PRESS AND AUCTIONS
THE DAILY MAIL
Artist pens eccentric memoir chronicling his adventures around the world
'James Reeve belongs to that rare breed of artists who can write. Not that you will learn anything about his painting methods in this book, but it is a delightfully entertaining, if often shocking, memoir, an escapist antidote to our lockdown times. ... The book is as quirky as it is quixotic, and all human life is here.'
Sebastian Shakespeare, 8 January 2021
THE TABLET
Books of the Year 2020 - Travels of a Painter
'[Reeve's] eye-popping adventures are filled with witch doctors, nuns, prostitutes, princesses, murderers, film stars, politicians, eunuchs and despots who cajole, threaten and wickedly entertain. ...' 3 December 2020
THE JACKDAW
Book Review - Travels of a Painter
'Writing descriptively is no problem to this painter who knows how to flabour and compose a scene with enlivening details and information. In his writing pictures are clearly drawn, the vivid stories funny and frightening, the love of nature and wildlife so moving and well appreciated. And each incident comes with its own tiny illumintion. Painting's gain was clearly writing's loss.' November/December 2020
COUNTRY LIFE
Book of the Week - Travels of a Painter
'This is an ideal pandemic book, offering hours of armchair travel through the pen and paintbrush of James Reeve ... part-memoir, part-travelogue, in which adventures, characters and anecdotes are brought to life through colourful vignettes.' 7 October 2020
RICHARD DORMENT, formerly chief art critic of THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘TRAVELS OF A PAINTER is one of the greatest travel books I’ve ever read. The beautiful way in which Reeve uses language, the vividness of his descriptions and the fascination of the stories : all are maintained until the last page. What’s more, the quality of the writing and of the scores of stories he tells never falters. Reeve keeps the reader glued to the page whether he is writing about the dregs of the Australian desert or the jungles of Mexico.
... It must be Reeve’s training and practice as an artist that gives him this superhuman acuity of observation -the rest of us see the world as a black and white newsreel, whereas for him life unfolds in full colour and cinemascope.
... The overall impression when I finished is that Reeve cannot write a dull sentence and cannot enter a room without something extraordinary happening. … What pleasure this book has given me.’
THE SPECTATOR
'...Classically trained in the Academies in Florence and Madrid, Reeve is a miraculous draughtsman — and as proficient at portraiture as he is in landscape and genre.'
SOTHEBY'S
September 2015 Made in Britain
November 2009 Latin American Art