Art of the Actual

WARNING

You are viewing an older version of the Yalebooks website. Please visit out new website with more updated information and a better user experience: https://www.yalebooks.com

Naturalism and Style in Early Third Republic France, 1880-1900

Richard Thomson

A&AePortal

Read this book online via the A&AePortal, our art and architectural history eBook platform. To learn more about how to access this book, please contact us.

View Inside Format: Cloth
Price: $75.00
YUP
Our shopping cart only supports Mozilla Firefox. Please ensure you're using that browser before attempting to purchase.

Also Available in:
Art ePortal

The French Republic—with its rallying cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity—emerged in 1870, and by 1880 had developed a coherent republican ideology. The regime pursued secular policies and emphasized its commitment to science and technology. Naturalism was an ideal aesthetic match for the republican ideology; it emphasized that art should be drawn from the everyday world, that all subjects were worthy of treatment, and that there should be flexibility in representation to allow for different voices.

Art of the Actual examines the use of naturalism in the 19th-century. It explores how pictures by artists such as Roll, Lhermitte, and Friant could be read as egalitarian and republican, assesses how well-known painters including Degas, Monet, and Toulouse-Lautrec situated their painting vis-à-vis the dominant naturalism, and opens up new arguments about caricatural and popular style. By illuminating the role of naturalism in a broad range of imagery in late 19th-century France, Richard Thomson provides a new interpretation of the art of the period.

Richard Thomson is Watson Gordon Professor of Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh.

"By boldly stating at the outset that ‘Naturalism was the dominant aesthetic of late 19th century France,’ he paves the way for a revelatory exploration of the works of all sorts of more or less forgotten artists… Even turning the pages and looking at the illustrations before reading the consistently compelling text is an education in itself." —David Ekserdjian, The Spectator
ISBN: 9780300179880
Publication Date: January 8, 2013
376 pages, 8 1/4 x 10 3/4
50 color + 200 b/w illus.
The Troubled Republic

Visual Culture and Social Debate in France, 1889–1900

Richard Thomson

View details
Impressionism and Post-Impressionism at the Dallas Museum of Art

The Richard R. Brettell Lecture Series

Edited by Heather MacDonald

View details
Monet

The Early Years

George T. M.

...
View details
Seurat's Circus Sideshow

Richard Thomson; With contributions by Susan Alyson Stein,

...
View details
Signac and the Independants

Edited by Gilles Genty and Mary-Dailey Desmarais

View details
The Presence of the Past in French Art, 1870–1905

Modernity and Continuity

Richard Thomson

View details