The Judgment of Paris

The Revolutionary Decade that Gave the World Impressionism

By: Ross King

Narrated by: Tristan Layton

Length: 6 hrs and 40 mins

Publisher's summary

While the Civil War raged in America, another, very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic, in the studios of Paris. The artists who would make Impressionism the most popular art form in history were showing their first paintings amid scorn and derision from the French artistic establishment. Indeed, no artistic movement has ever been, at its inception, quite so controversial. The drama of its birth, played out on canvas, would at times resemble a battlefield. With a novelist's skill and the insight of a historian, Ross King reveals how Impressionism would reorder both history and culture as it resonated around the world.

A tale of many artists, The Judgment of Paris revolves around the lives of two, described as "the two poles of art": Ernest Meissonier, the most famous and successful painter of the nineteenth century, hailed for his precision and devotion to history; and Edouard Manet, reviled in his time, who nonetheless heralded the most radical change in the history of art since the Renaissance. Out of the most fascinating story of their parallel lives, illuminated by their legendary supporters and critics, King recalls a seminal period when Paris was the artistic center of the world, and a revolutionary art movement had the power to electrify and divide a nation.

©2006 Ross King (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

Critic reviews

• Audie Award Finalist, Non-Fiction, Abridged, 2007

"King is a master at linking pivotal moments in art history to epic rivalries....Supremely engaging and illuminating." (Booklist)

Art History Refined and Corrected

Marvelously researched and beautifully written The Judgement holds many surprises that tend to reverse older platitudes of art history. Unfolding like living history the art and artists of the 1800's struggle, fail, and succeed at both ends of competing art epochs... without directly competing. Contemporary artists will recognize authentic personalities, techniques, and attitudes much like their own. An eye-opening cultural era vividly painted for us to see. - Ron Wigginton