Colin B. Bailey | The New York Review of Books

Watteau’s Theater

In Pierrot, Jean-Antoine Watteau depicted the all-embracing humanity of commedia dell’arte.

Revoir Watteau, un comédien sans réplique: Pierrot, dit le Gilles [A New Look at Watteau, an Actor with No Lines: Pierrot, Known as Gilles]

an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, October 16, 2024–February 3, 2025

November 20, 2025 issue

A Daring Departure

One hundred and fifty years after Impressionist paintings were first exhibited, it takes a certain effort to recover their original radicalism.

Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment

an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 26–July 14, 2024, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., September 8, 2024–January 19, 2025

Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism

by Sebastian Smee

February 27, 2025 issue

Let There Be Light

The new installation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s refurbished European Paintings galleries brings masterpieces of the collection into exhilarating juxtaposition with one another.

Look Again: European Paintings, 1300–1800

a new installation of the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

June 6, 2024 issue

Édouard/Edgar

“It is not a question of who is following whom, but of overlapping networks and a shared commitment to be ‘of one’s time.’”

January 6, 2024

A New Language of Modern Art

An ambitious exhibition of the work of Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas demonstrates their affinities and their shared ambition to revolutionize painting.

Manet/Degas

an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 28–July 23, 2023; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, September 24, 2023–January 7, 2024

December 21, 2023 issue

Dreams of Painting Walls

Two new books document the centrality of decoration for the Impressionists, both in commissions for houses and public buildings and more broadly as a founding principle of the movement.

La Peinture impressionniste et la décoration [Impressionist Painting and Decoration]

by Marine Kisiel

Le Décor impressionniste: aux sources des Nymphéas [Impressionist Decor: The Sources of the Water Lilies]

an exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, March 2–July 11, 2022

May 11, 2023 issue

A Master at Work

The Met’s exhibition of Jacques Louis David’s drawings demonstrates the ways he developed and refined the ideas expressed in his large paintings of classical history and contemporary events.

Jacques Louis David: Radical Draftsman

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, February 17–May 15, 2022

May 12, 2022 issue

A Compulsive Perfectionist

The intensely private Edgar Degas reveals himself intermittently in his voluminous correspondence, in moments of unexpected self-awareness and candor.

The Letters of Edgar Degas

bilingual edition edited and annotated by Theodore Reff

April 7, 2022 issue

Masterpieces Unmediated

The installation of the Frick Collection in Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist building is satisfying, elegant, thoughtful, and respectful at every turn.

The Sleeve Should Be Illegal and Other Reflections on Art at the Frick

edited by Michaelyn Mitchell, with a foreword by Adam Gopnik

Holbein’s Sir Thomas More

by Hilary Mantel and Xavier F. Salomon

Constable’s White Horse

by William Kentridge and Aimee Ng

Rembrandt’s Polish Rider

by Maira Kalman and Xavier F. Salomon

Vermeer’s Mistress and Maid

by James Ivory and Margaret Iacono

Gouthière’s Candelabras

by Edmund de Waal and Charlotte Vignon

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May 13, 2021 issue

Suffering, Unfaltering Manet

Even in ill health, the painter continued to shock his audience.

Manet and Modern Beauty: The Artist’s Last Years

an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, May 26–September 8, 2019; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, October 8, 2019–January 12, 2020

December 3, 2020 issue

In Plain Sight

Posing Modernity: The Black Model from Manet and Matisse to Today

an exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York City, October 24, 2018–February 10, 2019

Le Modèle noir de Géricault à Matisse

an exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Paris, March 26–July 21, 2019; and the Mémorial ACTe, Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, September 13–December 29, 2019

December 19, 2019 issue

The Rake’s Progress

Casanova’s Europe: Art, Pleasure, and Power in the Eighteenth Century

an exhibition at the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, August 27–December 31, 2017; the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, February 10–May 28, 2018; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, July 8–October 8, 2018

Casanova: The Seduction of Europe

Catalog of the exhibition edited by Frederick Ilchman, Thomas Michie, C.D. Dickerson III, and Esther Bell

September 27, 2018 issue

Fragonard’s Merry Company

In his “fantasy portraits,” Fragonard presents his amiable and dashing cast of characters as if they had stepped out of a masquerade set in the reign of Henri IV.

January 21, 2018

The Steely Connoisseur

21 rue La Boétie

an exhibition at the Musée de La Boverie de Liège, September 22, 2016–February 19, 2017; and the Musée Maillol, Paris, March 2–July 23, 2017

November 23, 2017 issue

Fragonard: The Heights of Drawing

Fragonard: Drawing Triumphant—Works from New York Collections

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, October 6, 2016–January 8, 2017

February 9, 2017 issue

Hubert Robert & the Joy of Ruins

Hubert Robert, 1733–1808

an exhibition at the Musée du Louvre, Paris, March 9–May 30, 2016; and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., June 26–October 2, 2016

October 13, 2016 issue

How He Ruled Art

Paul Durand-Ruel: Memoirs of the First Impressionist Art Dealer (1831–1922)

revised, corrected, and annotated by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, and translated from the French by Deke Dusinberre

Inventing Impressionism: Paul Durand-Ruel and the Modern Art Market

Catalog of a recent exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, the National Gallery, London, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art

December 3, 2015 issue

‘Manet Paints Monet’

In the summer of 1874, Claude Monet was living in Argenteuil, a suburb north of Paris, and Édouard Manet was spending time at his family’s property nearby. Two paintings made by Manet that summer are the subject of Willibald Sauerländer’s new book.

April 14, 2015

The Floating Studio

Manet Paints Monet: A Summer in Argenteuil

by Willibald Sauerländer, translated from the German by David Dollenmayer

April 23, 2015 issue