An updated edition of this classic collection of letters, critical reviews, and reminiscences by impressionist artists and their contemporaries. The impressionists—Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and others—are probably the most popular of all artistic schools. Their struggle to impose a new vision is one of the most absorbing stories in the whole history of art. With imagination and insight, art historian Bernard Denvir brings impressionism into focus by showing it through the eyes of the artists themselves and their contemporaries, against the background of the time. Through letters, critical reviews, statements, and reminiscences of the people who were there, the story of this groundbreaking art movement comes alive. This was the age of innovation, political liberalization, emergent photography, and modern ideas about perception. The impressionists had new ways of painting, but they also had a new world to paint. This revised edition now features full-color reproductions of art throughout and an updated bibliography.

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 comprehensive, accessible, and richly illustrated guide to impressionism—the perennially popular artistic movement that led to the radical renewal of Western art. Monet, Renoir, Degas, Rodin, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and the other Impressionist artists burst onto the art scene in the second half of the nineteenth century, creating shock waves with their rebellious rejection of the academy’s strict rules dictating subject matter, style, and even color. Their art, labeled impressionism, coincided with the Industrial Revolution, when the world was suddenly jettisoned into modernity. The young artists who gave rise to the movement confronted public disdain and oppression in Europe, but were applauded overseas for their radically contemporary aesthetic. This complete and accessible guide renews and refreshes conventional views on impressionism by placing this seminal moment in art in its historical context. Emblematic masterpieces are examined with a focus on each detail, allowing a deeper understanding and appreciation of the artworks. Biographies of all the major artists of the movement provide insight about their life and significant works, and period photographs illustrate this incredibly rich and exciting time in art history. Organized thematically, the guide includes chapters on photography, fashion, female impressionists, exhibitions, galleries and dealers, writers, the movement’s influence on later artists, and recurrent impressionist themes including leisure activities, the garden, the city, and industry. Replete with illustrations and numerous firsthand accounts and quotations, this book recounts a story of emancipation.

The New York Times–bestselling biography of Manet, Cezanne, Degas, and others—a “revealing group portrait . . . lively, required reading” (People). Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, their paintings are now revered around the world. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well do we know the Impressionists as people? The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Morisot, and Cassatt. Sue Roe’s Private Lives of the Impressionists, follows an extraordinary group of artists into their Paris studios, down the rural lanes of Montmartre, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental change. Vivid and deeply researched, it casts a brilliant light on this unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty years—and transformed the art world with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life.

As this major contribution to art history shows, Impressionism was far more than a French movement that spread to other countries; rather, it was an approach to art adopted by artists of all nationalities who responded to light and atmospheric conditions, to landscape and cityscape, with an explosion of enthusiasm that was felt around the globe.

Martha Ward tracks the development and reception of neo-impressionism, revealing how the artists and critics of the French art world of the 1880s and 1890s created painting's first modern vanguard movement. Paying particular attention to the participation of Camille Pissarro, the only older artist to join the otherwise youthful movement, Ward sets the neo-impressionists' individual achievements in the context of a generational struggle to redefine the purposes of painting. She describes the conditions of display, distribution, and interpretation that the neo-impressionists challenged, and explains how these artists sought to circulate their own work outside of the prevailing system. Paintings, Ward argues, often anticipate and respond to their own conditions of display and use, and in the case of the neo-impressionists, the artists' relations to market forces and exhibition spaces had a decisive impact on their art. Ward details the changes in art dealing, and chronicles how these and new freedoms for the press made artistic vanguardism possible while at the same time affecting the content of painting. She also provides a nuanced account of the neo-impressionists' engagements with anarchism, and traces the gradual undermining of any strong correlation between artistic allegiance and political direction in the art world of the 1890s. Throughout, there are sensitive discussions of such artists as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, as well as Pissarro. Yet the touchstone of the book is Pissarro's intricate relationship to the various factions of the Paris art world.

Drawing on unpublished letters and other documents, a leading French historian/biographer traces the life and times of art dealer Durand-Ruel (1831-1921). Ruel supported the careers of most of the major Impressionist artists including Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. Photos feature the artists and art championed by Ruel.