First Friday Book Club | Paris in Ruins by Sebastian Smee

In Paris in Ruins, the Pulitzer Prize winning art critic, Sebastian Smee, in a richly researched book, looks at the 1870-71 Siege of Paris and examines how art and politics interwove during what Victor Hugo described as “The Terrible Year”.   Artists had to struggle to make art pay, their style changed and many, such as Degas, Manet, Renoir, intersected with the politics of the time.   Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and Eduard Manet were trapped in Paris during the siege and whilst looking at Morisot and Manet’s love affair, Smee shows how the Paris Siege and the Paris Commune had a major effect on the history of art and gave rise to Impressionism, with its dramatic depiction of light, its lovely evocation of the transience of everything-remains wildly popular.

Crowds flock to exhibitions by its greatest artists-Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro. As shown in Paris in Ruins, a book of great narrative sweep and vivid detail, Impressionism was a complex reaction to an age of violence, civil war, and political intrigue. Smee tells this story through the eyes of these key artists, with a special focus on the intimate, enigmatic relationship between Manet--the father of Impressionism--and Morisot, the group's only female member in its early years.

Join The Friends for another morning of lively discussion.