Free The Judgment of Paris by Ross King

"King has made a career of elucidating crucial episodes in the history of art and architecture (Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling). This time he's at play in the fields of French art and society from 1863 to 1874, years when France preferred academic painters, with their lusty goddesses and uplifting battle scenes. But what France preferred was under challenge by a rising (and sometimes backbiting) new group of artists. At the same time, the vainglorious Emperor Louis-Napoléon was stumbling into the calamities of war and revolution. Eventually art would imitate life; all the old orders would come crashing down; and Manet, Monet and Cézanne would emerge from the wreckage. King's account of that all-important crack-up is full of smart pleasures."
    —Richard Lacayo, Time Magazine
    "King's meticulously researched history of this epic art movement . . . focuses on the engrossing story of two vital but opposing forebears: Ernest Meissonier, the most famous painter of the mid-19th century, celebrated for his exacting devotion to a pictorial reportage style of mostly Napoleonic war scenes, and Édouard Manet, constantly derided for his impulsively vigorous brushwork and lascivious subject matter. Manet lost many a battle in his time (he challenged one critic to a duel), but painted his way out of a stagnant academic style and won the war for art's future. 'A'"
    —Michele Romero, Entertainment Weekly
    "[The Judgment of Paris] has the stylistic grace, the abundance of entertaining anecdotes and the shrewd marshaling of facts that made King's Brunelleschi's Dome a best-seller and his Michelangelo and the Pope s Ceiling a National Book Critics Circle award finalist . . . If this lively book sparks a Meissonier revival, it won't be a surprise." —Charles Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle
    "King writes in an engrossing style. His research is fastidious, and he leaves readers with a detailed picture of how the politics of art and the art of politics intertwine."
    —Susan Lense, Columbus Dispatch
    "The painters themselves might admire King's skill in using this backdrop to highlight the artists in the foreground. [The Judgment of Paris] offers a clear sense of how the politics and personalities of late 19th-century Europe fused to push art in a new direction."
    —Ed Nawotka, Austin American-Statesman
    "King writes art history as tapestry."
    —Matthew Price, Newsday
"An engrossing account of the years from 1863—when paintings denied entry into the French Academy's yearly Salon were shown at the Salon des Refusés—to 1874, the date of the first Impressionist exhibition. To dramatize the conflict between academicians and innovators during these years, [King] follows the careers of two formidable, and very different, artists: Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, a conservative painter celebrated for detailed historical subjects, and Édouard Manet, whose painting Le dejeuner sur I'herbe caused an uproar at the Salon des Refusés. Many other artists of the day, among them Courbet, Degas, Morisot, Monet and Cézanne, are included in King's compelling narrative, and the story is further enhanced by the author's vivid portrayal of artistic life in Paris during a turbulent era that saw the siege of the city by the Prussians and the fall of Napoléon III."
    — Publishers Weekly, starred review
    "A fluid, engaging account of how the conflicting careers of two French painters—the popular establishment favorite Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier and the oft-reviled newcomer Édouard Manet—reveal the slow emergence of Impressionism and its new view of painting and the world. King has crafted an exciting chronicle about political and cultural change . . . Many great characters in cultural history appear—Baudelaire, Zola, Henry James—not to mention the painters whose names are now Olympian. Delacroix, Monet, Cézanne, Rossetti, Renoir—they all strut a bit on King's stage, as do political figures, most notably Napoléon III.