Art in the Making: Impressionism 1990 First Edition National Gallery

Published in conjunction with the National Gallery exhibition held 28 November 1990 - 21 April 1991, this substantial catalogue examines Impressionism not simply through style and subject, but through the actual materials and working methods of its painters. The National Gallery archive confirms the exhibition dates and records an impressive 378,438 visitors. The authors combine art history with conservation science, examining canvas manufacture and preparation, grounds, palettes, nineteenth-century pigments, color theory, brushwork, framing and artists' suppliers. The heart of the book is a detailed technical examination of 15 paintings by Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley and others, employing X-radiography, infrared photography, microscopy and pigment analysis to reveal alterations, underpainting, canvas structure and paint composition. This book provides magnified pigment samples and canvas weaves appearing beside X-ray and conventional images, allowing the reader almost to reconstruct the paintings layer by layer. The Canadian Conservation Institute catalogs the volume specifically under both Impressionism - Technique and National Gallery exhibitions. Condition: to Near Fine. Binding remains square and firm, with clean, bright pages and strong color reproductions. Pictorial wrappers show modest shelf and edge wear, particularly along the spine ends/corners and lower edges, with some light surface rubbing; no interior defects or markings. No dust jacket, as issued in this paperback edition. This book belongs to an important period in art-historical scholarship: the increasingly close collaboration between curators and conservation scientists. Rather than asking only what an Impressionist painting depicts or how its style developed, the authors ask very physical questions - what canvas Monet bought, how it was primed, which synthetic pigments became available, what earlier composition lies beneath the visible paint, and even how individual colors appear under magnification. That approach gives the catalogue unusual staying power as a reference work. Modern conservation literature still cites it; for example, later technical scholarship on Impressionist canvas preparation and Monet's grounds references Bomford and colleagues' analyses.…