Customer Reviews
The Private Lives of the Impressionists 
2007-08-05
This book gives insight to the artists and their methods and environment equally interesting reading.
An enjoyable read.... 2007-08-01
This is well-researched, extremely readable looks at the interactions and development of the Impressionists. Roe is knowledgeable and handles her subject well.
I found it hard to put down.
Sue Roe makes public the private lives of such artists as Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissaro and their friends 
2007-05-29
Paris began the nineteenth century as an ancient city of winding streets, dark alleys and dankly dangerous ill lit streets. Due to the architectural genius of Baron Haussman, Prefect of the Seine,it was transformed into the City of Light. The Eiffel Tower! The well lighted boulevards, the enchanting and cool parks, the height of fashion and the charm of beautifully sculpted public buildings made it the apex of urban beauty (although appalling poverty did still exist). Even the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71 when Paris was briefly occupied by Prussian soldiers did not dispel the charm of this world capital.
In mid nineteenth century Paris art seemed locked in a Procrustean bed of classicicism and stody history painting. The French Academy would only show painting approved by its ultra-conservative directors.
Each year bold new artists were seeking to make impressionism the wave of the future. Each year their art was rejected at Academy shows. Each year masterpieces were created as they launched their own art shows to intially hostile and then adoring crowds flocking to see them. Who were these artist beginning the most popular movement in art history?
Among their number were:
Eduard Manet the oldest of the impressionists whose bold colors and views of sea and the life of evereyday Parisians was a bold step in the art world. His painting "A Modern Olympia" picturing a nude prostitute as well as other controversial works such as "Le Dejeuner
sur l'herbe" of 1863 portraying a nude women sitting with two fully clothed male friends was a cause celebre bringing attention to the new trend of budding artists seekiing to portray light, color and air as they caught the "impression" of the evanescent passing scene.
Claude Monet (1840-1926) noted for his water lilies, boating scenes and haystacks at his home in Giverny had to struggle against his family, saw children die and faced years of poverty would, nevertheless, triumph becoming rich and famous. His 1872 painting "Impression: Dawn" gave the word impressionism to the movement he and his friends were launching.
Auguste Renoir (1841-1917) was famed for his portraits, love of abundance feminine nudes and boating and fruit scenes.Like many of the impressionist
his family opposed his painting and his choice of a simple girl as a bride.
Camille Pissaro (1840-1903) was born to a Spanish Jewish family in the West Indies. Pissaro served as a mentor to many of the impressionists.
Edgar Degas (1832-1883) died young of syphillis. The French artist Berthe Morisot married his brother Gustave. She may have been in love with Edgar.
His art is noted for brilliant persective, color and beauty.
Several other leading impressionists are discussed such as the American Philadelphian Mary Cassat: Paul Cezzane (who grew up as a friend of the famed novelist Emile Zola) are profiled.
The group eventually broke up showing ther art in shows with one another but by then the art world had been revolutionized by their genius.
Sue Roe has penned a fascinating study of the impressionists. She shows the mileu of Paris and France at the time they lived; how they interacted; how they loved, supported one another and at times feuded with not only the critics but themselves.
Anyone who strolls through an art gallery wanting to know more about the lives of the artists would enjoy this delightful book.
Enjoyable, Historical Read, Learn about great painters! 2007-05-27
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. If you are new to learning about impressionism or art history, I think you need another book of pure pictures to follow this up.
I learned so much more about Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Rembrant, Mary Cassat, Degas, Pissaro, and others that I can not accurately name. Of particular interest to me was Berthe Morisot, who, as a woman, was in on the impressionist movement from the beginning. However, she's not so well known, and I wonder if her name is included now in art history classes.
The impressionist painters even struggled with the word impressionst! They struggled with each other and disagreed, made up, then disagreed again. They agreed, then disagreed about when and how to display their work, if they should or should not submit to the Salon, and the list goes on.
