Impressionism by Phoebe Pool Book Club Associates, 1973, colour and black and white illustrations and photographs throughout, hardcover, dustjacket Very Good Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, minor rubbing and bumping to edges and corners, previous owners stamp on title page, dustjacket shows a little edge and shelf wear with a little rubbing, bumping, creasing, chipping and small tears (see photographs) “Impressionism was one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of painting. The young Impressionists of the 1860s and ‘70s in France not only abandoned the conventional theories of academic painting, but opened the way to the future. In 1874 a group of experimental and virtually unknown artists, including Renoir, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley, held a highly unsuccessful exhibition of their revolutionary works in Paris, defying the hidebound traditionalism of eth official Salon. Yet within little more than a decade, the originality of their approach to painting proved a vital challenge to all preconceptions of style, subject-matter, colour and technique. That challenge was to become the premise of modern art. Phoebe Pool has written a valuable survey which relates the Impressionists to both their predecessors and their heirs. She shows how they were influenced, and to some degree anticipated, by the less academic of the established artists, such as Delacroix, Courbet and the painters of eth Barbizon school. Special attention is given to Manet and Degas who, though drawn to Impressionism and closely associated with individual Impressionists, never became totally committed to the style though short-loved, Impressionism engendered the paintings of Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, whose connection with the movement is also discussed.”
