The Judgment of Paris

The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

1. I listened to half on my way home from Ohio, and now I'm going to actually READ the second half. I like to see events coincide: the Civil War and the birth of Impressionism and the downfall is it? of Napoleon III of France. I like to learn about art history this way, with new facts tossed in as part of the larger story: : Impasto is paint layered thickly. Chiaroscuro is paint getting gradually lighter, with a dark background, to show volume. Painting for Paris of mid-nineteenth century was like the high-tech world today: exciting! scandalous! picky! The French liked their paintings smooth, detailed, and classically grand. Impressionists tried a new way, with thick paint and not so much care for foreground and background. Everything shifts. Sex happens on the canvas. Crowds are aghast, uppity. Meissonier the classicist is idolized and rich, Manet is poor, but not now, now that he is dead.

2. I've decided to keep on listening. Narrator Tristan Layton pronounces those Parisian place names with aplomb, where I stumble, like they are cobblestones in my mind. As I drove between home and Publix yesterday,  Layton told me about the Franco-Prussian War, in which the Parisians were starved, humiliated, and driven to eating cats. Finally I understand why my Parisian great-great-grandfather disowned his beautiful daughter (my great-grandmother, the mother of Caroline Lily Frey) when she married a German.

3. Now it's over, and I understand this: It took 10 decisive years and more before that for the Impressionists to be respected.  Paris was in political flux at the time. The word Impressionism comes from someone who said it's like painting an impression of a horse, something you'd see from the window of a passing train.




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