The impressionts struggled to live on income soley from their art, and really who doesn't? I was struck with how insistant some were that they paint to live. They had little shame about begging and barrowing from rich patrons. Some of the artists portrayed were really above trying to suppliment an income with teaching. In reading this book I had the sense that they found teaching and work other than painting just plain common and not for them. As a working mother and writer, I found this postion quite privlidged. And some of them, like Degas, were wealthy growing up, and they felt they belong to the "gentleman's class"
If you want to know more about how the impressionists knew each other, realted to one another, hated one another, loved one another and so on, then this is the book for you. It is very much about their relationships. If, on the other hand, you want to know more about their paintings, then you need another book that illustrates thier art, as this one offers little in that way.
All in all, I enjoyed knowing more about these amazing people, their ideas, politics, relationships, and what they wanted from the world. This book will deliver all that and more to you.
A Struggle for Recognition 2007-04-20
Sue Roe traces the lives and relationships of the artists, focusing on the people rather than the art, their struggle for recognition and for the where-with-all to live and support their families. The book is exceedingly well-sourced and, as might be expected, factual in its presentation. Yet through the facts one is moved by the way in which the artists stood together, supporting one another artistically, psychologically, and financially. And while their time as rebel artists passed, their continuing support of each other is found in adopting each other's orphaned children, organizing each other's retrospectives, and arranging each other's funerals. Roe includes as a coda the ending histories of the individual artists and the amounts most recently paid for their work, reminding us that their paintings are among the best loved in all of Western art.
Lives of artists come alive 2008-06-16
I found this to be an excellently researched book covering the lives of the artists known as Impressionists. It went chronologically, with stories of their work, their families, and what was going on in the world around them that affected their ability to make a living at their art. It wasn't boring in the least, and let the reader get a clear picture of the personalities and characters of those struggling artists who are so well known to us now.
The Private Lives of the Impressonists 2008-05-20
An excellent work. The author has captured the feeling of each artist and the lime they lived.A must for all those
interested in the impressionists.
Gossipy, misery filled stories of starving artists. 2008-04-19
One of the great benefits of living where I do is the opportunity to take in great art. A reasonably short train trip lands me in Manhattan and I'm able to go and gaze at the glories of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of the huge draws of the Met are the galleries of paintings by the artists of nineteenth century France and the movement known as Impressionism. Filled with light and colour, these paintings caused mockery from the critics, outrage, and yet were still able to find a market -- and one that has become even more so in the modern world, where Impressionist paintings fetch prices in the millions of dollars.
In this narrative group biography, author Sue Roe explores the lives of the leaders of the Impressionist movement from 1862 to 1886, the most troubled -- and most prolific -- years that these artists shook up the rather staid art world. Each artist is given a bit of a brief biography, and some of the details of their childhood and early careers, along with the women they married and their struggles for either money or recognition or both.
She begins, naturally enough, with Edouard Manet, and his painting, Le Dejeneur sur l'Herbe first exhibited in the Paris Salon in 1863, and which caused outrage. It wasn't a biblical or historical subject, or a portrait, or even a landscape. Instead, two modern Parisian men are sitting out of doors on the grass, with a naked woman. And she's being bold about it, staring out at the viewer with a frank and somewhat amused expression. His next painting, Olympia, had the same naked model, this time as a grand courtesan in a modern setting, and this time, the critics really screamed in horror. Other artists were pushing the limits with experimental work that played with light, such as Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne. Two women would join the Impressionist circle, Berthe Morisot (she would marry Manet's brother in time) and Mary Cassatt. Shunned by the judges of the Paris Salon, they would eventually stage their own exhibitions, with varied success.
What makes this one different is that Roe takes a look at the lives of these people outside of the art. She looks at how they met one another, their marriages and children, how the outside world treated them. Most of her attention is focused on their financial and marital world. The popular idea of an artist struggling and slowly starving in a garret, fighting the world that scorns them, probably grew out of these lives, if Roe's information is any indication. With a few exceptions, nearly every artist in this story is going broke in a big way -- there are vivid details of their private lives, the quiet frustrations of their wives trying to raise their children on nearly nothing, and especially the choice that some of them took to paint more popular paintings that would make them money, and so, survive.
It was this constant focus on the lack money and the descriptions of poverty that really struck me with this nonfiction work. Again and again Roe focuses on the subject, and seems to take delight in describing the misery, from the Franco-Prussian War and the Communard uprising that soon followed, the disputes that Cézanne and his father had over money, and the constant borrowing and pleading for cash. What with all of the whinging going on, I wonder how anyone had time to paint...
