The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism

Human beings have been painting since they first figured how to create pigments in caves. For every painter, there’s a unique way to painting something, but the world of 19th century France didn’t see it that way. They had strict rules for what was considered good painting and what didn’t pass muster. Ross King’s Judgment of Paris recounts the ten years that led to the first modern schism in the art world. On one side was the Salon de Paris, championed by Ernest Messonier, and the other were the Impressionists, founded by a scrappy, radical artist known as Eduard Manet.

The Judgment of Paris chronicles the parallel lives of Messonier and Manet to show how one railed against change and how the other helped to show the world a show more different way to look at itself. Manet’s movement started with treating everyday people as grand subjects for paintings. Up until then, the Salon de Paris standardized the techniques and subjects allowed for what was considered “high art” and the common folk were considered declasse. Manet, along with Gustave Courbet and Claude Monet, decided that, after having been rejected time and time again by the Salon de Paris, that they should establish their own Salon—the Salon des Refuses (The Salon of the Refused).

While this could be considered a tad petulent, it allowed the public to see the new movement in art. Instead of allowing line, contour, and historical grandiosity dominate the picture, the Impressionists focused on light, color, and atmosphere. Nowadays, this seems rather trivial, but in the 1860s, this was enough to cause a public outrage.

King’s writing is fun and moves along at a decent clip, much in the current style of history-as-a-novel. There are times where he gets very involved in the details of Parisian living, but its add atmosphere to help flesh out the intricate art happenings. Also, it’s a good way to get in backdoor info on the French authors Zola, Hugo, and Baudelaire. My only gripe about the book is that it needed more color illustrations. King’s descriptions are one thing, but having the paintings at hand really helps to get the history across.

Also, I used to consider myself fairly knowledgable about art and art history. Once, on a family vacation to Rome, my parent gave me my own day to plan out and go to whatever I wanted. I chose to do a walking tour of the city to find many of the public sculptures of Gian Bernini and end the day at the Vatican Pinacoteca to view Caravaggio’s Entombment of Christ (it was stunning). Until this book, I had never heard of Messonier or his fight againt the Impressionist movement. I guess you really do learn something new every day. show less

I always enjoy histories of the arts (music history, literary history and art history), and Ross King is one of the best art historians writing for a broad audience. Obviously, a book (or in my case, an audio book) about art has its limitations (which copious use of Google Image search is the remedy).

The beauty of King's work is his focus on the *history* aspect - not just the history of the artists, but the history of the period more broadly. The history of the Second Empire and its fall, the Paris Commune of 1871, and the earliest days of the Third Republic are all here. We learn a lot about the artists, but also Napoleon III (and to a lesser extent, Napoleon Bonaparte), Wilhelm I of Prussia, and the political leaders of France in show more the period from 1863 onward.

The hero here is Eduard Manet; the ultimate villain is Ernest Meissonier. You might ask about the latter, "Who?" This book will tell you. Both hero and villain are portrayed not in black and white, but in varying shades of grey, with all of their human warts and foibles. A great read. show less

A generally fascinating and well-researched account of the emergence of the impressionist movement in art, in revolutionary Paris. Beginning in 1863 with the Salon des Refusés, convened to exhibit works refused by the Paris Salon, and ending in 1874, with major impressionist exihibitions, the book spans momentous events such as the siege of Paris and the war with Prussia. King has deeply researched the subject, examining detailed records of the salons, accompanying pamphlets, reviews, and records, and it is a pleasure to dive deep into the world of impressionism with him. He is able to outline very clearly the horror and disgust that the traditional art establishment meted out to early impressionists, particularly Monet, and the shift show more that occurred over ten years that followed. At the same time, there is surprisingly little attention paid to the actual technical changes in style that evoked impressionism, or the paintings themselves and what they evoked. I also cannot understand the authorial choice to set it up theatrically as a duel between Meissonier's traditional, realistic style and Monet's development of impressionism - the two did not meet, did not see each other as rivals, and this seems to be the author's attempt to spice up a sufficiently spicy history, for no good reason. show less

This book discusses some of the power struggles that underpin the history of art, structured on the varying fortunes of contemporary painters in the 1860s and 1870s in France.

He focuses on two artists - Ernest Meissonier and Édouard Manet- using their artistic lives and overlapping histories to illustrate the dawn of Impressionism in Europe. Never heard of Meissonier before? This book sets out to explain why.

