The Work of Art: Plein Air Painting and Artistic Identity in Nineteenth-Century France [Hardcover]

InThe Work of Art, Anthea Callen analyzes the self-portraits, portraits of fellow artists, photographs, prints, and studio images of prominent nineteenth-century French Impressionist painters, exploring the emergence of modern artistic identity and its relation to the idea of creative work. Landscape painting in general, she argues, and the plein air oil sketch in particular were the key drivers of change in artistic practice in the nineteenth centuryleading to the Impressionist revolution.
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Putting the work of artists from Courbet and C?zanne to Pissaro under a microscope, Callen examines modes of self-representation and painting methods, paying particular attention to the painters touch and mark-making. Using innovative methods of analysis, she provides new and intriguing ways of understanding material practice within its historical moment and the cultural meanings it generates. Richly illustrated with 180 color and black-and-white images,The Work of Artoffers fresh insights into the development of avant-garde French painting and the concept of the modern artist.

Anthea Callenis professor of art in the School of Art at the Australian National University, Canberra, and professor emerita of visual studies at the University of Nottingham, UK. Her many books includeArt, Sex and Eugenics: Corpus DelectiandThe Art of Impressionism: Painting Technique and the Making of Modernity.

Introduction
1. The Origins of Plein-air Painting to 1850
2.MaîtreCourbet: The Worker—Painter
3. Cézanne, Pissarro and Knife Painting
4. Colour: The Material and the Ephemeral
 
References
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index