Whistler embarked on a new project in the 1880s, working on a small scale in oil, pastel and watercolor to depict new London subjects and painting portraits of new urban types. This book, the first critical study of Whistler and his Impressionist followers, offers an in-depth analysis of Whistler's art as well as new insights into his modernist project. 
Using a wealth of primary material, Robins tracks the history of Whistler and his group and shows through testimony and practice that they were formulating an identity as avant-garde artists. This is the first critical study of these Impressionist artists and throws new light on this neglected aspect of British art.

A Fragile Modernism: Whistler and His Impressionist Followers

Arts & Photography

Robins, Anna Gruetzner

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

In the late 19th century, the exploding populations and hectic speed of life in London and Paris fascinated artists on both sides of the English Channel. French artists Edgar Degas and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec pioneered new ways of representing the city, profoundly influencing British artists as they did so. Walter Sickert fully embraced their Bohemian vision, creating brooding portrayals of the seamier side of urban life. Works by these and other key artists, including Vuillard, Bonnard, Tissot, and Whistler, include society portraiture and posters as well as scenes in bars, music halls, and theaters-evocative images of the decadence and spectacle of the fin-de-siècle metropolis.

Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris 1870-1910

THOMSON, Richard

Tate

Between 1910 and 1914 a series of exhibitions held in London displayed and offered for sale virtually the entire canon of modern art, introducing to Britain the likes of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso. As this book also shows, the impact they had on British artists was immediate and resounding.

Modern Art in Britain, 1910-1914

Merrell Pub Ltd

Walter Sickert's drawing style and choice of subject matter were highly controversial. He was fascinated by urban, populist subjects, which he sketched quickly in the street; in his studies of the Music Hall, he juxtaposed the partially-clothed female performers and the elaborately-dressed male spectators; and his drawings of nudes were of heavily distorted bodies in poverty-stricken domestic interiors rather than the traditional prettified, classically-posed figures. These breaks with academic convention presented an urgent challenge to Establishment taste in late nineteenth-century Britain.Early in his career Sickert adopted Degas's technique of building up paintings from drawings. Anna Gruetzner Robins's study of the drawings shows Sickert evolving a new technique to explore psychological and spatial relationships, and her analysis of the artist's early unpublished art criticism reveals the influence on his drawings of the Realist and Naturalist ideas of representation which Sickert had been introduced to by Degas and Whistler in the 1880s.Extensively illustrated, Walter Sickert: Drawings presents a catalogue of many of the known drawings, and includes a photographic reproduction of the exhibition catalogues for the Carfax Gallery in 1911 and 1912. These unique documents, in which an unknown hand has sketched each picture against its entry, enable scholars to establish what the titles of the pictures were at the time of their first exhibition. Sickert frequently changed his titles. The Carfax catalogues throw an intriguing light both on his initial intentions and on the impact of his titles on the reception of his work.

Walter Sickert: Drawings : Theory and Practice : Word and Image

Individual Artists

Scolar Pr

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Robins, Anna Gruetzner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Robins, Anna Gruetzner

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Robins, Anna Gruetzner. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Fragile Modernism: Whistler and His Impressionist Followers

Degas, Sickert and Toulouse-Lautrec: London and Paris 1870-1910

Modern Art in Britain, 1910-1914

Walter Sickert: Drawings : Theory and Practice : Word and Image