Deeply researched and suavely written ... Smee has a gimlet eye, a seductive style and a novelist’s feel for character and incident ... Smee has written an inspiring book.
The clarity and conviction of Smee’s prose notwithstanding, this is not the kind of thesis susceptible to rigorous proof ... Smee is especially good at depicting the hardships of Paris under Prussian siege.
Smee has a tremendous knack for placing readers inside historical scenes, but can be hyperbolic and repetitive ... Often feels like it desperately wants to be a Morisot biography, or perhaps that was just increasingly my desire to learn more about this 'poet of the ephemeral.' All art is subjective, but I would have liked the military and political particulars to be de-emphasized, less naturalistic and more impressionistic — like these memorable artists.
A wide-ranging work of cultural history with a dual focus. Though Mr. Smee gives a rather standard account of the political and social upheaval that led to the Commune and its suppression, his chronicle gains sinew as he recounts the deprivations and terrors of various artists and their families during the Prussian bombardment and the Communards’ revolt.
Smee draws on a wealth of historical and biographical sources to examine the birth of impressionism during a time of ferocious political and social upheaval in France ... Deft, vibrant cultural history.