And that's the disappointment of this work. The narrative has a very gossipy tone, and Roe continually focuses on the negative aspects of life. After a while, it became rather tedious to read about, and combined with the fact that she had so many leading characters necessarily leads to everyone getting a little piece of the story, and not too much lead time. I came away with a good perspective and idea of the time range of the Impressionist movement, but I also came away with not really knowing a great deal about any of the artists. If I had not already read some fictional and nonfiction works about Manet, Morisot and Cassatt, I would be heartily confused. Too, Roe mentions various paintings and works, but then doesn't have any pictures of them in the two photographic inserts. It all comes across as very confusing in the end, and while the book does have some positive aspects, it's not one that I would recommend for casual reading.
If the reader already has some knowledge of the Impressionists, this would be a good gateway book to spur some interest in more specific artists, but it really doesn't reveal anything new. Along with the two inserts of paintings, small black and white pictures are at the start of each section, along with two maps showing Paris and the surrounding countryside during the period. Plenty of notes and a bibliography and index complete the book.
Overall, this is about a three-four star read. It's worth reading once, but it's also one that I don't think I will reread any time soon. Which is a pity. So this is not a book that I would recommend, despite giving it an overall rating of four stars.
A scholarly and impressive work 2007-12-13
It is to Sue Roe's credit that THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS is not a fun or funny book.
Ms. Roe is a serious scholar and she has written a serious work.
Writing a definitive biography of even just one person is a huge and somber undertaking...writing an anthology about an entire discrete group is almost too huge to comprehend.
Yet because PRIVATE LIVES is not fun in no way negates its worth.
Sue Roe has assembled the ultimate work on those artists who coalesced to form the movement now well-loved as "Impressionism."
She explains the history of the movement, and how reviled it had been by the establishment. In the process of this explication, she also tells a great deal about the moment in which this movement came to life, at the precise time of the transformation of Paris from a patchwork of farming communities to a cosmopolitan city.
She does as good a job of detailing the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune as I have read anywhere.
Roe has done enormous research on the personal lives of the most important of the artists, and of their joint struggle to be accepted for the type of imagery they were trying to display.
It was startling to read that the great names of Impressionism considered themselves to be cohorts and supporters of one another.
I didn't have fun reading THE PRIVATE LIVES OF THE IMPRESSIONISTS, but the time spent was worthwhile. The book was everything that I hoped it would be: A true learning experience.
Private? 
2007-09-29
The title of the book is misleading. Most, like me, would believe that it is about the various affaires des coeurs of the Impressionist painters. But it is far from that. It is an insightful look into the struggles of the impressionist painters during the years of 1860-86; this was before they became famous.
The book covers the lives (intimate or otherwise) of the better-known impressionists such as Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Cézanne, and Pissarro and the not-so-well-known painters who were in their company Berthe Morisot, Frédéric Bazille, Mary Cassatt and Gustave Caillebotte. The author describes how these painters tried to break the rigid moulds of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, which controlled the technique and subjects of mainstream painting in France.
The author described many of the better-known and the not-so-well-known paintings in such an anecdotal form that the reader is forced to have a look at those paintings somehow (in a coffee table book or online). She brings alive the characters who had posed for the paintings that give a greater depth to the work.
The author has researched this period well and one not only gets an insight of the lives of these painters but also of the world around them. The reader can literally visualize the gradual realization of Haussman's vision of Paris, or the soirées and evenings spent in cafés. The Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and the siege of Paris are also described in detail - it led to tremendous upheaval in the French society as also the lives of the painters - a large amount of their output was lost during this war and the sense of loss is transferred to the reader.
The author manages to intertwine the lives of the painters - the individuality of each painter is maintained even though all are presented as a collective. Despite the fact that so many characters are being biographed, the author doesn't leave the reader of being overwhelmed with the plurality of characters.
Use of exact addresses and trivial but minute details such as a `thirteen-minute stop for hot chocolate' (238) which Eugène Manet made on way to Paris from Nice. Though the use of French words was rather limited despite the fact that the setting and the painters were French. Most words can be understood from the context - However, some words (cocottes, arrière pensée) do require a bit of looking up to understand the true import of the sentence.
