As we assembled this portfolio by Lincoln Perry, we became curious about his synthesis of art of the past—Renaissance painting particularly, but also such disparate modern sources as Courbet, Picasso, and Balthus. When we reached him on the phone at his home in Maine, Perry spoke about the reciprocal relationship between content and form and his view of the history of art as an extended family. “I look to steal everything that moves me,” he has written, “anything that can suggest ways to solve the problems a painter faces.” He also drew connections between his own work and that of his wife, Ann Beattie, whose story “Panthers” appears on page 143.

 

 

My father was absolutely hostile to all the arts. He was an old lefty who thought that the only ­reality in the world was material and economic, so the arts were, in his words, “a crock of shit”—all the humanities, in fact. So I probably felt some ­rebelliousness as a kid. I also just had an instinctive ­desire to draw. I would draw e…