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

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. NBCC finalist King (Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling) presents an engrossing account of the years from 1863—when paintings denied entry into the French Academy's yearly Salon were shown at the Salon des Refusés—to 1874, the date of the first Impressionist exhibition. To dramatize the conflict between academicians and innovators during these years, he follows the careers of two formidable, and very different, artists: Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, a conservative painter celebrated for detailed historical subjects, and Édouard Manet, whose painting Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe caused an uproar at the Salon des Refusés. Many other artists of the day, among them Courbet, Degas, Morisot, Monet and Cézanne, are included in King's compelling narrative, and the story is further enhanced by the author's vivid portrayal of artistic life in Paris during a turbulent era that saw the siege of the city by the Prussians and the fall of Napoleon III. An epilogue underscores the irony of the tale: after his death, Meissonier quickly fell from favor, while Manet, whose paintings were once judged scandalous, was recognized as a great artist who set the stage for Impressionism and the future of painting. Illus. not seen by PW. (Feb.)
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From The Washington Post

In 1865, no painter in France was more reviled than the 33-year-old Édouard Manet. The critics compared his brushwork to the action of a floor mop and judged his infamous "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe," which features a naked woman picnicking with two clothed dandies, "a shameful open sore." The public laughed at anything he hung on the wall. Accustomed to such abuse, he was understandably perplexed by the compliments his canvases received at the opening of the Paris Salon that year, and more mystified when people referred to his paintings as seascapes. In his customary top hat and frock coat, carrying his habitual walking stick, he went to investigate Room M, the gallery alphabetically assigned to him, where he found the source of confusion: "Who is this Monet," he exclaimed, "whose name sounds just like mine and who is taking advantage of my notoriety?" He need not have worried. After all, 1865 was the year that the Salon, and the world at large, first encountered "Olympia," his six-foot-long painting of a Parisian prostitute.

In The Judgment of Paris, Ross King describes "Olympia" as "easily the most notorious painting of the nineteenth century," placing it at the center of his fluent account of the years that ushered in the age of Impressionism. With the solid craftsmanship that characterized his previous two popular histories, Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, King's new book impressively synthesizes research on the culture, politics and personalities of an era that was anything but uncomplicated.

Contemporary responses to "Olympia" illustrate the contradictions of Paris on the verge of modernity. Critics called Manet's nude "grotesque" and "stupid," a "female gorilla" engaged in a lewd act that "cries out for examination by the inspectors of public health." And the populace? "Nothing can convey the visitors' initial astonishment, then their anger or fear," noted one journalist. When guards posted in front of the painting failed to control the daily hordes, the picture was elevated to the ceiling where, another reporter noted, "you scarcely knew whether you were looking at a parcel of nude flesh or a bundle of laundry."

Yet prostitution was legal in Paris at the time (Napoleon III hoped it would distract his subjects from deposing him). From our point of view, the moral outrage over Manet's painting seems hypocritical, if not utterly inexplicable. To address this conundrum, King shrewdly introduces another artist from Room M into his story: the redoubtable Ernest Meissonier.

In 1865, Meissonier's critical acclaim was exceeded only by his celebrity, which made him one of the most famous men in France. His paintings inspired international bidding wars, bringing the highest prices of any living artist. They were also, inch for inch, among the most labored over in history: While the nostalgic portraits of old-fashioned musketeers on which he made his fortune might be completed in less than a year, his eight-foot-long depiction of the 1807 Battle of Friedland took more than a decade. For that masterpiece, the artist's obsessive quest to capture the true gait of a horse led him to build a railroad track on his estate, along which he could be pushed by servants while he furiously sketched an adjacent stallion at full gallop.

To eyes accustomed to such meticulousness (which some connoisseurs enjoyed with a magnifying glass), Manet's broad strokes and bold contrasts were a visual assault. More important, as King notes, conventional wisdom held that "the teaching of moral lessons was . . . the whole point of a work of art." Meissonier's depiction of a triumphant Napoleon at the Battle of Friedland inspired patriotism. But what could one learn from the matter-of-fact depiction of a working prostitute?

To salon-goers, Manet's painting resembled pornography. Indeed, most pornographic pictures were illegally peddled nude photographic studies for artists. And here was "Olympia," painted with the flatness characteristic of contemporary indoor photography, posed like Titian's Venus. If the painting had any lesson to teach, it was that the classic nudes exalted by art connoisseurs for their purity and virtue could also be seen as prurient.

But if "Olympia" threw into doubt the era's idea of artistic enterprise, it also suggested an alternative. The painting's matter-of-factness showed that art need not be engineered to illustrate a value system in the old-fashioned way of allegory. The painter could be merely an observer, a reporter rather than a pundit.

While Monet, Cezanne and the other Impressionists who came in Manet's wake pursued the potential of unfiltered observation in their landscapes by simply painting the effects of light on the eye, half a century had to pass before the Dada movement made the aesthetic collaboration between artist and observer a full partnership: Most famously, the "ready-made" objects of Marcel Duchamp -- a snow shovel, a wine rack, a urinal -- were just hardware unless a viewer chose to see them otherwise. The viewer brought meaning to the work, and if the meaning was upsetting or disturbing or subversive, the viewer bore partial responsibility.

