Impressionists Side by Side : Their Friendships, Rivalries, and Artistic Exchanges

In this extraordinary volume, art historian Barbara Ehrlich White considers the achievements of the Impressionists from an entirely fresh perspective.  She focuses on the personal and professional relationships between seven pairs of artists: Degas and Manet, Monet and Renoir, Cézanne and Pissaro, Manet and Morisot, Cassatt and Degas, Morisot and Renoir, and Cassatt and Renoir.  Looking at the work of each pair, she finds, in their treatment of identical subjects and in their portraits of each other, a new illumination of their art and lives...how they relied on each other for comradeship, support, inspiration, ideas, and techniques...how they were bound by the ties of friendship...and how, at times, these same associations could include envy, antagonism, and even deep dislike.

To tell this story Barbara Ehrlich White has assembled hundreds of illustrations, scores of which are reproduced here in full color for the first time.  All the canvases the artists painted of identical subjects are reunited side by side in this volume--many for the first time since they were created more than a century ago.  Moreover, in another publishing first, Impressionists Side By Side includes all the artists' portraits of one another, a marvelous means of conveying the emotional truth of their relationships.  And, by delving into hundreds of letters (some previously unpublished, some appearing in English translation for the first time), diaries, and interviews, the author enriches our sense of the artists' lives on the most intimate level.

Twelve years in the making, Impressionists Side by Side is a singular contribution to the world of art, presenting the lives and work of some of the most important Impressionist artists in a dramatic new context.

Barbara Ehrlich White is an adjunct professor of art history at Tufts University.  She is the author of Renoir: His Life, Art, and Letters (1984) and the editor of the anthology Impressionists in Perspective (1978).  A well-known lecturer, she also wrote an Emmy-winning PBS film on Renoir (1973).  She and her husband live near Boston.