Hannah Halliwell

In their day the French Impressionists were met with criticism and even disbelief, yet today their paintings are admired and collected worldwide. The leading members of the group included Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, who dedicated themselves to working in oil paints out of doors, to capturing the transient effects of light and weather and depicting the society in which they lived. These artists challenged the traditions of the French Academy, bringing about a revolution in art during a period of enormous political and social change. Historical Dictionary of Impressionism contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography, as well as practical information on the eight Impressionist exhibitions. The dictionary section comprises cross-referenced entries on the French Impressionists, the locations they worked in (both in France and further afield), their predecessors and followers, and their models, critics and dealers. It also contains useful entries on key political events and figures, as well as the places of entertainment that sprang up all over Paris in the ‘belle époque’. This book is designed to appeal to students, researchers and the general reader.

“Paris is the centre of the cult,” wrote Robert Hichens in Felix, his 1902 novel on the rising number of morphine addictions in Europe. In Paris, artists depicted the morphine addict numerous times, yet they disregarded the reality of France’s addiction problem: male medical professionals made up the highest proportion of people who used morphine habitually. In oil paintings, caricatures, and lithographs, artists such as Pablo Picasso, Eugène Grasset, and Théophile Steinlen almost always depicted the morphine addict as a deviant female figure.Artists sensationalized addiction to elicit shock and stand out in the crowded Parisian art market. Their artworks show influences from contemporary medical texts on addiction and artistic depictions of sex workers, lesbians, and other women deemed socially deviant. These images proliferated in French society, creating false narratives about who was or could become addicted to drugs and setting a precedent for the visualization of drug addiction. Hannah Halliwell links the feminization of addiction to broader anxieties in late nineteenth-century France – the defeat by Prussia in 1871, concerns about social decadence, a declining population, and a rising feminist movement.Art, Medicine, and Femininity presents a new understanding of the history of addiction and substance use and its intersection with art and gender.