Watercolors and Drawings of the French Impressionists

First English edition (1982) copy of Watercolors and Drawings of the French Impressionists by Horst Keller.

This breathtakingly beautiful volume presents 98 extraordinary works by French
Impressionist (and pre- and Post-Impressionist) painters-treasures from a golden age of French art that continue to dazzle us with their brilliance today. Culled from the rich holdings of Europe's public and private collections, these water-colors, drawings, and pastels are so sensitive to light that they are usually tucked away in storage rooms and seldom exhibited. It is the very delicacy of the medium that makes them so enchanting and so revealing. Here we see the artists at their most spontaneous—unhampered by the complexities and delays of oil painting.

Most of the carefully and expertly selected sheets in this volume have never before been reproduced. They include masterpieces by Cezanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, Signac, Sisley, and other artists who, like them, owe their fame largely to Impressionist paintings in oil. There are also intriguingly Impressionistic works by Daumier, Delacroix, Doré, Millet, Puvis de Chavannes, and others whose art we customarily associate with different stylistic trends, as well as Post-Impressionist creations by Bonnard, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Vuillard.

The author brings an encyclopedic knowledge of nineteenth-century painting and drawing to bear on his subject as he elucidates the significance of watercolor and drawing in relation to other techniques. He describes and analyzes the French Impressionists' characteristic ways of seeing, the diversity of their subject matter, and their shared and separate goals, as he places their works in their proper historical and art-historical contexts.

Short biographies of all the artists represented (many exquisitely illustrated by a self-portrait or a portrait drawn by a fellow artist), a bibliography, and a chronology graph bring the reader to the end of this most rewarding volume.

Professor Horst Keller has been Curator of Monuments in Saxony and, from 1961 to 1977, Director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Mu-seum in Cologne. His numerous publications include books on French Impressionist art, German nineteenth-century painting, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Chagall.

115 illustrations, including 48 in full color

Hardcover with dust jacket.

Author: Horst Keller

Edition/Year: first edition, 1982, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 

Condition: Minimal wear on dust jacket. Otherwise in good vintage condition 

Dimensions: 13" x 12"