French Impressionists

This handbook presents a selection of sixty-four of the Fitzwilliam Museum’s finest paintings and drawings by French Impressionist painters. It includes paintings by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Cézanne, Seurat and Boudin which are widely considered to be among these painters’ greatest works, as well as other lesser-known works by Gauguin and Signac, and several which are published here for the first time. Degas features prominently in the book, with a particularly splendid group of watercolours, pastels, drawings and paintings, many of them early works. The Introduction gives a lively account of what an ‘Impressionist’ painter was - and came to mean - and also explains how these works came to be in Cambridge collections, against the background of the developing taste for Impressionist painting in Britain.

• Illustrates in full colour the splendid collection of French Impressionist works at the Fitzwilliam Museum • Many paintings and drawings are reproduced here for the first time • A lively account of how a museum acquires and collects, containing new information about collectors and critics of Impressionism in the twentieth century

Introduction; paintings and drawings by Cals, Boudin, Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, Gauguin, Cézanne, Seurat, Signac; References and further reading.

‘With many preliminary and never before published images included, each one with a page to itself opposed by brief but erudite text, this is a must for lovers of Impressionism ….’ Antiques Magazine

‘… sprightly introduction …’ Burlington Magazine