The Unfinished Portrait

The book is built around the relationships of leading artists and actors in London starting in the 1880s. The independent life of an unfinished portrait that is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, becomes the story as the people that create it fade from popular memory.

Sarah Bernhardt, Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Laurence Alma Tadema, Jules Bastien-Lepage, Bram Stoker, all play a part in the creation of the portrait and its' survival.

The interaction between the portraitist and the actor subject, the nature of the portrayal, the needs of the two artists create the first threat to the painting.

Neil Miley is a practising artist, working in oil paint, graphite and clay sculpture. He brings his keen interest in the arts and history together in writing his novels. The novels are exhaustively researched to ensure an accurate period feel comes through to the reader. To be able to write authoritatively about the paintings in the novels Neil has visited France, England, Germany, Denmark, Italy, Austria, The Netherlands, Belgium, spending in total almost two years in Europe. Not to mention all the major collections of 19th-century paintings in Australia. Neil's hoped-for visit to Spain is unfortunately on indefinite hold due to COVID-19 and travel restriction from Australia. Since writing his first book in 2013 Neil has studied creative writing and expanded his knowledge of the period covered in his first book. The new Bastien-Lepage series is much more dialogue focussed than the early book that followed a narrative stream. Apart from novel writing, Neil is also involved in instructional design and delivery. At the end of the four novels in the Bastien-Lepage series, Neil will turn his attention to writing instructional books on Oil Painting.