Stunning images and descriptions. Manet and Modern Beauty is very well made. Definitely a perfect coffee table book. I highly recommend this book.

As one of the founders of Impressionism, Manet had a pivotal influence on all impressionist painters, as all well as many later artists. In his later years, when he was suffering from several health issues, Manet focused mainly on painting flowers and very fashionable people, often his artist friends and bohemians, and at times high society. His last paintings, often still lives, were mostly small formats.

Even though I was unable to visit the exhibition, I was very glad to view the beautiful paintings in this catalogue and read extensive details of Manet's life (including personal letters by the artist) and the works included, along with essays by art historians and Manet experts. Having been a fan of impressionism since my early childhood, I have attended many exhibitions and admired many of Manet's paintings, some of which are also included in this collection. I would have loved to attend this exhibition, however, being able to read and view this beautiful book at least partially made up for missing it. This book will nicely complement any art-lover's exhibition catalogue collection and constitute an interesting read for any fan of impressionism.
I will buy a hard copy of this catalogue for my grandmother's coffee table, as she loves Manet's later works and lives in Europe as well.

This book coincides with the art exhibit of the same name, and includes plates of the works featured in addition to the catalogue of the exhibition. The essays included are interesting, and give insight into his later works. I especially enjoyed the inclusion of many of Manet's letters to friends which included watercolor sketches- what a treat it must have been to receive one of these missives! A lovely book, perfect for any lover of art

#ManetAndModernBeauty #NetGalley

Manet's last works have been severely under-rated because of their so-called 'chocolate boxy' qualities. The authors of these essays tell how Manet's yearning for beauty and love of fashion and women influenced these lovely paintings and study them in great detail.

This is an interesting book for art-lovers and a useful one for art students.

I received this ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.

As mentioned by the publisher in the description of the book,"This volume is published to accompany exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago May 26 to September 8, 2019 and the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center October 8, 2019, to January 12, 2020".

During his final years, French artist Édouard Manet was mostly restricted and could not move outdoors or work for long stretches of time. During this time he would mostly paint decorative art, and did watercolour illustrations in the correspondence with his acquaintances. During the last decade, he also made studio portraits of his female friends and models. These were very different from his usual style and that of his contemporary artists. Unfortunately some of these artworks were not appreciated that time. However, with passage of time, and also rise of feminism, Manet’s late artworks attracted more and more interest especially for understanding the lifestyle of Parisian women in the 19th century and their attention to the nuances of contemporary fashion, clothing and accessories. He had planned to make a series of paintings dedicated to the seasons, with one painting depicting one season. The first painting Le Printemps (spring) depicting model Jeanne Demarsy makes the cover of this book. The series was not completed. All these artworks are included in this exhibition.

The language of the book is very simple and anyone with even elementary knowledge and interest in fine arts would be able to comprehend the information presented here. Very clear reprints of Manet’s artworks are presented throughout the book which only enhance the overall merit and visual appeal of the book. A detailed year-by-year chronology of important events in Manet’s life is also given. Although it is easy to notice the temptation on part of the authors to discuss about Manet in detail, still mostly they successfully restrict themselves within the intended and proposed scope of the book viz., Manet’s final years.

The Foreword and Introduction give you an overview of the exhibition and the essays contained in the book. This gives you an idea about what to expect at the exhibition and its importance keeping in mind its historical significance. The book is intended to accompany the exhibition, and it definitely serves well to the layperson also. Ample description of various artworks are given throughout the text, so in a way you also get an educational course on how to look at a piece of art. In addition, a complete catalogue of the various artworks on display at the exhibition is included with adequate description, which would definitely aid the general viewers with appreciating the artworks.

I did not find any editorial mistakes, typographical errors or formatting issues. This book would make a valuable addition to your personal library.

MANET AND MODERN BEAUTY: THE ARTIST’S LAST YEARS

Title: Monet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years
Editors: :Scott Allan, Emily A. Beeny, Gloria Groom (Editors)
Publisher:J. Paul Getty Museum; 1 edition (June 25, 2019)
Format: Hardcover
Page: 400
Language: English
ISBN #: 1606066048 ISBN-13 (978-1606066041)


The editors of this work should be proud. They have managed to create a work of art that Édouard Manet would have considered a fitting epitaph. The publication is dripping with beautifully reproduced works by the brilliant and talented Manet.

This book is a must have for anyone who enjoys the Impressionist period of Modern Art. I would especially recommend this volume to students of art history or those with a love of the Impressionist Movement. There is so much information in the book that it could reasonably be considered as an encyclopedia of the artist and his works.

