Relates the life of Gulley Jimson, an aging, successful, London artist who has lost popularity and no longer paints.

Entranced by the paintings of the unconventional artist Vincent Van Gogh, for whom her mother is working as a housekeeper, Claudine is saddened when the townspeople turn against him.

High-school junior Clio Ford reluctantly gives up her dream job and a potential first kiss to take a working vacation with her estranged father on a yacht in Italy.

After Marvin, a beetle, makes a miniature drawing as an eleventh birthday gift for James, a human with whom he shares a house, the two new friends work together to help recover a Durer drawing stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.