Impressionists and Politics is an accessible introduction to the current debates about Impressionism. Was the artistic movement really radical and innovative? Is the term "Impressionism" itself an adequate characterization of the movement of painters and critics that took the mid-nineteenth century Paris art world by storm? By providing an historical background and context, the book places the Impressionists' roots in wider social and economic transformations and explains its militancy, both aesthetic and political. Impressionists and Politics is a concise history of the movement, from its youthful inception in the 1860s, through to its final years of recognition and then crisis.

A new perspective on Impressionist art that offers revealing, fresh interpretations of familiar paintings In this handsome book, a leading authority on Impressionist painting offers a new view of this admired and immensely popular art form. John House examines the style and technique, subject matter and imagery, exhibiting and marketing strategies, and social, political, and ideological contexts of Impressionism in light of the perspectives that have been brought to it in the last twenty years. When all of these diverse approaches are taken into account, he argues, Impressionism can be seen as a movement that challenged both artistic and political authority with its uncompromisingly modern subject matter and its determinedly secular worldview. Moving from the late 1860s to the early 1880s, House analyzes the paintings and career strategies of the leading Impressionist artists, pointing out the ways in which they countered the dominant conventions of the contemporary art world and evolved their distinctive and immediately recognizable manner of painting. Focusing closely on the technique, composition, and imagery of the paintings themselves and combining this fresh appraisal with recent historical studies of Impressionism, House explores how pictorial style could generate social and political meanings and opens new ways of looking at this luminous art.

The late 1870s and early 1880s were watershed years in the history of French painting. As outgoing economic and social structures were being replaced by a capitalist, measured time, Impressionist artists sought to create works that could be perceived in an instant, capturing the sensations of rapidly transforming modern life. Yet a generation of artists pushed back against these changes, spearheading a short-lived revival of the Realist practices that had dominated at mid-century and advocating slowness in practice, subject matter, and beholding. In this illuminating book, Marnin Young looks closely at five works by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred-Philippe Roll, Jean-Franocois Raffaeelli, and James Ensor, artists who shared a concern with painting and temporality that is all but forgotten today, having been eclipsed by the ideals of Impressionism. Young's highly original study situates later Realism for the first time within the larger social, political, and economic framework and argues for its centrality in understanding the development of modern art.

The essays in this wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated volume capture the theoretical range and scholarly rigor of recent criticism that has fundamentally transformed the study of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Readers are invited to consider the profound issues and penetrating questions that lie beneath this perennially popular body of work as the contributors examine the art world of late nineteenth-century France—including detailed looks at Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Morisot, Seurat, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. The authors offer fascinating new perspectives, placing the artworks from this period in wider social and historical contexts. They explore these painters' pictorial and market strategies, the critical reception and modern criteria the paintings engendered, and the movement's historic role in the formation of an avant-garde tradition. Their research reflects the wealth of new documents, critical approaches, and scholarly exhibitions that have fundamentally altered our understanding of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. These essays, several of which have previously been familiar only to scholars, provide instructive models of in-depth critical analysis and of the competing art historical methods that have crucially reshaped the field. Contributors: Carol Armstrong, T. J. Clark, Stephen F. Eisenman, Tamar Garb, Nicholas Green, Robert L. Herbert, John House, Mary Tompkins Lewis, Michel Melot, Linda Nochlin, Richard Shiff, Debora Silverman, Paul Tucker, Martha Ward

The examples convey not only these major themes but also the painters' belief in the progress of civilization through science and industry. The book thus expands the scope of Impressionist celebrations of modernity to include what might be called Impressionism's "other landscape" and proposes that in the Impressionists' effort to forge a modern landscape art, those signs of modernity defined their vision most clearly."--BOOK JACKET.

Julie Manet, the niece of Edouard Manet and the daughter of the most famous female Impressionist artist, Berthe Morisot, was born in Paris on 14 November 1878 into a wealthy and cultured milieu at the height of the Impressionist era. Many young girls still confide their inner thoughts to diaries and it is hardly surprising that, with her mother giving all her encouragement, Julie would prove to be no exception to the rule. At the age of ten, Julie began writing her `memoirs' but it wasn't until August 1893, at fourteen, that Julie began her diary in earnest: no neat leather-bound volume with lock and key but just untidy notes scribbled in old exercise books, often in pencil, the presentation as spontaneous as its contents. Her extraordinary diary - newly translated here by an expert on Impressionism - reveals a vivid depiction of a vital period in France's cultural history seen through the youthful and precocious eyes of the youngest member of what was surely the most prominent artistic family of the time.

"The late 1870s and early 1880s were watershed years in the history of French painting. As outgoing economic and social structures were being replaced by a capitalist, measured time, Impressionist artists sought to create works that could be perceived in an instant, capturing the sensations of rapidly transforming modern life. Yet a generation of artists pushed back against these changes, spearheading a short-lived revival of the Realist practices that had dominated at mid-century and advocating slowness in practice, subject matter, and beholding. In this illuminating book, Marnin Young looks closely at five works by Jules Bastien-Lepage, Gustave Caillebotte, Alfred-Philippe Roll, Jean-François Raffaëlli, and James Ensor, artists who shared a concern with painting and temporality that is all but forgotten today, having been eclipsed by the ideals of Impressionism. Young's highly original study situates later Realism for the first time within the larger social, political, and economic framework and argues for its centrality in understanding the development of modern art."--Provided by publisher.