Meissonier is the most celebrated painter in France during his lifetime, winning prizes, honours and riches. He is obsessive, taking years to finish a painting, often making elaborate models. He is celebrated for his staggeringly lifelike paintings of great battles: ''He did not feel at home or at ease in the nineteenth century," show more writes King, and describes his paintings as ''recherché figments of an antiquarian imagination." Yet his work declines from public view into relative obscurity by the 20th Century.

Manet moves from youthful failure, scorned by critics, a laughingstock of the public, an outsider, a fringe participant in the French art scene, yet moves into middle-aged success and posthumous veneration. He is volatile, bohemian, interesting, almost frightening. He paints the people he sees in the world around him: a rag-and-bone man he meets in the Louvre, for example, is the model for the ''rough-looking drunkard" he portrays in ''The Absinthe Drinker." In what is probably his most famous painting, ''Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," he simply paints ''a nude scene of modern-day Parisians."

Most of the narrative concentrates on the political contrivances and conniving of the Paris Salons of the 1860's and 70's, with the ‘old boy’ network of artists and the narrow view of acceptable artistic licence. It puts a face to the artists we view and admire today and reveals their often ribald or large personalities in context with other contemporary artists and political events.

The power of the Salon to make or break a French artist is astounding – it is a beaurocratic display of favoured artists sponsored by the government. Inclusion gives the official stamp of approval and smoothes the way for sales and commissions. Exclusion marks one for professional disgrace, and is higlighted by the red "R" ("rejected") stamped on the back of canvases that did not make the cut. In terms of the history of art, the judges inevitably chose wrong, preferring scenes of classical mythology and soft-porn Venuses to the exclusion of everything else. One year, 1867, the judges manage to turn down entries by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne while Manet, discouraged by previous rejections, didn't submit any paintings.

There are fascinating minor characters: the radical journalist Emile Zola, who as a young man was so poor he sells all his clothes and wear a bedsheet; Richard Seymour-Conway, the fourth marquess of Hertford, an extravagant art collector who boasts that ''when I die I shall at least have the consolation of knowing that I have never rendered anyone a service"; and Baudelaire, who is widely believed had not only murdered but also eaten his stepfather!

King gives an interesting account of the political and social developments leading up to the dawn of Impressionism. He focuss too obsessively on the trivia of Salon politics and maneuverings for my interest. Unfortunately there is no exploration of artistic development, influence or application to any major lucidity or depth. Of course, it is very, very difficult to describe artistic style, to account for and to do justice to its importance, its twists and turns, the epiphanies of new developments; but that is one of the great pleasures of reading about art history, and King is not on that level for me – read Simon Schama or Robert Hughes for that.

I don’t think Ross King is an art critic, but a historian of events. In that way, I was disappointed. However, the book is interesting, full of energy and well-researched with some really fascinating trivia of the day. I think it is the small incidental events, colourful characters and side stories that I liked the best. show less

As good an introduction to the impressionist movement as I've read, though the end feels a bit rushed (and to be honest I haven't read all that many). Not quite to the same level as others of King's books, but still provides a very decent treatment of the evolution of the movement's critical reception. King's biographical details on the not-at-all-well-known-now Meissonier were fascinating, too.

King uses the lives and careers of painters Edouard Manet and Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier to tell the story of the upheavals, political and artistic, in the French capital from 1863 to 1874. As the book opens Meissonier is “the world's wealthiest and most celebrated painter.” Famous for the realistic perfection of his detailed paintings, he lives in a country mansion with two studios, one for the summer, and one for the winter. By contrast the younger artist, Edouard Manet is living off money from his aunt and painting canvases that the critics and the general populace find so poorly executed that they are skewered by bad reviews in the press, and draw a crowd at public exhibitions where they are the objects of derisive laugher. It show more looks like he slaps the things together without bothering to finish them. Some details are distinct and others are just blobs of paint daubed on with his brush. You call that painting?

Yet around the critically and publicly ridiculed Manet gathered a group of younger artists, whose names are instantly recognizable in the twenty-first century: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Pissarro, Cézanne, Cassatt, and Whistler, while Meissonier’s reputation has faded. show less

I was familiar with much of this art history from a university introductory course (Darkness at Noon) and French political history from other readings but King weaves a wonderful story of their interconnectedness that filled in a lot of gaps for me. Perfect pandemic reading.