Histoire des peintres impressionnistes. Pissarro, Claude Monet, Sisley, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Cézanne, Guillaumin

First edition, one of 100 copies on Japon, the only deluxe issue.

Navy blue half shagreen with slight color restoration, spine with five raised bands abundantly framed in gilt, blue watered silk flyleaves, marbled endpapers and pastedowns, original wrappers and spine preserved, gilt top edge, binding signed J. Querelle.

A superb copy on japon of the first authoritative publications on the history of Impressionism, and the first bibliophile edition centered around this movement.
Illustrated edition with 6 original etchings, by Pissarro (Les Faneuses); Renoir (Femme nue assise and Femme nue couchée); one of only three etchings ever made by Cézanne (Portrait of Guillaumin); Armand Guillaumin (Vue près de Saardam) - the copy is complete with the additional etching by Renoir on bistre ‘Seated Nude Woman' reserved for copies on japon.

The work also features a frontispiece rotogravure of Fantin-Latour's Atelier aux Batignolles. In addition to the six original etchings, the book features 21 full-page plates, including a colour rotogravure of Monet's famous Impression, sunrise, and no fewer than 105 reproductions of works and portraits of artists in the text.

Théodore Duret paints here the great history of the movement he championed, collected, and theorized from its very beginnings. As early as 1878, he had published a small study that made him the first historian of these artists, if not of the group itself, just four years after their first exhibition at Nadar's studio. Twenty years after the last Impressionist exhibition, Duret establishes the comprehensive story of this artistic revolution: "For the early twentieth century and the decades to follow, the history of Impressionism is [Duret's] 'The history of the Impressionist painters'." (Laura Iamurri). Renowned for its chronological accuracy - although in many cases Duret recalls events from his own memories - this work became a reference and was widely reprinted and translated (London: Grant Richards, 1910; Berlin: B. Cassirer, 1909). Duret dedicates a monograph to each painter he mentions, with the exception of Caillebotte, and places Berthe Morisot in what he refers to as "the core group of Impressionists." Absent from his 1878 study, Paul Cézanne (now considered a post-Impressionist) and Armand Guillaumin make their appearance here.

A true art gallery on papier japon, this ‘text of reference for generations of readers' (Laura Iamurri) was the first to find a legitimate place for Impressionism in French art history.

Not in Carteret. Etchings by Renoir (Delteil 12, 14, 15); Camille Pissarro (Delteil 94/XII), Cézanne (Venturi 1159); Armand Guillaumin (Armand Guillaumin, 1841-1927, gravures et lithographies, 1995, p. 41).