Impressionism

Stretching from Paris to Le Havre, the Seine river and the valley flanking it afford some of France’s loveliest views. The ports, holiday homes and artists’ houses, the boats, the washerwomen, the windmills, the open-air cafes, the picnics and the bathing supplied French painting with some of its most iconic images, particularly during the Impressionist era, when painting stepped out of the studio and into the world. It was in this period, as the industrial revolution began to get underway and the landscape began to alter accordingly, through the development of railways, ports and factories, that the rural world it threatened became an increasingly popular subject for painting. This volume brings together 60 paintings painted on the banks of the Seine, retracing the history of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism to Fauvism, from Eugène Boudin to Henri Matisse. En route we encounter such familiar figures as Manet, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Sisley and Caillebotte, but also lesser-known figures such as Armand Guillaumin, Henri Rouart and Maximilien Luce.