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Perspectives on French Impressionism

A Mini-Course Offered by the NU Emeriti Organization and EPL

A two-part, non-credit, no-cost consideration of French Impressionism, taught by Prof. Hollis Clayson, Professor Emerita of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor Emerita of Humanities at Northwestern

This class will focus on French Impressionism, a style of painting and printmaking, a social formation, and an ideology of modernity, that arose in Paris in the 1870s. We will consider divergent perspectives on its meaning, and its volatile critical fortune. Class sessions take place on two successive Tuesday evenings, January 18 and 25. It is being offered to the greater Evanston community as a collaboration between the Northwestern Emeriti Organization (NEO) and Evanston Public Library.

The class takes root in the great paradox of Impressionism: roundly despised and mocked in the 1870s and 1880s, it is now among the most revered forms of art. Long lines at pre-Pandemic museum exhibitions of works by members of the group attest to its widespread popularity. We will ask why. In order to understand its birth and its upswing in the estimation of so many art viewers, we will become acquainted with the institutional history of French Impressionism and with examples of the work of the core artists (in alphabetical order): Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. We will also analyze the relationship between their artworks, and the rapidly modernizing city of Paris and its surroundings.  

The instructor for this course, Hollis Clayson, is Professor Emerita of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor Emerita in the Humanities. She has published widely on Paris-based art practices, including the French capital’s large population of artists from elsewhere. Her books are Painted Love: Prostitution in French Art of the Impressionist Era (1991), Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (1870–71) (2002), Is Paris Still the Capital of the Nineteenth Century? Essays on Art and Modernity, 1850–1900 (2016), co-edited with André Dombrowski, and Paris Illuminated: Essays on Art and Lighting in the Belle Époque (2019). Among her teaching awards are these from Northwestern: a Weinberg Distinguished Teaching Award (1987), a Charles Deering McCormick Professorship of Teaching Excellence (1993-96), and the Ver Steeg Graduate Teaching Award (2016). Her research has been supported by the Getty, the Clark, the ACLS, the Huntington, the National Gallery of Art and the INHA (Paris). In 2014, she was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques. Her new project studies World’s Fairs, and centers upon the reception of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and today.

Although attendance of both classes is strongly recommended, it is not required for participation.

Effective December 4, 2021: In light of the newly uncertain Covid situation, class meetings will be on Zoom only with no in-person component. 

Suggested readings and Zoom login information will be distributed via email to all registered participants well in advance of the first class.

Illustrations above: (l.:) Claude Monet, Gare St. Lazare, Paris, 1877 (private collection); (r.:) Prof. Hollis Clayson, Northwestern.

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