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

Praise for Sebastian Smee and The Art of Rivalry

"The keynotes of Sebastian Smee's criticism have always included a fine feeling for the what of art--he knows how to evoke the way pictures really strike the eye--and an equal sense of the how of art: how art emerges from the background of social history."
-- Adam Gopnik

"Sebastian Smee brings the perfect combination of artistic taste and human understanding, and a prose style as clear as spring water."
-- Peter Schjeldahl

"Persuasive and vivid. . . . The Art of Rivalry is rooted in a closely observed theory, but it roams in a way geared to nonspecialist readers, part mini-biographies, part broader art history."
-- John Williams, New York Times

"With novella-like detail and incisiveness . . . [and] vivid, agile prose . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority."
-- Michael Upchurch, Boston Globe

"[Sebastian Smee's] brilliant group biography is one of a kind."
-- Ann Hulbert, Atlantic

"One of those rare books that manages to show, convincingly, the exalted stuff of genius emerging from the low chaos of life."
-- Economist