Ever wonder why all those 19th century European painters were so batshit crazy? According to Christopher Moore it wasn't just the absinthe, lead poisoning and/or syphilis. 
 Lucien Lessard is a talented painter who also makes a mean loaf of bread in his family's bakery. One of Lucien's best friends is another artist named Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec who doesn't let his short stature stop him from drinking constantly while trying to sleep with every whore in Paris. Lucien and Henri are saddened by the news of the suicide of their friend Vincent van Gogh. Lucien's world is rocked even more by the return of his old flame Juliette who vanished two years earlier. 
 Juliette wants to pick up where they left off and insists that Lucien do a nude painting of her, but unbeknownst to him, Juliette is actually a supernatural entity linked to a special shade of blue that she makes with a gnome-like paint supplier known only as the Colorman. Through the course of the book, we learn the long history of Juliette and the Colorman and discover that they've inspired and destroyed many an unsuspecting artist. 
 Moore's created a historical fiction with a supernatural twist as he uses many real artists as characters. As you'd expect with Moore, it's got plenty of bawdy humor with just enough heart to keep it from spinning off into complete absurd nonsense. All in all, it's a fairly entertaining mix of history, fantasy, mystery, romance and humor. 
 However, this ended up in the second tier of Moore books for me, behind ones like Lamb or Fool. While there are plenty of laugh out loud lines, he didn't hit the consistent tone of hilarity that he's managed in his best work. 
 The structure is a bit of a puzzle because there's so much time jumping done in the story. No only do we get many flashbacks to Juliette and the Colorman's past, there's also lots of inserts to Lucien's past, and then there's all the random trivia about the color blue in the art world. At the end, most of this has added up to a complete story, but for the first half of the book it felt like we were just kind of wandering around and looking for random bits of story to piece together. 
 Not bad, but not my favorite Christopher Moore. I think it might have been more entertaining if he had just written his version of the art scene at the time and left out the supernatural stuff because that part of it felt like the same kind of plot he's delivered in his other books like Bloodsucking Fiends or Coyote Blue.