Paris and Impressionism, The History of a New City and a New Style; how Impressionist artists looked at Napoleon III and Haussmann’s renovated Paris
During the period of the Second Empire, from 1851 to 1870, Emperor Napoleon III and his prefect the Baron Haussmann transformed Paris into the quintessential modern ‘city of light’. This transformation was recorded by the Impressionists who largely chose to present the spectacle of the new boulevards and public parks rather than the displacement of the lower social orders. We will explore the new Paris and Impressionists reactions to it in this talk.
Brigid Barton is a professor emerita from Santa Clara University in Art History. She received her Ph.D. from Cal Berkeley and now teaches multiple courses and lectures at Stanford Continuing Studies, the Santa Clara University OLLI program, the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts, the Palo Alto Jewish Community Center, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.