Product Description

Many Impressionist paintings of modern life and leisure include images of household pets. Their appealing presence lends charm to such works while alluding to middle-class prosperity and the growing importance of animals as family members. In many cases, such domestic denizens significantly complement representations of their owners. In certain others, the devotion of individual artists to their pets symbolically enhances their expressions of artistic identity. This enjoyable and informative book focuses on the role of pets in Impressionist pictures and what this reveals about art, artists, and society of that era. James H. Rubin discusses works in which artists paint themselves or their friends in the company of their pets, including several paintings by Courbet (who was fond of dogs) and Manet (a notorious lover of cats). He points out that in some works by Degas, dogs contribute to the artist's commentary on psychological and social relationships, and that in paintings by Renoir, dogs and cats have playful and erotic overtones. He also offers a theory to explain why Monet almost never painted pets. Drawing on early pet handbooks and treatises on animal intelligence, Rubin explores nineteenth-century opinions on cats and dogs and compares handbook illustrations to the animals shown in Impressionist works. He also provides fascinating information on pet ownership and on the place of Impressionism in the long history of animal painting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #233259 in Books
• Published on: 2003-11-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 156 pages

From Booklist
Impressionism was revolutionary, and impressionist artists purposefully portrayed animals as symbols of their dissent. Cats and dogs stood for sexuality, independence, loyalty, and the artists' self-image, and Rubin's lavishly illustrated volume explores exactly "how pets in art reveal artists' attitudes not just toward animals, but toward the people they painted, including themselves in their identities as artists." Beginning with a brief overview of the symbolic meanings of pets in ancient Egyptian, medieval, and modern art, Rubin quickly focuses on impressionist works and the symbolic and realistic roles animals played in such noteworthy paintings as Manet's rebelliously sensual Olympia and its opposite, Renoir's Madame Charpentier and Her Children, which celebrates the natural place pets played in the rise of the middle classes. Rubin also discusses pets in the paintings of Monet, Caillebotte, Seurat, Cezanne, and Courbet, whose cat in The Studio of the Painter embodies the artist's determination to retain his artistic independence. An unprecedented, revealing, and enjoyable new angle on a much examined movement. Lauren Roberts
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Cat Fancy
"Lovers of art and animals will treasure this delightfully written, amply illustrated book . . . deepen[s] the appreciation of pets and art."

About the Author
James H. Rubin is professor and chair of the department of art at Stony Brook, State University of New York.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful!
A beautiful big book, although it was 'try to spot the animal' in some of the paintings, they were so small!