Impressionists

The French impressionists gave each other advice and help despite their rivalries and disputes. The portraits they made of each other and of themselves crystallized their common ways of seeing. Renoir painted Sisley; Manet sketched Monet; Cezanne sat for Pissarro, while Felix Nadar photographed nearly everybody. Bonafoux (Rembrandt Self-Portrait has stitched together an episodic and disjointed narrative that nevertheless offers rewarding glimpses of the impressionists at work and play, while also reproducing many of their portraits and other paintings. We see Manet at 30 trying to shock and provoke the fashionable world that he aspired to be part of, but which rejected him. Along with period photographs and letters, this scrapbook contains 187 reproductions, including seldom-seen, pleasing pictures by such artists as Jongkind, Zandomeneghi, Bazille, Boudin, Lhuillier, Morisot, Caillebotte, Marie Bracquemond. (January 2)