The contents are arranged in an organized fashion with accompanying high-quality photographic images of Édouard Manet’s paintings, sketches, personal letters, and more; much more. The Editors include a useful chronology dating from 1876 until Manet’s death in 1882. You can expect to learn about his background, his years at the Salon (Portrait of Antonin Proust, 1880. Cat. 22). We also learn details of his personal challenges experienced shortly before his tragic death. It is evident from Manet’s works included herein that Velasquez was one of his major influences. I believe that is most evident in Manet’s oil painting on canvas entitled A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, 1881. The Editors have made it easy to reference the illuminations.

The aspect of the book I enjoyed the most is the personal letters which Manet illustrated with wonderful watercolor sketches. Sketches that elevate an otherwise mundane note to a whole new level (See the Chapter entitled: Manet’s Little Nothings). After reading this “Manet Encyclopedia” I have a more complete understanding of the man and his work. I found the Chapter on Manet’s methods and Materials to be interesting and educational; as any artist would. By viewing the artists’ palette, we can see the insight for the paintings he created. There are close up images of individual brushstrokes revealing some of his methods in applying oil paint; an aspect that I found to be very helpful. I adored the summary of pigments detailed in a table complete with abbreviations, techniques employed, and references. There is even a color chart detailing individual colors that Manet used in his palette. Keep a look out for the Chapter on Manet’s private selection of personal letters 1878-83, for a genuine insight into the mind of the artist. It’s appropriate that the chapter of personal letters is followed by Plates that include a Portrait of Édouard Manet, 1867 (painted by Henri Fantin-L'atour) See Cat. 1. The Plates are resplendent with painting after painting. I laughed when I saw his painting of a brioche with a rose in it. This image in particular speaks of the artist’s outlook on life. I have yet to see a better painting of Irises in watercolor than the one contained in this tome.

The book concludes with a Catalogue of the Exhibition – 1866. Manet was at the height of his power as is evident from the contents of the catalogue. The Editors generously provide us high-quality images of the paintings from the 1866 exhibition.
This is the seminal work in my opinion of the late years of Édouard Manet and is a fitting epitaph to the great artist. I have no compunction in recommending this work of editorial art to you.

Acknowledgment

My sincere thanks go to: NetGalley, and J. Paul Getty Museum for affording me the opportunity to review “Manet and Modern Beauty”.

A big thank you to NetGalley and Getty Publications for the ARC. I am voluntarily reviewing this book. I believe this goes along with an exhibition. This is a fantastic resource, and if you love Manet. This covers his later works. I requested this book just to learn a bit more, and so for me it was a bit.overwhelming! The reproductions are great, well researched and I enjoyed the parts where it showed the changes he made. I am not an art buff at all but I liked this book and if nothing else just looking at something that is beautiful and well outside of anything I could ever do. 5 stars

A gorgeously illustrated, meticulously detailed account of the painter Edouard Manet's final years. Shows the artist's influence on later painters, and includes a chronology of his life. Will appeal to art history students, painters looking for inspiration, and anyone who enjoys looking at great art.

Really good if you're interested in the specific topic of Manet's late art. It can get a bit dry, but one can pull through. Would recommend if you're into Manet.

This book was an excellent overview of Manet’s work.

My favorite part was the methods and materials section. It is interesting how artists work can be detected to learn their secrets and techniques. This section showed great insight and inspiration for my own paintings.

Any aspiring artist would enjoy this book. It would also be a great coffee table book with all the beautiful Manet works.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

Manet is an artist I like very much, so I enjoyed this book very much. I liked the fact that a chronological timeline of his life was provided as well as many interesting anecdotes from his life. Also, the reproductions are beautiful!

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

Very informative and showing his works and inspirations throughout. It covers his later years, which nice if you want to focus on that part of his life and work. It goes through works and looking at them through xrays for some. A good source for Manet lovers and art historians. Different things looked at, covering a lot of points.

Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years, edited by Scott Allan, Emily A. Beeny, and Gloria Groom, is the catalogue for the eponymous exhibit of Édouard Manet’s later works. Filled with lush color representations of the paintings and ephemera on display, the expansive book also delights with authoritative, informative essays for those who might not be as familiar with Manet’s life and painting, or for those eager to learn current theories about the painter.

Later in life Manet gravitated toward unabashedly painting fashion, flowers, and fruit. Unlike his political and hierarchical-upsetting earlier works, he seemed pleased to focus on painting what simply appealed to his eyes during his later years when he was unwell and had limited mobility.

Two notable works in the collection are Jeanne (Spring) and Autumn (Méry Laurent), the only two of a planned set of four to represent the seasons that Manet completed.

