Spending by Mary Gordon

Mary Gordon,
Spending, a novel: Gordon explores new territory with an indelibly vibrant, witty character, Monica Szabo, a fifty-year-old artist who decides to accept a handsome commodities trader as her patron. He gives her money, sex, and poses as a model. However, when her new series of paintings makes her rich, famous, and controversial, her patron has a reversal of fortune, and she must face the moral questions about art, money, and love that she has chosen, up to now, to delay answering. (Scribner)