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Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism Audiobook
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From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the "Terrible Year" by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans—then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune, ultimately crushed by the French Army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.
In stirring and exceptionally vivid prose, Sebastian Smee tells the story of those dramatic days through the eyes of great figures of Impressionism. Édouard Manet, Berthe Morisot, and Edgar Degas were trapped in Paris during the siege and deeply enmeshed in its politics. Others, including Pierre-August Renoir, joined regiments outside of the capital, while Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro fled the country just in time. In the aftermath, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. That feeling for transience—reflected in Impressionism's emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things—became the movement's great contribution to the history of art.
Incisive and absorbing, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the siege and the chaos of the Commune had a profound impact on modern art, and how artistic genius can emerge from darkness and catastrophe.
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About Sebastian Smee
Sebastian Smee has been The Boston Globe’s art critic since 2008. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011, having been a runner-up in 2008. He joined the Globe’s staff from Sydney, where he had worked as national art critic for The Australian. Prior to that, he lived for four years in the U.K., where he wrote for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Art Newspaper, The Independent, Prospect magazine, and The Spectator. He has contributed to five books on Lucian Freud. He teaches nonfiction writing at Wellesley College.
About Julian Elfer
Julian Elfer is an award-winning, classically trained British actor with extensive stage experience. He studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and the British Academy at Oxford University, where he studied with the likes of Derek Jacobi, Fiona Shaw, and Alan Rickman. Elfer currently resides and acts in New York City.