In this book, Jeffrey Meyers follows the lives of four Impressionist painters whose rebellious work was scorned by the critics and derided by their contemporaries. The French art establishment dismissed them altogether and at the time their sold for very little. Impressionist Quartet describes the relationships between these artists and how they struggle emotionally and intellectually to create a new way of seeing and representing the world.

Although his career spanned a mere twenty years, Édouard Manet remains one of the most influential artists in history. Rejecting the classical style of painting religious or mythological subjects, Manet was one of the first artists in the nineteenth century to paint modern people in modern situations. Many of his paintings depicted the everyday street life of Paris, especially the cafés. The realism of his art offended the mainstream art community, and as a result, Manet's work was criticized as being obscene and unskilled. Despite the critics, paintings such as The Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia inspired the Impressionist movement and marked the beginning of modern art.

This groundbreaking study, the definitive introduction to the work of artist Mary Cassatt, places her work in the wider context of nineteenth-century feminism and art theory and is now updated with color illustrations. This groundbreaking study redefines the status of the beloved American artist Mary Cassatt, placing her work in the wider context of nineteenth- century feminism and art theory. Mary Cassatt looks at the artist’s work in light of her time as an advocate for women’s intellectual life and political emancipation. Esteemed by her contemporaries for her commitment to what she and her radical colleagues in Paris termed “the new art”—now called impressionism—Cassatt brought her discerning gaze and compositional inventiveness to the study of the subtle, often psychological, social interactions of women in public and private spaces. Focusing on key moments of engagement and change over the artist’s long career, art historian Griselda Pollock discusses Cassatt’s artistic training across Europe, her profound study of the Old Masters, and places fresh emphasis on the artist’s interest in Manet and other contemporary French and Spanish painters as well as her influence on American collections of French modernism. Now revised with a new preface, updates to the bibliography, and color illustrations throughout, this book offers a reevaluation of the work of this important artist as seen through the frames of class, gender, space, and difference.

A close ally of Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt was the only American painter at the heart of the Impressionist group in Paris. Highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic, Cassatt was a forthright advocate for womens intellectual, creative and political emancipation. She brought her discerning gaze and compositional inventiveness across many media to the subtle social interactions of women in public and private spaces, such as at the theatre, and in moments of intimacy with children, where she was one of the most attentive and unsentimental analysts of the infant body and the childs emerging personality. Tracing key moments in Cassatts long career, art historian Griselda Pollock highlights Cassatts extensive artistic training across Europe, analysing her profound study of Old Masters while revealing her intelligent understanding of both Manet and Courbet. Pollock also provides close readings of Cassatts paintings and her singular vision of women in modernity. Now revised with a new preface, updates to the bibliography and colour illustrations throughout, this book offers a rich perspective on the core concerns of a major Impressionist artist through the frames of class, gender, space and difference.

The first comprehensive study of Cassatt’s life, work, and legacy through the prism of a transatlantic framework. This book re-envisions Mary Cassatt in the context of her transatlantic network, friendships, exhibitions, politics, and legacy. Rather than defining her as either an American artist or a French impressionist, author Ruth E. Iskin argues that we can best understand Cassatt through the complexity of her multiple identifications as an American patriot, a committed French impressionist, and a suffragist. Contextualizing Cassatt’s feminist outlook within the intense pro- and anti-suffrage debates in the United States, Iskin shows how these impacted her artistic representations of motherhood, fatherhood, and older women. Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York also argues for the historical importance of her work as an advisor to American collectors, and demonstrates the role of museums in shaping her legacy, highlighting the combined impact of gender, national, and transnational dynamics.

Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists—Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon—whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights. Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary—one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock’s uninhibited style of “action painting” triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock’s sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock's mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend’s mistress. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain’s most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen. Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one’s own as an artist—finding one’s voice—almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate’s expectations of who you are or ought to be. Praise for The Art of Rivalry “Gripping . . . Mr. Smee’s skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.”—The New York Times “With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority.”—The Boston Globe

Pulitzer-winner Sebastian Smee relives the remarkable birth of Impressionism from the ashes of war Paris, January 1871 – the final, agonising days of the Franco-Prussian War. As the German army cements its advantage, shells rattle through the Left Bank. It is a bitterly cold winter; there is no fuel, no medicine, no food. The city’s poorer citizens have long turned to eating rats, cats and dogs. France has been brought to its knees. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas are trapped in the besieged city. Renoir and Bazille have joined regiments outside of Paris, while Monet and Pissarro fled the country just in time. Out of the Siege and the Commune, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. A feeling for transience – reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things – would change art history forever. This is the extraordinary account of the ‘Terrible Year’ in Paris and its monumental impact on the rise of Impressionism.