Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism

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

Mary Tompkins Lewis is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Trinity College, Hartford. She is the author of Cézanne’s Early Imagery (UC Press) and Cézanne.

Preface

Introduction: The Critical History
of Impressionism: An Overview
MARY TOMPKINS LEWIS

Part One
Background Studies: Economic Landscapes
and Exhibition Strategies

1 Impressionism, Originality,
and Laissez-Faire
ROBERT L. HERBERT

2 Dealing in Temperaments: Economic
Transformation of the Artistic Field
in France during the Second Half of
the Nineteenth Century
NICOLAS GREEN

3 Impressionist Installations
and Private Exhibitions
MARTHA WARD

Part Two
Landscapes of Modernity

4 Framing the Landscape
JOHN HOUSE

5 The Environs of Paris
T.J. CLARK

Part Three
The Critical Climate

6 The Intransigent Artist or How
the Impressionists Got Their Name
STEPHEN F. EISENMAN

7 Duranty on Degas: A Theory
of Modern Painting
CAROL ARMSTRONG

8 Berthe Morisot and the
Feminizing of Impressionism
TAMAR GARB

Part Four
Impressionism,
Politics, and Nationalism

9 Camille Pissarro in 1880: An Anarchistic
Artist in Bourgeois Society
MICHEL MELOT

10 Monet and the Challenges to
Impressionism in the 1880s
PAUL TUCKER

Part Five
Recent Studies in Post-Impressionist Painting

11 Seurat’s Grande Jatte:
An Anti-Utopian Allegory
LINDA NOCHLIN

12 At the Threshold of Symbolism:
Van Gogh’s Sower and Gauguin’s
Vision after the Sermon
DEBORA SILVERMAN

13 Mark, Motif, Materiality:
The Cézanne Effect in the
Twentieth Century
RICHARD SHIFF

Select Bibliography
Contributors
List of Illustrations
Index