American impressionism

by William H. Gerdts

Paper Book, 1984

Status

Available

Publication

New York Artabras cop. 1984

Description

Lavishly illustrated with more than 400 paintings by 125 different artists, this volume contains documentary photographs of the artists and quotations from their private letters and journals complementing the text. Beginning with a brief prelude discussing the roots of Impressionism in America and its relationship to French Impressionism, Gerdts recounts the early adventures of American artists in Claude Monet's village of Giverny, evaluates Impressionism's progress from an avant-garde aesthetic to its triumph during the 1813 Chicago World Fair and its replacement by the radical styles of Cubism and Futurism. Also studies how Impressionism flourished across the United States and includes an exhaustive bibliography. Among the masters reproduced are Childe Hassam, John Twachtman, Edmund Tarbell, and Frederick Frieseke. ISBN 0-89659-451-3 : $85.00. (For use only in the library).… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member presto
This impressive volume has much to recommend it; well written the very readable text is both illuminating and interesting and the high quality reproduction of the paintings is a delight. The author divides the text into four sections: Prelude, to 1886; Rising Perceptions 1886-1893; The Years of
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Truth 1893-1898; and The Impressionist Establishment 1889-1915.
It concludes with an extensive general and artist specific bibliography.

The illustrations run with the text, and as is often the cases in such publications the text and the illustration to which it refers rarely appear on the same page. A large number, but by no means all, of the images are reproduced in colour; and they vary in size from little more than thumb-nail to the impressive full page. In some cases the photography is superb, and the reproduction vividly conveys the richness of the original along with the brush work and texture of the paint, but the standard here is not consistent and some reproductions appear flat by comparison, and the black and white images are not inspiring. It is a well laid out book with good typography, and it certainly has a feel of quality.

American Impressionism is a fine most valuable volume, but put alongside the recently revised Soviet Impressionist Painting by Vern G Swanson, ISBN 0789207370, the quality and consistency of the reproductions is shown to be lacking.
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LibraryThing member RaskFamilyLibrary
Remarkable how much information and how many tiny paintings are included.

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