Diss.--Münster, 1989. / Bibliogr. p. 295-309.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 1973-1092). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2009. / Principal faculty advisor: Nina Athanassoglou-Kallmyer, Dept. of Art History. Includes bibliographical references.

Focusing on the prints of Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt and Camille Pissarro, my dissertation explores the development of the belle épreuve, or the fine print, in relation to the Impressionist movement. I firstly consider the commercial tactics of the Impressionists in the face of the evolution of the modern art market and the decreasing relevancy of the Salon and expound on previous scholarship by demonstrating how the Impressionists' modes of presentation proved especially conducive to showcasing works on paper and how we might apply observations about the speculative nature of the Impressionists' formal innovations to their prints. Additionally I highlight contemporaneous observations about the heterogeneity of the Impressionist exhibitions that reveal meaningful insights into the nineteenth-century perception of the artists' relationships to each other, thus questioning the tendency to divide the exhibitors into two groups, the Degas-led realists and the Monet-led colorists. Then I consider the printmaking practices of Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro individually, elucidating how each artist's attitudes toward work, craft and business manifest formally in a small selection of examples from their printed oeuvres intended for exhibition or publication. Among the core members of the Impressionist group, Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro represented those most enamored with printmaking, even collaborating to create prints for a never-realized journal during the winter and spring of 1879 and 1880. I posit that the artists' shared compulsions for regular work, fascination with artistic processes, technical flexibility and curiosity and forward-thinking disregard for the traditional hierarchy accorded to media rendered them particularly suited for making rarified, laborious prints. A final factor that connects Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro is that all three artists had complicated relationships with the business of art or the need to sell. The dichotomy of art making versus art marketing manifested itself in their prints. While printmaking as a process implies multiple pulls of an original image for commercial reasons, by emphasizing handicraft through idiosyncratic techniques, Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro accentuated the artistry and labor of their prints. Because of the complicatedness of their practices, printmaking did not turn out to be particularly lucrative for any of them, yet the artists' efforts correlate to a concurrent vogue for intimate exhibitions and works, in terms of both size and technique, and Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro seemingly undertook printmaking with the progressive clientele already established for Impressionism in mind. I thusly connect my discussions of biography and personality to a consideration of Impressionism's relationship to the changing art market of the late nineteenth century, in which facture, as a record of artistic temperament, became a sought-after commodity for collectors of avant-garde art. Despite superficial differences with regard to their subject matter and approaches, an examination of Degas, Cassatt and Pissarro's printmaking practices reveals the assumed draftsmen and the colorists of the New Painting as kindred spirits, for whom the how of art-making proved just as significant as the what and for whom marketing was important but making was vital. The artists' uses of combinations of etching, softground, drypoint and aquatint demonstrates concerns for both design and tone, and each artist accordingly strove to achieve in their prints a balance of personal sensations and decorative artifice.  / Art History

Throughout their careers the Impressionists demonstrated a strong, but rarely examined, interest for decoration. A careful examination of both archival material and well-known artworks produced between 1870 and 1895 shows that Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Morisot and Caillebotte never ceased to explore the values of decoration and the decorative. Set in the context of the Third Republic’s passion for monumental decoration and deep interest in the decorative arts, the Impressionists’ experiments range from ceilings to ceramic tiles, and from never achieved projects to ambitious realisations (although none remain in their original location). One painter among those surveyed also engaged with theoretical thinking: Renoir wrote for the press and drew up the drafts of a Grammar mainly focused on the decorative arts. Along with a number of artworks explicitly designated as decorative that were predominantly exhibited at the Impressionist shows, the Impressionists further produced more than twenty decorative ensembles made for the interiors of amateurs who then became patrons. Renoir, who started his career as a painter on porcelain, worked in the 1870s for the Parisian homes of a Romanian aristocrat, prince Bibesco, and of a leading publisher, Georges Charpentier, but also for the country house of Paul Berard. Monet, in a similar fashion, painted for the department store magnate Ernest Hoschedé in his property of Montgeron. Initially publicised by the painters in the 1870s, the decade on which this thesis focuses, the Impressionists’ decorative works were subsequently undertaken more quietly though continuously. Morisot painted a chimney trumeau for her own salon, to which Monet gave a pendant (they were eventually used as overdoor panels). Monet and Renoir also painted door-panels for Durand-Ruel. None of these later schemes were actually promoted towards a wide public, showing how the Impressionists’ commitment to painting decorations went from a strategic (and partly commercial) vision to embody a deeper reflection on the essence of painting and its relation to the wall – a reflection that the larger dissertation submitted to the Université de Bourgogne embraces. The critics’ attention, however, went the opposite way. It grew from a relative but highly meaningful disinterest to making the decorative key to their approach at the turn of the century, but in all situations, mocking or praising, their comments shed a crucial light on the Impressionist’s enterprises and their relations to the society’s concerns. An analysis of the Impressionists’ decorative experiments and their critical reception encourages, as this thesis aims to demonstrate, a reconsideration of our vision of Impressionism, for its development drew much more from the decorative than has so far been discussed.

The French temperance movement during the nineteenth century believed that it had discovered the source of social problems when it linked accidents, conjugal violence and crime to an increase in alcohol consumption by the working classes. In a swift attempt to curb these societal ills, the campaign led by the medical community targeted the working classes in France. This instigated the further alienation of the masses and allowed government officials to promote its own agenda of moral reform. In an effort to expose the elitist intentions of this state run temperance movement, this thesis analyzes four images from Camille Pissarro's unpublished album, Turpitudes Sociales of 1889, which represent similar imagery but with an opposite message. I will analyze these images from Pissarro's unpublished work in order to shed light on his incorporation of class relations and depiction of the bourgeoisie's negative impact on the French working classes.

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