The Judgement of Paris : The Revolutionary Decade that gave the World Impressionism

Author(s): Ross King

Art

In 1863, the French painter Ernest Meissonier was one of the most famous artists in the world. The darling of the 'Salon' - that all important public art exhibition held biannually in Paris - he painted historical subjects in meticulous detail and sold his works for astronomical sums to collectors who included Napoleon III himself. Manet, on the other hand, was struggling in obscurity. Famous today as the father of Impressionism, when this books opens he was known only as the sloppy painter of a few much-derided canvases depicting absinthe-drinking beggars and bourgeois gentlemen in top hats. With his usual narrative brilliance and eye for telling detail, Ross King has taken the parallel careers of Meissonier and Manet and used them as a lens for their times. Beginning with the year that Manet exhibited his ground-breaking "Dejeuner sur l'herbe" and ending in 1874 with the first 'Impressionist' exhibition, King plunges us into Parisian life - on the streets and in the corridors of power - during a ten-year period full of social and political ferment. First published 2006.

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The acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling applies paints a dazzling portrait of late-nineteenth century France and of the flamboyant and highly influential painters who were emblematic of the struggle between old and new - a struggle which resulted in the birth of Impressionism.

General Fields

  • : 9781844134076
  • : Vintage Publishing
  • : Pimlico
  • : 0.386
  • : May 2007
  • : 199mm X 132mm X 30mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 464
  • : Paperback
  • : Ross King