In this episode of Biographers in Conversation, Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about his choices while crafting Paris in Ruins: How Love, War and Art Gave Birth to Impressionism.
Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:
- How the chaos of war and revolution in 1870s Paris shaped the birth of Impressionism.
- Why the relationship between Édouard Manet and Berthe Morisot was central to the book and the Impressionist Movement.
- How Impressionism’s quick brushwork and light fixation reflect trauma, urgency and impermanence.
- Why Smee gives Berthe Morisot equal prominence and reinterprets her legacy in a male-dominated art world.
- What it means to write empathetic, narrative-driven biography while honouring archival truth.
- Why art made in crisis can speak across generations and offer hope, resistance and resilience.
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