Customer Reviews

Great Book of French Impressionism

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a native of Chicago, where the Art Institute has the largest collection of French Impressionism outside of Paris. So I've seen many of the originals of the works in this book. I'm also a photographer, so I have a critical eye, and I know how hard it is to get a good reproduction in a book of a work of art. Nonetheless, this book contains some of the worst prints I've seen. The colors are flat and lifeless and the shadows are clipped, which has blocked up the blacks and therefore ruined the contrast.

There's lot of in-depth information on the history of the art form. But visually it's a stinker. If you've never seen the magnificent work of the impressionists, this book will NOT ignite your interest in this genre, it's just too poorly printed.

too many black and white photos. would not buy this book again, as impressionism is about color.

I bought this book as a retirement gift for a friend. I am not an art expert by any means, but before I bought this book, I looked through numerous other art books and thought that the colors were muddy and unattactive in many of them and there were relativley few reproductions that I would want to look at. This book has a large selection of excellent color prints of wellknown impressionists' works. Much better quality then others I have looked at. A good buy for the money.

Where else can you buy an 11 lb coffeetable style book for about $[...] including shipping! That comes to ~$1 per lb!

The shipping cost to the Amazon sellers must be at least $6 alone, but they only charge $3.99!

Anyway, this is a wonderful, beautiful big book with colorful dustjacket. The color pictures inside are numerous and very large. The explanations are brief and to-the-point and quite infomative.

I have ordered 3 copies of the used book to give as impressive gifts, making me look like I spent $50 on the gift! The used copies were in very decent condition despite being labelled as "very good' by the Amazon sellers.

I first saw this book at my grandmother's. She would put it on a console table which greeted people entering the living room from the foyer. She always had the book open to a different painting--you never knew which one it would be. I became so interested, and learned so much from her by asking about the paintings, that eventually, as an adult, I knew I had to have one too. So I bought one for myself and have used it to teach my 6yr. old about Impressionism. She doesn't really understand, but she likes the little girls (Renoir, Cassat) :) -Beryl