Though largely out of the public eye for more than a century, Gustave Caillebotte (1848–94) has come to be recognized as one of the most dynamic and original artists of the impressionist movement in Paris. His paintings are favorites of museum-goers, and recent restoration of his work has revealed more color, texture, and detail than was visible before while heightening interest in all of Caillebotte’s artwork. This lush companion volume to the National Gallery of Art’s major new exhibition, coorganized with the Kimbell Art Museum, explores the power and technical brilliance of his oeuvre. The book features fifty of Caillebotte’s strongest paintings, including post-conservation images of Paris Street; Rainy Day, along with The Floorscrapers and Pont de l’Europe, all of which date from a particularly fertile period between 1875 and 1882. The artist was criticized at the time for being too realistic and not impressionistic enough, but he was a pioneer in adopting the angled perspective of a modern camera to compose his scenes. Caillebotte’s skill and originality are evident even in the book’s reproductions, and the essays offer critical insights into his inspiration and subjects. This sumptuously illustrated publication makes clear why Caillebotte is among the most intriguing artists of nineteenth-century France, and it deepens our understanding of the history of impressionism.

Gustave Caillebotte: The Painter's Eye

Arts & Photography

Morton, Mary

Shackelford, George

History & Criticism

University of Chicago Press

A new appraisal of intriguing and meditative figural works by one of the 19th century’s great masters of landscape The women painted by Camille Corot (1796–1875) read, dream, and gaze at the viewer, conveying an independent spirit and a sense of their inner lives. Corot’s handling of color and his deft, delicate touch applied to the female form resulted in pictures of quiet majesty. Although these figural paintings constitute a relatively small and little-known portion of his oeuvre, they were of great importance for the founders of modernist painting, such as Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque. This publication encompasses some forty paintings by Corot—from the single-figure bust and full-length images of the 1840s through the 1860s nudes and his allegorical series devoted to the model in the studio. Essays by leading experts in the field address Corot’s debt to the old masters and the impact of his pictures on both 19th- and 20th-century painting, the relationship of his figural work to his more famous landscape practice, his response to the shifting social position of artists’ models, and the incursion of photography into artistic practice in the Second Empire and early Third Republic.

Corot: Women

Yale University Press

Masterworks of European Painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Published to coincide with the opening of the Audrey Jones Beck building in March of 2000, this lavishly illustrated catalogue--the first single volume dedicated to this extraordinary collection--features one hundred of the most important European paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The works, which range in date from the early Renaissance to the beginning of the twentieth century, are all handsomely featured as full-page color plates. The accompanying text is highly accessible, providing interesting insights into the artists' lives and explaining--in general terms--the stylistic evolution of the history of European painting. Furthermore, important new research on unpublished works has been incorporated into the entries.
 The European painting collection of the Museum of Fine Arts has grown tremendously over the past fifty years through the generosity of major donors and patrons. The 1944 bequest by Edith A. and Percy S. Straus forms the foundation of the permanent collection, including works by such well-known Italian and Northern Renaissance artists as Fra Angelico, Rogier van der Weyden, and Hans Memling. The next milestone was the acquisition of the Robert Lee Blaffer Memorial Collection, which comprises splendid pictures spanning many centuries, such as major works by Giovanni di Paolo, Frans Hals, Canaletto, Auguste Renoir, and Edgar Degas. Purchases and gifts, including substantial donations from Samuel H. Kress and the Kress Foundation from the 1930s through the 1960s, further strengthened the holdings of Renaissance and Baroque pictures with exceptional works such as Sebastiano del Piombo's Portrait of Anton Francesco degli Albizzi and Orazio Gentileschi's Portrait of a Young Woman as a Sibyl. The renowned John A. and Audrey Jones Beck Collection includes a significant number of important Impressionist and modern paintings, represented herein with works by Edouard Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Signac, Georges Braque, and Vassily Kandinsky. Represented as well are some of the museum's most important recent acquisitions, such as Still Life with Golden Bream, a stunning canvas by Francisco de Goya, and Still Life of Flowers and Fruit, a ravishing work by Jan van Huysum.
 With beautiful reproductions and informative commentary, Masterworks of European Painting will be of great appeal to art lovers and scholars alike.

Bowron, Edgar Peters

Princeton University Press

With its fittingly dramatic design, Courbet and the Modern Landscape accompanies the first major museum exhibition specifically to address Gustave Courbet's extraordinary achievement in landscape painting. Many of these carefully selected works produced from 1855 to 1876--gathered from Asia, Europe, and North America--will be new to readers. The catalogue--which accompanies an exhibition at the Getty Museum to be held from February 21 to May 14, 2006--highlights the artist's expressive responses to the natural environment. Essays by the curators examine Courbet's distinctly modern practice of landscape painting. Mary Morton's essay situates his landscapes in relation to his work in other genres, his critical reputation, and his role in establishing a new pictorial language for landscape painting. Charlotte Eyerman's essay investigates how later generations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists responded to Courbet's example. The catalogue also includes an essay by Dominique de Font-Réaulx, curator of photographs at the Musée d'Orsay, on the relationship between Courbet's work and landscape photography of the 1850s and 1860s.

Courbet and the Modern Landscape

Eyerman, Charlotte

J.paul Getty Museum

Exhibition catalogue that accompanied the show "Intimate Impressionism, from the National Gallery".

Intimate Impressionism from the National Gallery of Art

National Gallery of Art