Composition in White and Green is a novel about the Russian-French painter Nicolas de Staël (1914¬–1955), especially known for his colour satiated landscape paintings from the 1950s, where his background in abstract painting allowed for new forms of Figuration. For the most part, de Stael personified the romantic mythology of The Artist, but in Anne Gjeitanger’s novel it is the artist’s work itself that captures the reader. The artist’s endeavour to identify and realize his artistic goals, his struggle to capture the colour and light of his surroundings on canvas are depicted with empathy and understanding. It is a struggle that, in his own eyes, he rarely wins, and which the fame and recognition he finally is awarded does little to remedy.

Composition in White and Green is a distinctive portrait of an artist, a moving, contemplative novel full of wonder, which investigates the creator and the created.