Another tale of love and loss and art conservation

Fugitive Blue, by Claire Thomas
Allen and Unwin
2009
A young painting conservator working in a studio in Melbourne, Austalia comes to treat a fifteenth-century panel painted with large quanitities of ultramarine pigment (which makes the title quite bewildering as ultramarine is not a fugitive pigment). As she restores the painting, her fascination with it and its history grows and we learn the story of the painting from its creation until its arrival in Australia after World War II as one of the possessions of a Greek family.
As with many similar novels, there is a love story involving the conservator who has more trouble taking care of her life than works of art.
A sample quote: “I spent so much of time restoring things, trying to reclaim their original beauty. All day, I looked at deteriorating objects with their parts exposed like a person with her heart on the outside. I could touch these paintings, make a decision and watch them transform. Done. But then there was us.”