Customer Reviews

The Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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Anthea Callen trained as a painter. She writes with a painter's insight. She also has a brilliant mind. The book is thoroughly researched. It is written with more emphasis on the materials and physical techniques of the Impressionists than on sociological or philosophical analysis. When she does go into those areas she does so with restraint and great intelligence. I give this book the highest recommendation particularly as a book for painters or for those interested in the intricacies of painting.

This is a very good book (for what it is), but it is quite a difficult read, with much content that has little practical value for most of us. It is a scholarly (i.e., academic) history of opinions and processes that informed Impressionist painting. It is undeniably impressive in its scholarship, its substantive weight, and its physical dimensions--this is a big book having large oversize pages full of single-spaced small print. Its research and detail are, I think, remarkable. Indeed it presents detail upon detail upon technical detail. It is both exhaustive and exhausting. It thoroughly covers many topics that I simply have no need or desire to know about. This is a book for art-history professors.

I had wanted to see this book for two reasons: I wanted to learn to paint like the Impressionists, and I hoped to see their paintings in superior reproductions. In each case, I was disappointed.

The quality of the reproductions is very good (more than adequate to illustrate the text's points), but NOT outstanding. And this definitely is not a how-to-paint lesson manual. If, from this book, you ever learn to paint like the Masters, it will only be indirectly, from inference rather than from clear instruction. And you will need to dig through some fairly thick and sometimes diffuse language to find information you might consider useful. In fact, many of the opinions and processes discussed in the book are contradictory--and (to her credit) the author does not offer her opinion about which ways and opinions were best.

Believe it or not, the foregoing is not meant to disparage the book per se, because it is excellent, FOR WHAT IT IS (and on those particular terms it deserves 4 stars). I have only meant to tell prospective buyers just what it is. This book was not very helpful to me, and I think it would not be very useful to most readers, including most painters and art aficionados.

I'm glad the book exists--it is a genuine scholarly achievement--and if someone were to give it to me as a gift, I'd gratefully recieve it (and I'd probably look at it once in a while). But I would not pay much to buy it. (Borrow it from a public library before deciding to buy.)