Globalizing Impressionism

For many decades, impressionism has occupied a central place in the canon of art history, but new transnational approaches to the study of nineteenth-century art have complicated the perpetuation of Francocentric histories. As the field’s attention has increasingly turned to places outside of France, including Britain, the United States, Australia, and beyond, the time is ripe to place impressionism within a global context.

In this collection of 14 essays, a distinguished group of scholars deploy new methodological tools, theories, and paradigms to explore how impressionism as an artistic language simultaneously operated locally, nationally, and internationally around the world; how Europe, especially Paris, has existed as a privileged center of modernity and modern art; how a transnational network of artists, critics, scholars, curators, and dealers worked across linguistic, institutional, geographical, and political boundaries; and much more. These texts, while not abandoning France and French impressionism, contribute to the ongoing work to dismantle the franco-centrism of impressionism studies and to the anglocentrism of art history as a discipline.