Customer Reviews

Guide to Impressionist Paris: Nine Walking Tours to the Impressionist Painting Sites in Paris

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Patty Lurie's 178-page guide 1996 to Paris offers a refreshing, artists' look at nine hot Paris walking tours, from the current-day perspective--accompanied by 19th century impressionists' views of the same locations. Tour Five, for example, runs from the Place de la Clichy through Place de Saint-Augustin, including along the route seven artists' haunts and their various renditions thereof.

On Rue de Turin, Gustave Caillebotte painted "Paris Street: Rainy Day," in 1877, while the next year, Edouard Manet painted the nearby "Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags." The guidebook shows these paintings, alongside current-day photographs of the same spots, and includes discussions of the artists' similar works of the same areas and era.

Each of the nine tours has a similar wealth of locations and artistic delights, and helps contemporary travelers to retreat in time and see Paris from the perspective of the impressionists who enlivened the City of Lights in ways that remain fresh, even 140 years later.

In art, at least, the place is still beautiful and this little book can help one appreciate the city's former artistic glory.

This book contains walking guides through different neighborhoods in Paris, from where paintings by the Impressionists exist. The author then compiled black and white photos of the time, of the same site, with descriptions and history.
I found it in Strand, and took it to Paris, when my wife Irene and I travelled two winters ago. With her friend Martha, on an unusually mild and slightly sunny Parisian December morning, we took the walk around Montmartre, open book in hand, and camera, to follow the sites, the contemporary photos, the impressionist paintings, and got so much more about it than ever before! We did take photos, now digital and in color, of precisely the same sites, or of what remained of them. It was instructive and fun!
So, our friend in Paris wanted to have it; Irene looked for it and found it in Amazon. She sent it to our friend and made her very happy.