Description
Book SynopsisIn 1863, the French painter Ernest Meissonier was one of the most famous artists in the world and the darling of the 'Salon' - that all important public art exhibition held biannually in Paris. Manet, on the other hand, was struggling in obscurity. Beginning with the year that Manet exhibited his ground-breaking Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe and ending in 1974 with the first 'Impressionist' exhibition, Ross King plunges into Parisian life during a ten-year period full of social and political ferment with his usual narrative brillliance.
These were the years in which Napoleon III's autocratic and pleasure-seeking Second Empire fell from its heights into the ignominy of the Franco-Prussian war and the ensuing Paris Commune of 1871. But it was also a period in which a group of artists, with Manet in the vanguard began to challenge the establishment by turning to the landscapes and ordinary people they saw around them. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to get their paintings exhibited in pride of place at the Salon was not just about art, it was about how to see the world.
Trade ReviewThis is an exhilarating book... The success Ross King achieved with
Brunelleschi's Dome and
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling is repeated here, for he fashions history anew -- Frances Spalding * Independent *
A crowded canvas - like, say, Manet's
Music in the Tuileries Gardens - full of diverse characters -- Martin Gayford * Sunday Telegraph *
A brilliant book, a micro-history that feels like a macro-history... A good read and a good history; an unusual a pairing as its twin subjects -- Charles Darwent * Independent on Sunday *
Wonderfully rich... With great deftness [King] tracks the careers of both men in the decade leading up to the most important exhibition in the history of art, the Impressionist group show of 1874 -- Michael Prodger * Literary Review *
It is, in its broad outlines, a familiar story, but King, the author of
Brunelleschi's Dome, tells it with tremendous energy and skill. It is hard to imagine a more inviting account of the artistic civil war that raged around the Paris salons of the 1860s and 1870s, or of the outsize personalities who transformed the way the world looked at painting -- William Grimes * Scotsman *
