Description
Book SynopsisFocusing on the art of Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904) and his colleagues Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Frederic Bazille, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, this book argues for the importance of the group as a defining subject of nineteenth-century French painting.
Trade Review"[S]cholarly, exact, and closely argued."--Julian Barnes, London Review of Books "[Fellow Men] is a most meticulous and wide-ranging study."--Choice "Bridget Alsdorf has written a fluent, carefully considered book... Staying admirably close to the paintings and the preparatory drawings for each, Alsdorf exposes many of the contradictions that linger around Fantin-Latour's oeuvre, often signaling these in crisply aphoristic terms."--Anne Leonard, Nineteenth-Century French Studies "It is the great virtue of Alsdorf's study that she is able to penetrate the mysterious solemnity of such a work, and to demonstrate how Fantin's group portraits, for all their apparent dignity and restraint, are riven by conflicts that help to sharpen an understanding of artistic identity and bourgeois masculinity in the formative decades of cultural modernity."--Neil F. McWilliam, caa.reviews "[The book is] an invaluable addition to the literature not only on Fantin-Latour but on the subject of group portraiture. Perhaps the most effective service it performs for Fantin's group portraits is to force us to look at them anew and see them in all their complexity, awkwardness and discomfort, to tease out the many contradictions at their heart."--Rachel Sloan, Burlington Magazine
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Self in Group Portraiture 19 * In Homage 21 *Moi et Delacroix 39 * Manet: "One in a thousand, or alone" 56 * Degas: Relational Portraiture 61 Chapter 2 A Crisis of Pride 68 * Mutual Admiration Society 70 * Courbet's Studio 74 * To Truth! 79 * Mirror, Mirror 82 Chapter 3 Studio of the Self 105 * Solitary Confinement 111 * Velazquez's Mirror 131 * Bazille's Studio 144 * Secret Societies 149 Chapter 4 Deviance and Disappearance 156 *Les Vilains Bonshommes 160 * Courbet / Fantin / Pelletan 178 * In Absentia 189 * Manet's Crowd 193 * Rimbaud the Bourgeois 198 Chapter 5 The Irregularists 203 * Renoir's Society 206 * An Impressionist's Studio 215 * Degas, Odd Man In 217 Conclusion 228 Notes 243 Selected Bibliography 309 Index 323
