Painting And Sculpture In France 1700 1789

Discusses the major painters and sculptors of the period during the last years of France's ancien regime - a period that started with Watteau and the fete galante and closed with the revolutionary history paintings of David.

This new edition of this highly successful and influential work includes two entirely new chapters - on Europe and the wider world and on the Revolutionary crisis - and is extensively revised throughout. It offers a wide-ranging thematic account of the century, that explores social, cultural and economic topics, as well as giving a clear analysis of the political events. Filled with fascinating detail and unusual examples, this absorbing history of eighteenth-century Europe will bring the period alive to students and teachers alike.

Taking a new approach to consideration of the sculpture created in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this book is concerned with its societal roles and the ways in which it was received. The author draws on an extensive range of texts by artists, critics, art theoreticians and other writers as well as on images, setting contemporary conceptions of the nature and purposes of sculpture and individual works into the contexts of the elite and popular cultures of the time. Among topics included are investigations of the employment of statuary for political and religious communication, pictorial representations of sculpture, the comparative roles of painting and sculpture, and the social status of various kinds of sculptors. Previous treatments have dealt with these productions primarily in terms of stylistic developments or of the accomplishments of individual sculptors. This study however approaches its subject thematically rather than chronologically or biographically, while nevertheless acknowledging developments and variations that occurred during the period.

The first monograph to examine the depiction of reading women in French art of the early Third Republic, Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 evaluates the pictorial significance of this imagery, its critical reception, and its impact on notions of femininity and social relations. Covering a broad range of paintings, prints, and sculptures, this book shows how the liseuse was subjected to unprecedented levels of pictorial innovation by artists with widely differing aesthetic aims and styles. Depictions of readers are interpreted as contributions to changing notions of public and private life, female agency, and women's participation in cultural and political debates beyond the domestic household. This highly original book explores images of women readers from a range of social classes in both urban and rural settings. Such images are shown to have articulated concerns about the impact of female literacy on labour environments and family life while, in many cases, challenging conventions of gendered reading. Kathryn Brown also presents an alternative way of conceiving of modernity in relation to nineteenth-century art, a methodological departure from much recent art historical literature. Artists discussed range from Manet, Cassatt and Degas, to less familiar figures such as Lavieille, Carri?, Toulmouche and Tissot.

The first monograph to examine the depiction of reading women in French art of the early Third Republic, Women Readers in French Painting 1870-1890 evaluates the pictorial significance of this imagery, its critical reception, and its impact on nineteenth-century notions of femininity and social relations. Artists discussed in the volume range from Manet, Cassatt and Degas, to less familiar figures such as Lavieille, Carrière, Toulmouche and Tissot.