Benjamin Moser's fascinating study of Dutch art and artists is more than the sum of its extraordinary parts. Part memoir, part critical and historical analysis, the book also offers a superb commentary--one of the best I've ever read--on what it means to be displaced in a never entirely whole world, and what it means to see between the cracks. I learned so much reading this fine book, and so will you.--Hilton Als, author of White Girls

I always dreamed of living in the rooms of my favorite paintings. Finally! A book that animates these rooms, their light, the people in them--that evokes their character and emotions and places them in the context of their culture. Profound and intensely alive, Benjamin Moser's writing describes these artists as living beings and brings to life their works of art, connecting his own life as a writer to deep insights into the meaning of art.--Laurie Anderson

In a luminous, splendidly illustrated melding of art history and memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, translator, and essayist Moser pays homage to 17th-century artists whose works he discovered when he first settled in the Netherlands 20 years ago. [Moser] sets artists' lives in the context of violence and upheaval, as well as personal loss, poverty, grief, and longing. In Vermeer, he sees "a mind seeking." In writing about art, Moser admits that he, too, was a mind seeking: to understand his identity as a writer and as a foreigner in a new culture.... A graceful meditation on art.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Conversational and congenial, essayistic and elevating . . . by the book's end, I found that Moser's intimate asides had accumulated into something affecting and open-ended . . . much more than an elegant guide to Dutch painters.--Sebastian Smee "Washington Post"