Treasures of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: National Gallery of Art [Hardcover]

As one of the Tiny Folio Great Museum series, this book is designed as a tour of the National Gallery's collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture. Visitors to the National Gallery in Washington usually make straight for the rooms holding the museum's works by the greatest Impressionist artists, including Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and many others. This miniature compendium includes all the favourites, along with many less-familiar works photographed especially for this volume.

INTRODUCTION

One single event, the sensational debut of Impressionism in Paris in April 1874, became the catalyst for a revolution that transformed the arts during the second half of the nineteenth century. A number of young artists presented the exhibition, the first public group show to be organized independently of the government-sanctioned Salon. Their audacious venture overturned contemporary artistic institutions and traditions, freeing artists to explore new forms of expression.

The Impressionist movement and the artists who created it are now almost universally beloved. Their paintings depict a world that looks more innocent and far more appealing than ours, with healthy and handsome men, women, and children populating bustling city streets and shops, comfortable suburban homes and parks, and tranquil fields in the countryside. Yet the familiarly and accessibility of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works of art can obscure the complex artistic concerns addressed by these artists. Toward the end of his life Camille Pissarro gave some advice to a young follower. Pragmatic rather than theoretical, his words provide a rough working definition of Impressionism: Paint the essential character of things, try to convey it by any means whatsoever, without bothering about technique. When painting, make a choice of subject, see what is lying at the right and at the left, then work on everl³'