by Jon Lackman | 16 May 2006 | Books, Modern
Is anyone writing good art history for a popular audience? Ross King lately had a go at Paris in the 1860s, comparing Manet and Meissonier in The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism. Charles Darwent, in The Independent, finds it a “brilliant book… a good read, and good history,” and William Grimes in the New York Times goes so far as say that the book “in its way achieves the kind of history painting that Meissonier could only dream of,” but Jackie Wullschlager is not impressed: “As its crassly punning, mock-classical title hints, no spark of new thought, no emotional involvement, still less any original research, animates The Judgement of Paris … Meissonier you can forget; on Manet, read any book you can get, except this one” (Financial Times).
