Core claim: Burnt Umber pairs Franz Marc and Harry Baer across two world wars to explore how modern art, faith and narcissism intertwine. A sketchbook Harry finds by chance in a ruined house near the front becomes one element in his evolution, a passing of “creative fire” from Marc to Harry, but the real focus is on how both men use the people around them, especially women, to feed their work while trying to live with war, God and their own egos.
· Set the scene just after the Battle of the Bulge, near St Vith.
· Harry, cold and exhausted, moves through a battered house with other soldiers.
· In the basement he opens an old trunk and finds a sketchbook filled with animal drawings by Franz Marc.
· He recognizes its power and slips it into his pack.
· Emphasize:
o This is not a camp storeroom or a pile of loot from the murdered.
o It is war chaos and serendipity with impact, not a legal “crime scene” moment.
· Frame this as a first small example of how Harry takes what the world offers and folds it into his inner life.
· Briefly sketch Harry’s visible arc:
o Working class Jewish kid from Cleveland in a dense family world.
o GI in Europe, surviving the Bulge and seeing the horror of the camp.
o Postwar student and emerging artist, drawn to Goya and images of war and sacrifice.
o Charismatic, difficult teacher and artist in the American art world.
o Older man at his retrospective, looking back on decades of work and relationships.
· Introduce Franz Marc’s strand:
o German modernist obsessed with animals and color.
o His intense friendships and arguments with Kandinsky and others.
o His religious search and changing sense of God and the church as sanctuary, and then as hospital in wartime.
o His decision to enlist and experience of the First World War.
· State the parallel: the novel keeps cutting between Marc’s war and Harry’s war to show how modernism and conflict shape two narcissist artists in different eras.
· Describe what the sketchbook is and is not:
o It is found in a house, from a trunk that predates the current fighting.
o What matters most is the creative essence inside: Marc’s way of seeing animals and death in a few lines.
· Show how it functions for Harry:
o An aesthetic catalyst that influences his line and sense of movement.
o A private, charged object he returns to as he matures.
o A piece of “fire” he feels he has been given rather than a formal asset he must litigate.
· Keep the emphasis on impact, not law:
o The horror of the camp and the war is another element in his evolution.
o The notebook is part of that evolution, not a legal or moral case study about genocide and restitution.
· Explore Marc’s side:
o His early images of animals and landscapes as spiritual symbols.
o His conversations and letters about God, abstraction, and the role of church and painting.
o The shift from church as sanctuary to war hospital and battlefield as the new, broken “sanctuary.”
o His war drawings and the way the First World War both confirms and shatters his ideas.
· Explore Harry’s side:
o Captain Ramsey’s diagnosis of trauma, survivor guilt and narcissistic defences.
o His Dogs of War and other war-related work.
o His fascination with Goya’s Disasters of War and being invited to hang alongside them.
· Connect them: both men are trying to make images that face war and God’s apparent absence without retreating into safe decoration, each in his own time and idiom.
· Franz Marc:
o His narcissistic abandonment of Antonia on the wedding night and the self-justifying letters that follow.
o His pursuit of Marguerite and tendency to treat other people’s devotion as raw material.
o The way he wraps his choices in talk about artistic necessity and destiny.
· Harry Baer:
o His tendency to orient teaching, family and love affairs around his work.
o The way he accepts admiration and patience from others as something almost owed to him.
o His mixture of genuine vulnerability and self-centeredness.
· The sketchbook fits this pattern: not as “loot,” but as another thing he takes into himself and makes part of his story, without much thought for any invisible owner.
· Antonia (Marc’s wife):
o Limited options in early twentieth century Germany.
o Hopes for a shared life of art and stability.
o Left behind when Marc pursues his own vision; her main tools are letters and endurance.
· Women around Harry:
o Aurora: French medievalist shaped by occupation and resistance, with her own work and politics; not just a muse.
o Karine: Black academic who sees through Harry’s charm and reads him in terms of race, class and power.
o Darah: Political and practical, capable of loving him and also setting boundaries.
o Alida: Daughter who grows into her own perspective on her father.
· The contrast and development:
o Antonia’s world gives her almost no structural power.
o Aurora, Karine and Darah live in a world where women can claim more agency, even as they still absorb much of the cost of loving a narcissist artist.
· Argue that one of the book’s central themes is how the balance of power between male artists and the women around them shifts over the century, without becoming simple or fair.
· Describe the retrospective: multi-city show, gathering of works and people from every period of Harry’s life.
· Focus on what it does to Harry internally:
o He walks through rooms that feel like a visual diary of his fears, desires and ambitions.
o Old relationships and conflicts are present in the flesh.
o His heart condition and age make it impossible to pretend he has infinite time.
· The sketchbook’s place:
o It has fed into Elgin’s work and into Harry’s own, and exists as a financially valuable, insured object.
o It is one thread in his self-understanding, not the central question the show is “about.”
· Emphasize that the retrospective serves as a kind of self-reckoning rather than a legal or moral judgment about ownership.
· Pull together the main strands:
o Franz Marc: early modernist, deeply religious yet drawn to war, narcissistic in love, convinced of his own vocation.
o Harry Baer: Jewish American, traumatized by war, talented and narcissistic, moving through a very different art world but haunted by similar patterns.
o Women around them: from Antonia’s constrained loyalty to the more empowered but still burdened lives of Aurora, Karine, Darah and Alida.
· Suggest that the novel’s core concerns are:
o How modern artists draw energy from war, faith and other people’s lives.
o How narcissism can coexist with real feeling and real work.
o How, over time, the people around such men gain more power to answer back.
End on the idea that the sketchbook is a vivid symbol of all this: a bit of “fire” carried from one damaged artist to another, shaping a lifetime of work without ever being the whole story.
Book Written By Sheldon L. Greene.
More of Sheldon Greene’s reflections on law, memory and belonging can be found on his Substack: https://sheldongreenee.substack.com/