One of the formative history books I read in my younger days was Alistair Horne’s remarkable account of the war of 1871, The Fall Of Paris.
Happily, someone also handed Pulitzer Award-winning art critic Sebastian Smee the same volume, because from that seed of inspiration he has tended a quite remarkable melange of art history, romance and political machinations.
While the war between France and Prussia, and more so the emergence and bloody evisceration of the Paris Commune in its aftermath, are the backdrop for Paris In Ruins, centre stage is the relationship between established artist Edouard Manet and emerging talent Berthe Morisot.
They were never destined to be a couple — he was older and married, she would eventually marry his brother — but each was vital to the other, personally and artistically. As each created works of, or inspired by, the other, they held a profound conversation through art and helped shape the direction of what became known as impressionism.
The machinations of the Parisian art world play out in counterpoint to the political turmoil in the capital as first the Emperor is deposed, and then various political figures struggle for primacy, all the while as the guns boom outside, and then inside, the city walls.
It was a vital, urgent time in Parisian history and Smee brings it vividly to life, but that is a tale well told before, not the least by Horne.
What makes Smee’s book so fascinating is his examination of the art made before, during and after the crisis, and speculation as to how influential the events of the time were upon it.
Mike Houlahan is the Otago Daily Times political editor