The Conservatory, Plum Brandy, Waitress Serving Beer, and the Café-Concert are some of the other paintings depicting modern life and fashion that preoccupied Manet in the second half of his career. No one paints a good mug of beer like Manet. It’s as if he’s anticipating drinking it as he creates it. Equally, no one uses color quite in the same way, either. If you don’t know his paintings by the hands, you’ll know them by the way he places colors adjacent to one another. He evidences his joy in flowers by the care he takes in drawing them. His palette makes flowers look even more beautiful than they do in real life. It’s the work of someone who knows he’s dying and wants to gather to himself all of the beauty and color he will have to leave behind.

The editors of the book thank Juliet Wilson-Bureau, and with good reason: her extensive Manet scholarship is deeply felt in the exhibit. Essay authors and contributors to the collection include Carol Armstrong, Helen Burnham, Leah Lehmbeck, Devi Ormond, Douglas MacLennan, Nathan Daly, Catherine Schmidt Patterson, Bridget Alsdorf, Jamie Kwan, and Samuel Rodary. They write on topics as varied as Manet and the Salon to the materials he used, a fascinatingly deep dive. His “little nothings” are the subject of Armstrong’s essay, lending weight to something Manet himself pretended to dismiss.

The essays are engaging and necessary reading for the exhibit goer (preferably devoured before attending the show and again after), and perhaps even more necessary for those who cannot attend. For Manet aficionados, this book will both whet your appetite to see the paintings and to study him more in-depth than ever before. What the authors spark is a hunger for examining the paintings for oneself.

This volume will satisfy the curiosity of the most avid fan. It delves into the provenance of every painting. It depicts his “scribbles” on envelopes and his attempts at painting tambourine skins. It reprints correspondence to and from Manet about his paintings. As a souvenir, an exhibit guidebook, and a textbook, Manet and Modern Beauty is one for the art lover’s library.

An important note for would-be viewers: a few of the paintings are not going to be shown at both the Art Institute in Chicago and the J. Paul Getty Museum in L.A., (the two museums which will host the show), so reviewing the book to know if your favorite will be at the museum you will attend the show at is advisable.

The following review appeared on my book review blog this morning:

The following volume corresponds to exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago which runs from May 26 to September 8, 2019 and the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Center which runs from October 8, 2019, to January 12, 2020.

Unlike most Manet exhibitions, the curators of Manet and Modern Beauty chose to focus their show on a less popular period within Manet's life: his later years. This is a period for the artist that is largely overlooked because it is such a shift from what Manet is so well-known for. The shift in his work is often attributed to his decline in health and his growing interest in fashion and women painters, namely Berthe Morisot, a woman created with being a source of inspiration for this period of his work.

Weaving together gorgeous reproductions of Manet's works with essays and correspondence from the artist during this period in his life, Allan, Beeny, and Groom create an in-depth view of Manet and his later works. While the writing is academic in tone, the inclusion of the personal correspondence really illuminates where the artist was during this part of his life and how it could relate to why there is such a shift in his work from previous paintings. 

As viewers, we get to see the lush social world that Manet found himself in during the 1870's and 1880's and in many ways, we can also uncover his commentary on this world that he lived in during his later years. With nearly 300 beautiful reproductions, Manet and Modern Beauty stands as a gorgeous literacy and artistic work that brings to life the later years of Eugène Manet. 

 Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years edited by Scott Allan, Emily A. Beeny, and Gloria Groom will be released on June 25, 2019 from Getty Publishing with ISBN 9781606066041. This review corresponds to an advanced electronic galley that was shared in exchange for a review.

In discussing mostly later pieces by the French master, Manet, this huge book does kind of drain its subject dry – never, the passing browser will think, has so much been written about so little. We get academic looks at the kinds of women he was trying to portray, the flowers he used, the backgrounds to his pictures, even – so much detail is too much perhaps for the layman. Still, this book is designed to be a heavy companion to a major museum exhibition running for some time in the US in 2019, and so it is duty-bound to be more than the catalogue. That said, the presentations of the paintings in the hanging are wonderful, and you do get all the museum placard captions and notes for everything else the essays fail to cover. As for the essays, they are actually quite accessible, although one in particular really does hang its hat in Pseuds' Corner and rest up awhile. In giving a star rating to such a volume, it's only fair to point out that I have had to counter the blatant success of the book in achieving what it wanted, and my personal thoughts of being slightly overwhelmed.

It's a very rich book and catalogue of the Getty exhibition of the same title. Essays from ten authors treat the artworks, the techniques, the correspondance of Manet, and through them his professional carrier, his social and private life, His appreciation of beauty, let it be flowers, women or dresses shows us a lust for life, that reconnects him with contemporeanity.

This book is excellent for those with a love of Manet and French Impressionist art during those times that art was truly at the center of life. Informative, concise, "Manet and Modern Beauty" definitely reconstructs the artist's talent and era.