Impressionism : paint and politics / John House.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

House, John, 1945-2012.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Impressionism (Art)--France.

Impressionism (Art).

France.

Physical Description:

vii, 256 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 29 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New Haven : Yale University Press, 2004.

Summary:

This beautiful book explores the history of Impressionism from a wide range of perspectives, viewing it in terms of subject matter, painting technique, exhibiting and marketing strategy and within its wider political and ideological contexts. Recent accounts of Impressionism have focused on single issues; this is the first book to bring together the fresh approaches to the field that have been proposed in the past twenty years. John House, one of the most distinguished scholars of Impressionist painting, argues that Impressionism can be fully understood in its historical contexts only if all of these approaches are taken together. Studied in this light, Impressionism can be seen as a movement that challenged both artistic and political authority, with its uncompromisingly modern subject matter and its determinedly secular world view, dependent on sense experiences alone. In a series of chapters, ranging from the late 1860s to the early 1880s, House analyses the paintings and career strategies of the leading Impressionist artists, stressing the ways in which they countered the dominant conventions of the contemporary art world and evolved their distinctive and immediately recognisable manner of painting. Insisting on the need to focus closely on the technique, composition and imagery of the paintings themselves, he explores the ways in which pictorial style could generate social and political meanings at the end of the Second Empire and in the early years of the Third Republic in France.

Contents:

The 'Ecole des Batignolles': oppositional painting in the late 1860s

Sketch and finished painting

Modernising the landscape: the environs of Paris

The viewer of modern life

Making a mark: the Impressionist brushstroke

From the 'Little Church' to the market place: Impressionism around 1880

Coda: Impressionism's histories reviewed.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 241-249) and index.

ISBN:

0300102402

OCLC:

52937482