A Companion to Impressionism

The 21^st century's first major academic reassessment of Impressionism, providing a new generation of scholars with a comprehensive view of critical conversations

Presenting an expansive view of the study of Impressionism, this extraordinary volume breaks new thematic ground while also reconsidering established questions surrounding the definition, chronology, and membership of the Impressionist movement. In 34 original essays from established and emerging scholars, this collection considers a diverse range of developing topics and offers new critical approaches to the interpretation of Impressionist art.

Focusing on the 1860s to 1890s, this Companion explores artists who are well-represented in Impressionist studies, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cassatt, as well as Morisot, Caillebotte, Bazille, and other significant yet lesser-known artists. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies in addressing such topics as Impressionism's global predominance at the turn of the 20^th century, the relationship between Impressionism and the emergence of new media, the materials and techniques of the Impressionists, and the movement's exhibition and reception history. Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series, this important new addition to scholarship in this field:

• Reevaluates the origins, chronology, and critical reception of French Impressionism
• Discusses Impressionism's account of modern identity in the contexts of race, nationality, gender, and sexuality
• Explores the global reach and influence of Impressionism in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, North Africa, and the Americas
• Considers Impressionism's relationship to the emergence of film and photography in the 19th century
• Considers Impressionism's representation of the private sphere as compared to its depictions of public issues such as empire, finance, and environmental change
• Addresses the Impressionist market and clientele, period criticism, and exhibition displays from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century
• Features original essays by academics, curators, and conservators from around the world, including those from France, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Turkey, and Argentina

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Impressionism is an invaluable text for students and academics studying Impressionism and late 19^th century European art, Post-Impressionism, modern art, and modern French cultural history.

André Dombrowski is Frances Shapiro-Weitzenhoffer Associate Professor of 19th-Century European Art at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. He specializes in the arts and material culture of France and Germany in the late 19th century. He is the author of Cézanne, Murder, and Modern Life, and numerous essays on Manet, Monet, Pissarro, and Degas, among other artists.

List of Figures ix

About the Editor xiv

Notes on Contributors xv

Series Editor’s Preface xxiii

Acknowledgments xxv

Introduction 1
André Dombrowski

Part I What Was Impressionism? What Is an Impression? Definitions and New Directions 9

1 Impressionism and Criticism 11
Marnin Young

2 Rethinking the Origins of Impressionism: The Case of Claude Monet and Corner of a Studio 27
Mary-Dailey Desmarais

3 Monet in the 1880s: The Motif in Crisis 43
Marc Gotlieb

4 As a Glass Eye: Manet’s Flower Paintings 61
Briony Fer

5 Figuring Perception: Monet’s Leap into Plein Air, 1866–1867 75
Michael Marrinan

6 Pater, Impressionism, and the Undoing of Sense 93
Jeremy Melius

7 The Impressionist Mind: Modern Painting and Nineteenth-Century Readerships 107
Ségolène Le Men

Part II Painting as Object: Tools, Materials, and Close Looking 127

8 Impression, Improvisation, and Premeditation: New Insights into the Working Methods and Creative Process of Claude Monet 129
Gloria Groom and Kimberley Muir

9 Piquer, Plaquer: Cézanne, Pissarro, and Palette-Knife Painting 146
Nancy Locke

10 John Singer Sargent’s Lady with a Blue Veil and the Matter of Paint 162
Susan Sidlauskas

Part III New Visual Media and the Other Arts 181

11 Painting Photographing Ballooning: At the Boulevard des Capucines 183
Carol M. Armstrong

12 Series and Screens: Seeing Monet’s Cathedrals through the Lens of the Cinematograph 201
Marine Kisiel

13 Critical Impressionism: A Painting by Mary Cassatt and Its Challenge to the Social Rules of Art 219
Anne Higonnet

14 James McNeill Whistler: Veiling the Everyday 234
Caroline Arscott

Part IV Impressionism and Identity 251

15 Cassatt’s Alterity 253
Hollis Clayson

16 Bazille, Degas, and Modern Black Paris 271
[Excerpt from Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today, Yale University Press, pp. 70–83, with a new preface. Reprinted with permission from Yale University Press]
Denise Murrell

17 Expert Hands, Infectious Touch: Painting and Pregnancy in Morisot’s The Mother and Sister of the Artist 287
Mary Hunter

18 Painting the Prototype: The (Homo)Sexuality of Bazille’s Summer Scene 304
Jonathan D. Katz, with André Dombrowski

Part V Public and Private 323

19 Revival and Risk: Renoir, Fragonard, and the Epistolary Theme 325
Nina L. Dubin

20 “The Little Dwarf and the Giant Lady:” At Home with Gustave Caillebotte 343
Felix Krämer

21 Renoir, Impressionism, and the Value of Touch 357
Martha Lucy

22 Morisot’s Urbane Ecologies 375
Alison Syme

23 Incorporating Impressionism: The Société anonyme and the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874 393
André Dombrowski

Part VI World Impressionism 415

24 “Plume Mania:” Degas, Feathers, and the Global Millinery Trade 417
Simon Kelly

25 Home and Alienation in the Colonies: Auguste Renoir in Algiers, Jean Renoir in India 435
Todd Porterfield

26 Impressionism in Japan: The Awakening of the Senses 452
Takanori Nagaï

27 Impressionism in Argentina: A Historiographical Discussion 466
Laura Malosetti Costa

28 Turkish Impressionism: Interplays of Culture and Form 484
Ahu Antmen

29 Impressionism and Naturalism in Germany: The Competing Aesthetic and Ideological Imperatives of a Modern Art 499
Alex Potts

Part VII Criticism, Displays, and Markets 517

30 Degenerate Art: Impressionism and the Specter of Crisis in French Painting 519
Neil McWilliam

31 Impressionism through the Prism of New Methods: A Social and Cartographic Study of Monet’s Address Book 533
Félicie Faizand de Maupeou

32 Against the Grain: Gustave Caillebotte and Paul Durand-Ruel’s Impressionism 547
Mary Morton

33 Are Museum Curators “Very Special Clients?” Impressionism, the Art Market, and Museums (Paul Durand-Ruel and the Musée du Luxembourg at the Turn of the Twentieth Century) 566
Sylvie Patry

34 The Museum of Impressionism, 1947 583
Martha Ward

Index 601

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