Book excerpt: A huddle of wooden sheds in a courtyard off the Boulevard Montmartre known as Cormon's atelier was where the handsome art student from Sydney, John Peter Russell, first met the haunted, intense newcomer from Holland, Vincent van Gogh. Both were foreigners in the competitive art world of Paris in the 1880s, and over the next two years both would discover a passion for colour painting. Now, for the first time, Ann Galbally traces the passage of this extraordinary and unlikely friendship. The two spent hours together in a Paris studio experimenting with the fast-moving changes in art practice. Both artists ultimately rejected the Impressionist's world of urban sophistication and left Paris to develop colour painting in isolation, Van Gogh at Arles in Provence, and Russell on Belle Ile off the coast of Brittany. With a supporting cast including Gauguin, Rodin, Monet and Matisse this is a journey through the struggles and failures, plots and intrigues of artistic life. A tale of love found and lost and ultimate tragedy, it makes for enthralling reading.