The documents in this book -- letters and recorded comments by the artists themselves, as well as selections by notable contemporaries including Baudelaire, Zola, Valery, Mallarme, Huysman, Laforgue and Proust -- show how artists and critics during and in the aftermath of Impressionism did describe themselves: how they responded to tradition, to each other and to the kaleidoscope of the contemporary scene. The ever-expanding interpretation of Impressionism and its legacy within the changing world of twentieth-century art and art criticism is examined through the writings of artists such as Leger, Kandinsky, Masson, Matisse, Bataille, Klee and Hofmann as well as recent critics, philosophers and art historians. Accompanying the texts are 235 color plates of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces, and 242 black and white reproductions of historical photographs, original documents, contemporary cartoons, prints and drawings. - Jacket flap.

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.

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.

Examines the use of cafes, opera houses, dance halls, theaters, racetracks, and the seaside in impressionist French paintings

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.

This book describes the development of Impressionism and presents the eleven artists who made up the Impressionist group, including reproductions and analyses of their work.