James A. Ganz

Previously announced Edouard Baldus (1813–1889) was the most important French architectural photographer of the mid-19th century. This book offers an in-depth exploration of one of his most intriguing projects—a remarkable series of views of the Château de La Faloise, in which his subject was not primarily the country house but the owner and his family at leisure on its grounds. James A. Ganz locates the photographs at a key moment in Baldus’s career and during one of the most eventful decades in the history of French photography, showing that they stand at a crossroad between the English “conversation piece” and the birth of Impressionist portraiture in the early paintings of Monet and Bazille.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Claude Monet (1840–1926) is one of the best-known and most beloved painters in the history of art, with myriad publications and exhibitions devoted to his oeuvre. And yet there remains a previously undiscovered aspect of his career: his surprisingly significant role as a draftsman. This book is the first to focus on Monet’s pastels, drawings, and sketchbooks, offering a revolutionary new interpretation of the artist’s life and work.Monet has long been seen as an anti-draftsman, an artist who painted his subjects directly and whose rarely seen graphic works were marginal to his artistic process. In an effort to develop his public image, Monet denied the role of drawing in his working method. In actuality, Monet began his career as a caricaturist and as a teenager developed a passion for drawing that was never extinguished. He went on to master the medium of pastel and included seven in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.Citing recently discovered, unpublished documents that overturn the accepted image of the artist, The Unknown Monet reveals an extensive group of graphic works created over the course of the artist’s career, many of which are unknown to the general public and to scholars: beautiful pastels, stunning black chalk drawings, and fascinating sketchbooks, which include pencil studies that relate to many of his paintings. The book also shows how Monet exploited the print media to promote his art.The most important publication on Monet to appear in a generation, this illuminating volume is essential to anyone interested in his work, Impressionism, and nineteenth-century French culture.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MassachusettsExhibition Schedule:Royal Academy of Arts, London (March 17 – June 10, 2007)Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (June 24 – September 16, 2007)