Mary Morton - Böcker

A new appraisal of intriguing and meditative figural works by one of the 19th century’s great masters of landscapeThe 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.  Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, WashingtonExhibition Schedule:National Gallery of Art, Washington(09/09/18–12/30/18)

Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) was an undisputed success during his life. Crowds flocked to see his vibrant compositions and thanks to mass marketing of his work through mechanical reproduction, he reached audiences on an unprecedented scale. Despite Gerome's undisputed accomplishments, his success met with critical hostility. Emile Zola, champion of Edouard Manet, dismissed Gerome as a cynical manufacturer of anecdotal images for popular consumption - a critique repeatedly levelled at artists in the years since. In light of revisionist and postmodern trends over the past four decades, however, Gerome's work is now being approached with unprecedented seriousness and refreshing candour. The ten essays in this volume go far in challenging critical biases against the artist and indeed suggest that we are just beginning to learn how to 'read' Gerome's paintings in their full complexity.