Review by Booklist Review
The nineteenth-century rebel painters known as the impressionists, often reviled in their time, remain perennial art-world stars. Meyers, author of a formidable list of literary biographies of the likes of Hemingway, Orwell, and Lawrence, now considers four impressionists. Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt are often seen as lesser lights in their male-dominated world, but Meyers gives them their due in relation to the dapper Manet and the overlord Degas. They inspired, admired, taught, harangued, envied, loved, challenged, and competed with one another. Each developed a singular style in breaking with tradition. Each was lovable and unlovable in his or her own way. Meyers treats them singly and in pairs, and looks closely at many of their paintings to discuss creativity, politics, class, and sex as well as suppressed love and longing. Meyers' title hints at his musical structure: the book is less linear biography than four suites of essays, with themes and variations that often double back and revisit moments through each artist's experience. Risky, but mostly engaging. --Steve Paul Copyright 2005 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The author of biographies of Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham, Meyers highlights here the intertwined lives of four Impressionist painters. Commencing with Edouard Manet (1832-1883), Meyers chronicles the artist's angst-ridden life as a bohemian and social rebel whose paintings were repeatedly rejected by the French art establishment. Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) is chiefly investigated in relation to Manet, with whom Meyers suggests she was romantically involved; she ultimately married Manet's brother (Manet was already married). Meyers's discussions of Morisot's paintings are engaging and unpretentious, as are his interpretations of all of the artists' works. The author pays more attention to Edgar Degas (1834-1917) than he does to American-born expat Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), whom he characterizes as a prickly, self-effacing woman with a formidable array of off-putting qualities who painted overly hygienic children. While Degas valued Cassatt as an artist and friend, Meyers says, he found her physically unappealing. As a glimpse into the context and dramas surrounding some of the world's most famous paintings, Meyers's book is lively and subjective, but not always entirely convincing. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Who better than celebrated biographer Meyers to revisit these greats, reminding us of the individuals behind the art. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The prolific biographer (Somerset Maugham, 2004, etc.) moves from his familiar journey among writers and actors to the dangerous realm of Impressionist painters. Meyers's rambling, four-subject biography promises to illuminate the intimacies of Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt. Many have speculated that the two male artists enjoyed sexual as well as artistic relationships with their female disciples, and Meyers wants it to be true. He examines contemporary and modern secondary sources (the two couples' letters were all burned), recording every connection. Regrettably, he conveys little understanding of precisely why these connections are important in his formulaic trek from anecdote to anecdote. The serial descriptions of paintings are similarly unenlightening. Several works receive new interpretations, but they're seldom persuasive. Meyers's reading of Manet's portrait of his parents as insulting and castigating, for example, contradicts the subjects' and the artist's documented pleasure with it. The author oscillates between taking his research at face value and overinterpreting it. Meyer dismisses Morisot's husband (Manet's brother) as superficial, on the basis of a letter declaring that he misses his wife's "lovely chatter and pretty plumage." As examples of the Morisot family's malicious snobbery, the author cites two letters written decades apart describing two separate people as fat. He accurately portrays Degas and Cassatt as mercurial, complex people who often changed their minds and temporarily feuded with friends, but Meyers reads these qualities as character flaws. For the most part, he seeks scandal in the personal relationships of the four without finding much of it. While there may have been something illicit between Manet and his sister-in-law, Meyers spends a lot of time outlining his evidence of a sexual connection between Degas and Cassatt, then anticlimactically concludes: not. Disappointing art history, unrealized scandal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
