Gainsborough’s name is synonymous with Suffolk, but it was his daughters, one who suffered from mental illness and the other who cared for her, who grabbed Emily Howes’ imagination and inspired her to write a novel about them
Visiting the National Gallery on a whim one day, Emily Howes had no idea that a special exhibition of 18th century paintings would affect her so deeply.
‘It was a collection of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough of his family and friends, people he loved,’ she says. ‘All around were these beautiful pictures of his children. But there was also a huge portrait of his two daughters as adults and the transformation caught my eye. They looked so stiff and frozen and so unhappy.’
Emily bought books about Gainsborough and his work by Susan Sloman and James Hamilton from the gallery shop and for the next four years immersed herself in the lives of the artist, his wife and his daughters, creating an acclaimed novel called The Painter’s Daughters.
It tells of Peggy and Molly Gainsborough and how their carefree childhood in Suffolk is disrupted when the family moves to Bath for their father, Thomas, to earn his living painting portraits in fashionable society. As the girls grow up, Molly suffers increasing episodes of mental instability and Peggy instinctively seeks to protect her.
A compelling and poignant story, the book explores family, love and sacrifice, the institution of marriage and the role of women, mental illness and its treatment, money and class, and art, of course.
‘Gainsborough’s paintings are so beautiful and have hidden messages in them, too, but I hadn’t really known that he was local.’ Emily was more familiar with Constable, she says. She went to school in Southwold, but the family home was in north Essex, and as a child she had enjoyed exploring the countryside immortalised through his landscapes and rowing at Dedham. Emily discovered Gainsborough through writing the novel.
‘One of the things that struck me was how he didn’t want to be painting faces. He wanted to be free, in the countryside, painting landscapes. But money was so tight and, even though he was painting royalty and extraordinarily wealthy people at the top of society, he was never able to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. The artist we most associate with the extravagance of upper-class portraiture was really struggling himself.’
It’s an atmospheric, powerful and multi-faceted story, but it might never have been a novel. Emily’s background was in theatre. She graduated from Cambridge with a first in English and had toured nationally with the acclaimed comedy sketch troupe Footlights before working as a writer, director and performer in stage, television, radio and comedy.
‘I trained in physical theatre, making stories out of nothing and creating atmosphere using the whole body, using all the senses,’ she says. ‘It’s instrumental in how I write books, I think. I allow myself to imagine the colours, to hear the sounds and to feel what it would be like to be in Gainsborough’s studio - the squeak of a door, the slosh of water in a bucket, the smell of the paint.’
She gave up theatre when it conflicted with the needs of her young family, and as a single mother decided on a completely new direction as a psychotherapist. ‘I didn’t want to take a job for financial security that I hated or didn’t believe in. And I wanted to leave space for me to be creative too. Once I found existential psychotherapy, I knew this was for me. It’s so brilliant and satisfying and enjoyable as a career.
‘It’s a place where philosophy meets therapy. Why are we here? What is it to be alive? What do we want from our lives? Can we break free from things we don’t want in life? These are the same kind of questions that I ask in my books.’
From rooms in central London, she runs her practice for two or three days a week, with the remaining time dedicated to her writing. And since completing The Painter’s Daughters, she is now working on the story of Charles Dickens’ wife.
‘I love raising ghosts,’ she says of her fascination for historical fiction, which she has enjoyed from childhood. ‘There’s this sense of being able to be transformed and transported to somewhere I would never normally find myself.
Writing the book caused Emily to draw on her own family experience, too, she says. ‘I wasn’t completely aware of it when I was writing, but in presenting the two girls dealing with this terrifying force they don’t understand, I was drawing on my own story. My grandmother was taken into a mental institution for postnatal depression and was there for 25 years. My mother was adopted by relatives, and it was really frightening for her as a child.’
The intensity and integrity of Emily’s novel was recognised from the outset. She entered the manuscript for a writing competition at Mslexia magazine and won.
‘The lead judge was Hilary Mantel. Hearing such lovely words from her was life changing. I will always be grateful to her for her generosity. People sit up and take notice when they hear her name.’
Winning the competition gave Emily confidence, encouragement and permission to consider herself a novelist, she says. But now readers of The Painter’s Daughters will agree she’s a very accomplished writer.
The Painter’s Daughters is published by Phoenix priced £20.
