Hidden Treasures Revealed: Impressionist Masterpieces and Other Important French Paint...

An astonishing feast of unknown masterpieces, this glorious album is a historic event that deepens our understanding of modern art. It documents an exhibition at Russia's Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, unveiling a large trove of French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings--by Monet, Renoir, Matisse, Pissarro, Degas, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Manet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, etc.--whose existence had been a carefully guarded secret for half a century. The paintings were seized from German private collections during WWII and transferred to the Hermitage's storage rooms. Many of these works have never been exhibited before, even in prewar times. Among the 74 full-page color plates are Van Gogh's psychologically charged White House at Night, painted six weeks before his death; Degas's Interior with Two Figures, a symbolic drama of alienation between the sexes; vibrant pictures made in Tahiti by Gauguin; and canvases by Daumier, Delacroix, Edouard Vuillard, Andre Derain. Kostenevich, a Hermitage curator, has provided an extensive commentary on each picture. BOMC main selection. (May)