King isn't much interested in the broader implications of Manet's art, but he does provide a sound word of caution. Comparing 19th-century nostalgia for Meissonier's musketeers to our own nostalgia for the Impressionists' 19th-century Paris, he observes that "the painters of modern life created, in the end, the same consoling visions of the past." Today, ensconced in the Louvre, "Olympia" is but an artifact, a stunning souvenir. Manet's true legacy, as always, is to be found, paint still fresh, in studio and salon.

Reviewed by Jonathon Keats
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: Walker & Company; First Edition, First Printing edition (January 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802714668
• ISBN-13: 978-0802714664
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #114,650 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Long Live the King!, January 26, 2006

By	Rico Lebrun - See all my reviews

I dislike many history books. History books written by academics for academics. (Publish or perish isnt exactly producing pageturners.) Books written by people who have "colleagues" and actually use that word more than once a week. Ahhh, but I love art. I love the history of art. Ross King is my hero. He can take a time line filled with people, places and dates and keep me turning the page. He made me understand one of my favorite times in the history of art, the passing of the french academic tradition into more modern forms of art. King infuses the caracters with life and makes you care about them. We meet Manet and learn the hardships he endured trying to show his work under the Salon system. We are introduced to Meissonier, the reigning champion of art in the 1800's. Never heard of him? Same here. This book is the story of the "greatest" artist, who we have completly forgotten and an artist who never was accepted in his life time, whom we all know.
THAT is the suff of great literature and life lessons. Long life the King!

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Hero is Meissonier, February 25, 2006

By	Reader 100 - See all my reviews

Ross King has written a fine book, rich in detail, which covers the emergence of the Impressionists against an engaging background of the political, military, scientific, and cultural trends of mid-19th century France. Perhaps unintentionally, he has also made a case for rehabilitating Ernest Meissonier, the painter whose reputation went into eclipse as the world went nuts over Manet, Monet, and their ilk. We are told that Meissonier possessed colossal self-regard and hauteur, but the details adduced in THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS show him to be: generous (he supported a bankrupted blacksmith and a poor woman in Antibes), forgiving (when his son damaged his most important canvas), an ally to other artists (he signed his name to a petition over restrictive judging rules), a meticulous craftsman (he made countless models and sketches and even grew a wheat field to be trampled so he could paint it), and, most especially, wise about the vagaries of posthumous reputations ("Life. How little it really comes to.").

It is fine to argue now, as a fatuous NY Times review did, that Meissonier's major work, Friedland: 1807, is "fussy," but attention must also be paid to the quote in King's book that sheds important light on the Impressionists: On page 196, Claude Monet says: "It really is appallingly difficult to do something which is complete in every respect, and I think most people are content with mere approximations." Meissonier emerges, like his paintings, in three dimensions; Manet, like his, in two. Manet is portrayed as petulant, mean, and petty, refusing at first even to meet Monet because of a belief that the younger man was stealing his name. And while it is certain that the moneyed classes preferred Meissonier and kept him in high style, the younger artists were beneficiaries of shameless logrolling, particulary by Emile Zola. When Zola saw a Manet he apparently didn't like, he simply clammed up.

Ideally, viewers would judge art by looking at it and applying their own aesthetic standards. To take one example from the evil "conservatives" cited by King who tried to thwart the generation of 1863, I suggest looking at Dominique Ingres' "Princesse Debroglie" on the Web. Is this the painting of a hidebound no-talent? Or view Meissonier's "The Campaign of France." King calls it one of the greatest depictions of motion ever captured on canvas, and I see no cause to dispute him. Meissonier is forgotten, yes, but thanks to King maybe now he will get a little attention -- not as much as the sainted Impressionists, mind you, but a little.

42 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Book Does Not Deliver , April 18, 2006

By	Marco Antonio Abarca (Colorado) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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Ross King had a good idea in contrasting the lives of Ernest Meissonier, the most famous painter of his time with Edouard Manet, the father of Impressionism. Using the annual painting Salon as a fulcrum, King attempts to illustrate the reversal of fortunes of these two great painters. Unfortunately, King does not deliver on the central argument of his book.

By focusing on the painting Salons of 1863-74, King shifts the focus of the book from a biography of Meissonier and Manet to the business component of these Salons. Ross never really takes us into their interior lives. This was a very important decade for the development of modern painting and unfortunately we only get thumbnail sketches of the other great Impressionist painters and the world that helped shape them.

Finally, I was dissapointed that King quickly concludes his thesis on the reversal of fortunes in the very last chapter of the book. There is no doubt that Edouard Manet was the more influential painter of the two. He was one of the giants of the 19th Century. However, for King's thesis to work, Manet must reach great heights while Meissonier must dissapears into mediocre obscurity. But I am not so sure that Meissonier is the forgotten figure that King wants us to believe. Ernest Meissonier was one of the great historical painters and his works are very well known to people who appreciate this genre of painting. Ernest Meissioner was not the mediocre figure that King dishonestly wants us to believe.

Ross King writes very well and his book is geared towards the general reading public. I wanted to like this book but in the end, he was not able to sell me on his thesis. For those who like the period, I would recommend "Art, War & Revolution in France 1870-1871: Myth, Reportage and Reality" by John Milner. Milner's beautifully illustrated book is not geared for the general reading public but it does a much better job of capturing the feel of the period.