Q&A with Rue Matthiessen

 

 

 

Rue Matthiessen is the author of the new novel Woman with Eyes Closed. Her other books include the memoir Castles & Ruins. She is based on the East End of Long Island. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Woman with Eyes Closed, and how did you create your characters Kit and Perrin?

 

A: The 2012 real-life theft of a painting called Woman with Eyes Closed, by Lucian Freud, caught my attention. It happened at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam.

 

At the time, the art world was riveted by this story of two brothers, not professional in any way, who broke into a major museum and walked off with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of art. Two Monets and a Picasso were also stolen.

 

The question of the monetary value, versus the cultural and personal value of these works was intriguing to me.

 

I had seen many of Lucian Freud’s paintings here and in London. My very favorite show was in 2019, Monumental, at Acquavella in NYC. This show just really put me over the top. It was so exciting to see these works up close, because Acquavella is a gallery, not a huge museum space.

 

Freud’s work is complex, and his characters are fully rounded. Aside from the physical, you can see so much about them. His painting Woman with Eyes Closed was of course not there. But just looking at photos of it online, I felt that I knew so much about her, that there was a real story there. 

 

Perrin just came to me. She is a local girl, who grew up in an insecure home, in a town that became enormously wealthy. I modeled her looks on Keely Hawes, one of my favorite actresses. I drew from my own past for her character. 

 

Kit was inspired by the character of Tom Quinn, who was played by the actor Matthew MacFadyen in the show MI-5. (Keely Hawes was also on this show!)  

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you? 

 

A: Well, the possibility that the paintings from the Kunsthal heist were burned by the mother of the thieves while her sons were on the run was fascinating to me. People were so angry, coming down hard in condemnation and in her defense.

 

That opened the door to many other scenarios, and questions. Value, money, art, emotional attachment to things, to culture, to people. What do artists do, and why do they do it? What is it worth, and to whom? The fiction just grew from there.

 

When I was growing up in Sagaponack, the significance of art and writing was among the primary questions. So the novel evolved naturally back to our shores. As I was writing it, the characters felt ready-made. However, it took a long time and polishing to bring them into any kind of clarity on the page. But that’s where craft comes in.  

 

Q: Joan Baum wrote in Sag Harbor Express, “Woman with Eyes Closed will longingly resonate, recalling a time before luxe building and big money art acquisitions came to dominate a once vital artist’s community.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I think it’s insightful. As I was writing it, I realized there was a subplot there having to do with how much the East End of Long Island—now “The Hamptons,” has changed. It’s another thing I care passionately about.

 

When we were children, houses in Sag Harbor and Springs could be had for under $10,000, in some cases far less. Many artists, including Jackson Pollock and James Brooks, lived in fisherman’s shacks with drafty outbuildings in East Hampton, and did their work.

 

Sagaponack, where we lived, was mostly farmers and fishermen. People were excellent neighbors because in the winter, the electricity would go down. We sometimes depended on the farmers across the street, who had a generator.

 

My father [Peter Matthiessen]’s place was very simple. Now the hedges are high, and people are suing each other regularly over lot lines and other grievances. The place has been victimized by its own success.

 

Back then the artists came because they could, the light was beautiful, and there were others who were doing the same thing through winters that were long and cold. The summers were gorgeous and the beaches mostly empty.

 

Quietly chic rather than glamorous, it was fun and a fascinating culture in which to grow up. I was definitely a free-range kid.  

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you? 

 

A: That title was a gift, taken directly from the painting, Woman with Eyes Closed, by Lucian Freud. It worked for the book in so many ways.

 

My main female character, Perrin Clayton, grew up poor in a fishermen’s shack on the beach, with her somewhat wild parents. Her father, George, is an abstract expressionist. Her mother Iris is experimental, intellectual, and uninterested in domestic things. There is never, never enough money.

 

When Perrin comes of age, she meets Jack Triplett at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. She falls for him because he is organized and ambitious, and she sees immediately that he will have a huge success. They marry, and she acquires all of the things she always wanted, the house, the cars, the cash flow.

 

But he is controlling, shallow, belittling to her as a woman, and as a person. Very quickly she has regrets, that she might have valued the wrong things, and that maybe she should have waited. She keeps trying to talk herself back into it though. Perrin is the Woman with Eyes Closed.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I have a biography of my mother, Deborah Love Matthiessen, in the works. It’s called Shape of Seas, a line from a poem she wrote about my father. She is featured in my memoir, Castles & Ruins, but that book was mostly about me.

 

Aside from being my mother and dying young, Deborah Love was a pioneering, fascinating woman, and absolutely brilliant. I wanted to do a (mostly) detached portrait of her, her life, her time, her influences, her ambition, and her cut-glass originality. 

 

Q: Anything else we should know?  

 

A: These have been terrific questions! After completing my memoir, which had been difficult to write, I so enjoyed the adventure of this story and where it led me. I hope that the reader has as much fun reading Woman with Eyes Closed as I did writing it.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb