Weekends With the Impressionists: A Collection from the National Gallery of Art, Washington

The impressionists left a celebrated and much-loved legacy of paintings that depict the pleasures of turn-of-the-century France. These images of gardens and picnics, days spent boating on the river, and summer evenings in town sparkle with life, light, and color.

By bringing together these alluring pictures, from such artists as Money, Renoir, and Cassatt, with inspired quotations from the painters and their literary friends, including Zola, Flaubert, and de Maupassant, Weekends with the Impressionists is the ideal impressionist memento. It is a charming collection of visual idylls and quiet moments that evoke a world of leisure, repose, and simple indulgence--all to the delight of today's reader.

Carla Brenner writes for the Education Division of the National Gallery of Art. The Gallery's collection of impressionist paintings is one of the world's finest.