From the pen of one of Amherst, Massachusetts's most important women comes an intriguing glimpse into the nineteenth century. Twice, Orra White Hitchcock traveled with her husband, Edward, a famous geologist and president of Amherst College. She kept meticulous diary entries of their journeys, observing with wit and frankness the people and places she encountered. Orra writes behind-the-scenes accounts of a scientific conference in Edinburgh and of a visit with some of the century's most notable contemporary scientists in London. She describes in stunning and honest detail Sunday services, an international antiwar congress in Frankfurt, and slavery on the streets of Richmond, Virginia. Because she was an open-minded woman, her pages are rich in entertaining stories of botanical gardens, public entertainments, and the shops of London and Paris. She also indulges the reader with romantic descriptions of memorable landscapes in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. Spanning the ocean from America to Europe, Orra's never-before-published travel journals offer a vivid, inside look at one woman's unique experiences in a world moving toward modernity.

"Long-awaited, this full-scale revision of Impressionism immediately supersedes all other studies in the field. Herbert rejuvenates even the most famous paintings by seeing them in a dense and flexible context touching on everything from the hierarchy of theater boxes to the role of beer-hall waitresses. His mind and eye are as supple as his lucid prose, and his command of sociological data is staggering. In this classic of art history, both art and history are triumphantly reborn."-Robert Rosenblum, New York University This remarkable book will transform the way we look at Impressionist art. The culmination of twenty years of research by a preeminent scholar in the field, it fundamentally revises the conventional view of the Impressionist movement and shows for the first time how it was fully integrated into the social and cultural life of the times. Robert L. Herbert explores the themes of leisure and entertainment that dominated the great years of Impressionist painting between 1865 and 1885. Cafes, opera houses, dance halls, theaters, racetracks, and vacations by the sea were the central subjects of the majority of these paintings, and Herbert relates these pursuits to the transformation of Paris under the Second Empire. Sumptuously illustrated with many of the most beautiful Impressionist images, both familiar and unfamiliar, this book presents provocative new interpretations of a wide range of famous masterpieces. Artists are seen to be active participants in, as well as objective witnesses to, contemporary life, and there are many profound insights into the social and cultural upheaval of the times. "A social history of Impressionist art that is truly about the art, informed by a penetrating analysis of the ways in which its pictorial structure and qualities communicate its social content. Herbert brings that society to life, but above all he makes some of the most familiar and frequently discussed works in the history of art come wonderfully and vividly to life again."-Theodore Reff, Columbia University Robert L. Herbert is Robert Lehman Professor of the History of Art at Yale University. He is the author or editor of numerous books and articles on nineteenth-century French art.

From the pen of one of Amherst, Massachusetts's most important women comes an intriguing glimpse into the nineteenth century. Twice, Orra White Hitchcock traveled with her husband, Edward, a famous geologist and president of Amherst College. She kept meticulous diary entries of their journeys, observing with wit and frankness the people and places she encountered. Orra writes behind-the-scenes accounts of a scientific conference in Edinburgh and of a visit with some of the century's most notable contemporary scientists in London. She describes in stunning and honest detail Sunday services, an international antiwar congress in Frankfurt, and slavery on the streets of Richmond, Virginia. Because she was an open-minded woman, her pages are rich in entertaining stories of botanical gardens, public entertainments, and the shops of London and Paris. She also indulges the reader with romantic descriptions of memorable landscapes in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Switzerland. Spanning the ocean from America to Europe, Orra's never-before-published travel journals offer a vivid, inside look at one woman's unique experiences in a world moving toward modernity.

In this rich, readable anthology, 16 of the 20th century's leading artistic innovators talk forcefully about the theories that drive their work-from Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger's 1912 presentation of cubist theory to Henry Moore's comments, three decades later, on sculpture and primitive art. Newly added essays by Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, El Lissitzky, and Fernand Léger include observations on dada, surrealism, and the "machine esthetic." Challenging commentaries provide art historians and theorists with plenty of food for thought and continuing inspiration of all artists and art students.

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as "Grand Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game," tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."
Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.