The only comprehensive history of pastel art, beautifully illustrated with works both celebrated and little known The Art of the Pastel traces the evolution of this most appealing medium from the fifteenth to the early twentieth century—from its humble origins as a tool for sketching to the height of its popularity in Rococo portraiture, and its embrace by the Impressionists and Symbolists. Authors Thea Burns and Philippe Saunier, both leading experts on the subject, shed new light on the acknowledged masters of the pastel, such as Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Jean-Etienne Liotard, who used these magical sticks of color to capture the character of their sitters; Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt, who used them to reveal the unexpected beauties of the everyday; and Odilon Redon, who used them to explore the inner mysteries of the spirit. But Burns and Saunier consider the pastel work of many other artists as well, from forgotten—yet pleasing—society portraitists to such important names as Delacroix, Whistler, and Picasso. As a rare achievement, their graceful yet authoritative text is matched by the color plates in this volume, which reproduce the harmoniously blended hues of more than 330 choice pastels, from collections around the world. For reasons of conservation, most of these works are exhibited only rarely, and then only in low light. Now they can be admired all together, without interruption, in this museum between two covers. A delight for the eyes as well as an important work of art history, The Art of the Pastel will be eagerly welcomed by artists, scholars, and art lovers alike.

In this engrossing book, Hollis Clayson provides the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in women prostitutes, examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s by such avant-garde painters as Cézanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by the academic and low-brow painters who were their contemporaries. Clayson not only illuminates the imagery of prostitution-with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination-but also tackles the issues and problems relevant to women and men in a patriarchal society. She discusses the conspicuous sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social life and civilized mores. She describes the system that evolved out of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of clandestine prostitutes who escaped police regulation and who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for spreading sexual licentiousness among their moral and social superiors. Clayson argues that the subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it exemplified the commercialization and the ambiguity of modern life.

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) created just six major figure paintings during his lifetime, one of which, the alluring Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), has remained the most challenging to interpret since it first intrigued viewers at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Unlike Seurat’s earlier sunlit scenes, Circus Sideshow presents a nighttime tableau depicting a parade—a street show enticing passersby to purchase tickets. With its geometrically precise composition, muted colors, and elements of abstraction, the painting stands apart as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionism and heralds Seurat’s subsequent depictions of popular entertainments. This book, the first comprehensive study of Circus Sideshow, situates the painting in the context of nineteenth-century Paris and of the many social changes France was undergoing. Renowned art historian Richard Thomson illuminates the roles of caricature, naturalist and avant-garde painting, and circus advertising; examines Seurat’s use of contemporary aesthetic theory; and discusses how artists ranging from Rouault to Picasso mined the sideshow theme into the twentieth century. Illustrated with Seurat’s related drawings, works by other artists, and period posters and broadsides, Seurat’s Circus Sideshow delves into the history of traveling circuses and seasonal fairs in France, exploring the ongoing appeal of this traditional form of popular entertainment through the fin de siècle. Two additional essays describe the painting’s enthusiastic reception in New York upon its 1929 debut and present the results of a fresh technical examination of the canvas, making this volume the definitive resource on one of Seurat’s most captivating works.

In the last years of his life Paul Cézanne produced a stunning series of watercolors, many of them sill lifes. Still Life with Blue Pot is one of these late masterpieces that is now in the collection of the Getty Museum. In Cézanne in the Study: Still Life in Watercolors, Carol Armstrong places this great painting within the context of Cezanne’s artistic and psychological development and of the history of the genre of still life in France. Still life—like the medium of watercolor—was traditionally considered to be “low” in the hierarchy of French academic paintings. Cézanne chose to ignore this hierarchy, creating monumental still-life watercolors that contained echoes of grand landscapes and even historical paintings in the manner of Poussin—the “highest” of classical art forms. In so doing he changed his still lifes with new meanings, both in terms of his own notoriously difficult personality and in the way he used the genre to explore the very process of looking at, and creating, art. Carol Armstrong’s study is a fascinating exploration of the brilliant watercolor paintings that brought Cézanne’s career to a complex, and triumphant, conclusion, The book includes new photographic studies of the Getty’s painting that allow the reader to encounter this great watercolor as never before, in all of its richness and detail.

Within a short time the Department of Drawings has acquired impressive holdings of European works on paper. This volume, the first in a series intended to keep scholars apprised of acquisitions, contains 149 entries on Italian, French, Flemish, Dutch, and other works ranging in date from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century. Artists represented include Rembrandt, Cezanne, Blake, Goya, Dürer, Savery, Rubens, Millet, Veronese, Caravaggio, Raphael, and numerous others. All drawings are illustrated at full-page size.