Customer Reviews

Paintings in the Musee d'Orsay

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The concept of this book is very good: minimum text - maximum pictures. All art monographs should follow the same principle.
The book is split into the chapters dealing with dominant artistic trends of the time, and subchapters dedicated to the most important artists within each trend/movement.
The brief introductory essays are well written and help understand background behind the movements or artistic groups whose most representative works are displayed on the subsequent pages.

If one hasn't seen d'Orsay's magnificent collection in person, they'll be amazed by this lavishly illustrated monograph.
In most cases there is one plate per page, sometimes two and very seldom three. However, what I don't understand is 2 inches wide margin around the reproductions (???) Why? Why they were not printed at least an inch larger at all sides?

Besides, though even the best repros can't do justice to the original, many pictures could have been much better. Don't get me wrong - majority of reproductions is of good quality, but there are those (I'd say one third of the total number) which are considerably lighter than the originals and/or have rather compressed values - Manet's Olympia being the most obvious example. (I've visited d'Orsay two months ago and the paintings are still vivid in my memory).

However, these remarks shouldn't stop you from purchasing the book, since monsieur Lemoine in this monograph included works of many great but usually neglected artists, those which one can very rarely (or never) see in the books on art of the 19th century. There are enough books on Impressionists to fill all the world's garbage landfills many times over (and thousands upon thousands more are printed every year), yet it is so hard to find one monograph on the likes of Cabanel, Delaunay, Fromentin, Bonnat, Laurens, Carriere, Levy-Dhurmer, Hammershoi etc etc.

The contents of the book are as advertised, but the quality of the book and printing left a lot to be desired. Some of the pages were printed too large around the corners, and were then just folded into the book before they wrapped it up. A few of the pages were even torn, which detracts from the book. Of course for a book of this price, I expected a much more professional printing and packaging. But like I said, the actual content of the book is great, as described.