ART HISTORY Paris in Ruins: Love, War and the Birth of Impressionism Sebastian Smee Text, $36.99 French Impressionist painting offers a vision of colour and light so vivid and pure we might imagine the artist saw nothing but the elemental beauty of the observable world. In this art, typically, every colour of the spectrum is used except black.
And yet, there is an aspect to Impressionism that is dark, and that darkness is the preoccupation of this book. Prussian troops within the ruins of Fort Issy near Versailles at the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War on February 1, 1871. Credit: Getty Images Sebastian Smee, the Australian-born Pulitzer Prize-winning critic who writes about art for The Washington Post , is interested in the wider influences on visual art that are not necessarily marked on the canvas.
His previous book, The Art of Rivalry , explored the personal and professional relationships between pairs of famous artists that affected their lives and work. Smee describes Paris in Ruins as “an attempt to knit together art history, biography, and military and social history”. The book well could change the way you think about Impressionism, and it might alter your perception of art history .
Three-quarters of it covers the period before Impressionism was established as a significant movement in art. Credit: Supplied Impressionism followed on from the self-inflicted horror of foreign invasion and civil war that almost destroyed Paris, culminating in the so-c.