How to Read Impressionism: Ways of Looking

Impressionism is about as popular and familiar a movement as art history has to offer, and as a result, new studies of Impressionist painting often trade in redundancy and repackaging. Rubin, however, succeeds in avoiding these pitfalls, approaching the movement on fresh terms. In large part, this is accomplished through the structure of the book itself. After the briefest of introductions, the text moves thematically through Impressionist works, with each pair of pages introducing a painting in the context of its history and a few comparable works, which are reproduced alongside it. By grouping the often familiar paintings in sections like "Family and Friends" and "Light and Air," Rubin smartly comments on the particulars while suggesting some broader themes and modes that chronological studies often miss. This structuring also places dominant artists like Manet, Renoir, and Degas alongside less-celebrated painters, among them Berthe Morisot and Armand Guillaumin. Rubin exceeds in crafting a voice that is friendly and at times lyric while still squarely formal, leading to wonderful insights: "while [Alfred Sisley's snowy landscape] might suggest the constancy of human perseverance, his pictures also find a subtle beauty in the way life simply continues on." All together, the slow piecing together of biographical incidences, astute readings of individual paintings, and historical narratives results in a text that actually succeeds in its initial promise, encouraging even learned art fans to see Impressionism anew. 600 color illus. (Dec.)