Paris and the countryside

"It has long been observed that the French Impressionists and their followers heeded Charles Baudelaire's call to paint "modern life." The exhibition catalogue explores what the very notion of a modern life, in its many facets, meant in late-nineteenth-century France, both in Paris and outside it. Gabriel P. Weisberg's essay touches on a range of issues that together capture, from a distinctly human viewpoint, something of the richness and complexity of life in Paris at the time. Using the objects secured for the exhibition, he discusses aspects of urban modernity that diversely affected rich and poor; created opportunities for women as artists, tastemakers, and consumers; spawned and/or sustained an array of performing arts, both highbrow and popular; and embraced the influx of non-French culture." "In her essay, Jennifer L. Shaw offers a thorough overview of the rise of modernism in French landscape painting as it paralleled the desire of artists to demonstrate, through their techniques and choice of subjects, that they belonged to a new era of picture making. Her interpretations of the wide range of landscape paintings in the exhibition bring to life the surprisingly many faces