Overview

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans—then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris. As renowned art critic Sebastian Smee shows, it was against the backdrop of these tumultuous times that the Impressionist movement was born—in response to violence, civil war, and political intrigue. In stirring and exceptionally vivid prose, Smee tells the story of those dramatic days through the eyes of great figures of Impressionism. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas were trapped in Paris during the siege and deeply enmeshed in its politics. Others, including Pierre-August Renoir and Frédéric Bazille, joined regiments outside of the capital, while Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro fled the country just in time. In the aftermath, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. That feeling for transience—reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things—became the movement’s great contribution to the history of art. At the heart of it all is a love story; that of Manet, by all accounts the father of Impressionism, and Morisot, the only woman to play a central role in the movement from the start. Smee poignantly depicts their complex relationship, their tangled effect on each other, and their great legacy, while bringing overdue attention to the woman at the heart of Impressionism. Incisive and absorbing, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the pressures of the siege and the chaos of the Commune had a profound impact on modern art, and how artistic genius can emerge from darkness and catastrophe.

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9781324006954

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"""Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Smee draws on a wealth of historical and biographical sources to examine the birth of impressionism during a time of ferocious political and social upheaval in France … Smee vividly conveys the terror of the times, the tense military standoffs and plotting, and the inflamed passions … [H]is depiction of impressionists’ works is discerning, as is his sensitivity to the complicated relationships among the artists. … Deft, vibrant cultural history."" -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"

""Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Smee draws on a wealth of historical and biographical sources to examine the birth of impressionism during a time of ferocious political and social upheaval in France … Smee vividly conveys the terror of the times, the tense military standoffs and plotting, and the inflamed passions … [H]is depiction of impressionists’ works is discerning, as is his sensitivity to the complicated relationships among the artists. … Deft, vibrant cultural history."" -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ""The book well could change the way you think about Impressionism, and it might alter your perception of art history."" -- Simon Caterson - Sydney Morning Herald ""Sebastian Smee explodes a tired chestnut about the Impressionists: that their works are merely pretty. Like a restorer scraping off layers of grime and dust, he restores color and nuance and light, and performs the vital critical task of forcing us to look better and deeper at things we thought we already knew."" -- Benjamin Moser, author of Sontag

Author Information

Sebastian Smee is a Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic at the Washington Post and the author of The Art of Rivalry. Formerly the chief art critic at the Boston Globe and national art critic for the Australian, he has also written for the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Financial Times, and the Independent, among other publications. He lives in Boston.

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