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

The Author’s Note gives Sebastian Smee’s overall thesis for Paris in Ruins, introducing the key theme of The Relationship Between Art and Politics. He describes Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, and their circles’ artistic aspirations, claiming their styles were in part a reaction to the “Terrible Year.” 

It is helpful to understand how their work contrasted with the dominant art style of the time. In France during the Second Empire, the art establishment was closely tied to the government. The major Salon held every year placed a premium on work that used highly refined techniques of small brushstrokes and heavily layered paint, usually depicting Biblical scenes or epic historical events. An example is Victor Ranvier’s L’Enfance de Bacchus, which depicts a scene from ancient Roman mythology as told by Ovid. This neo-classical painting was shown in the 1865 Salon and purchased by the government that same year. In contrast, Édouard Manet’s Olympia, also shown during the 1865 Salon, was “relegated to an obscure position hidden above a doorway” (Shafe, Laurence. “Manet’s Olympia.”). Its presumed depiction of a sex worker, bold use of color, and more unfinished style made it a topic of derision. It would not be purchased by the French government until 1890.

Smee argues that the Impressionist style was in part a reaction to the events of the Terrible Year. However, this is a contested claim. As Marjorie Heins points out in ArtNet:

[T]here’s no doubt that the war and the Commune left their mark on everybody in France, but as a matter of simple chronology, Impressionism did not begin, or result from, these events. It began in the late 1860s when Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro, working in towns and countryside just outside Paris, began deploying oil paint to capture the fleeting effects of outdoor life. (Marjorie Heins. “Here’s What Bothers Me About How ‘Paris in Ruins’ Rewrites Impressionist History.” ArtNet. 22 Nov 2024)

She also identifies some other factual errors Smee makes in his account, such as when Degas first purchased Japanese prints. There are other small errors Smee makes in the text as well, such as French language mistakes and incorrect descriptions of Paris geography (Sèvres is downriver from Paris, not upriver, for example). These discrepancies suggest Paris in Ruins is best read as a popular biographical account of Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, and others in their circle during the Terrible Year, rather than as the definitive account of the development of the Impressionist style.

The Prologue uses a method common to popular historical writing. It opens with a punchy anecdote that introduces the upheaval of the Paris Commune, and establishes the imagery of Gambetta’s perspective on the French countryside from a balloon, which is returned to later in the text. This anecdote gives insight into the wider circle of which Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet were part. 

The opening anecdote also clarifies how the cultural establishment was connected to the political figures of the time. Smee describes a meeting between the legendary republican French writer Victor Hugo, author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and the republican lawyer and politician Léon Gambetta. He notes that Gambetta was a longtime friend of Édouard and connected to Berthe’s family. This shows how small the circle these historical figures were in, reinforcing how politics and art overlapped at the time. The reveal that Paris in encircled by Prussian soldiers with “orders to shoot the balloons down” (7) in the two final paragraphs of the anecdote creates a sense of tension and underscores the stakes of the scene. It prompts the question of why those soldiers are there, which is answered in Part 2 of Paris in Ruins.