Impressionist and Post–Impressionist Drawings

An authoritative analysis of the drawings (including watercolours and pastels) of twenty leading Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists in one magnificent volume

Manet, Pissarro, Morisot, Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Van Gogh and their colleagues made some of the most beautiful drawings in the history of art. This book sets drawings by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists in the context of late nineteenth-century France and explains why these particular works are as important as their paintings in the representation of modernity.

A new approach to materials and a wholly inclusive attitude to exhibitions gave drawings a more elevated status in this period than ever before, which avant-garde artists welcomed in their preference for scenes from contemporary life. For the first time also, painting and drawing shared the same stylistic principles of spontaneity, freer handling and lack of finish. Pastels by Degas, watercolors by Cézanne, pen-and-ink drawings by Van Gogh and mixed media works by Toulouse-Lautrec have an autonomy of their own, which proved instrumental in the development of modern art.

The distinguished art historian Christopher Lloyd examines the drawings of twenty of the leading Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, highlighting an aspect of French avant-garde art that remains relatively unexplored and was of immense importance for the art movements that followed

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Triumph of Drawing • Eugène Boudin 1824–1898 • Camille Pissarro
1830–1903 • Édouard Manet 1832–1883 • Edgar Degas 1834–1917 • Paul Cézanne
1839–1906 • Alfred Sisley 1839–1899 • Odilon Redon 1840–1916 • Claude Monet
1840–1926 • Berthe Morisot 1841–1895 • Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841–1919 • Federico
Zandomeneghi 1841–1917 • Mary Cassatt 1844–1926 • Paul Gauguin 1848–1903 •
Gustave Caillebotte 1848–1894 • Jean-François Raffaëlli 1850–1924 • Jean-Louis Forain
1852–1931 • Vincent van Gogh 1853–1890 • Georges Seurat 1859–1891 • Paul Signac
1863–1935 • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864–1901