Events › New Perspectives on French Impressionism

We are delighted to welcome back Professor Emerita Hollis Clayson of Northwestern's Department of Art History to continue her encounter--and ours--with French Impressionism, begun at her very popular mid-pandemic mini-course in January 2022, shared with an audience of 180 over Zoom.

This time we will focus on French Impressionism at the opening of 2026--140 years after the final "Impressionist Show" in 1886--because the art world has again shown that it remains smitten with Impressionism. Indeed major museums and their art goers in the transatlantic world went mad over Impressionism in 2024-25. Major exhibitions in Paris and Washington DC celebrated the 150th anniversary of the 1st Impressionist Show (1874) in 2024. And then came a major retrospective exhibition of the art of Gustave Caillebotte, an Impressionist in good standing, in Paris, Los Angeles, and Chicago in 2024-25. The mini-course will endeavor both to describe and explain this apparent love affair. The analysis will take root in examining the status of the movement's headquarters, the French capital, Paris. The city was called The Capital of the Nineteenth Century. We will study paintings, prints, and photographs of Paris made between the 1860s and 1890s asking what the art works showed and didn't show -- and why. And what exactly was considered to be innovative about them. Urban planning, architecture, and World's Fairs will also be discussed.

This mini-course takes place on two successive Tuesdays, March 24 and 31. Register just once for both events. You can choose to take part in person or via webinar: the link to the webinar will be provided to all registered participants. There is no need to tell us how you will be participating!

The NEO/EPL mini-courses are a prize-winning collaboration between Evanston Public Library and the Northwestern Emeriti Organization (NEO), a partnership now in its 7th year.

Hollis Clayson is Professor Emerita of Art History and Bergen Evans Professor Emerita in the Humanities at Northwestern University, where she taught for 35 years. She has received many awards including fellowships from the ACLS, CASVA, the INHA, the Getty, and the Clark. She is a Chevalier in the Ordre des Palmes Académiques and was the 2024 College Art Association Distinguished Scholar. Her scholarship centers on diverse Paris-based art practices, and her books include Painted Love: Prostitution in the Art of the Impressionist Era (1991), Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life under Siege, 1870-1871 (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). She has also studied and published essays on the interior and the threshold, intaglio printmaking as an integral component of modernism, and art produced within social and political networks of transatlantic exchange. Her book in press is entitled The Dark Side of the Eiffel Tower.

Both webinars will be recorded and made available on the Evanston Public Library YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/@evans....