1st Edition
Painting and Narrative in France, from Poussin to Gauguin
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors xii
Acknowledgements xv
Introduction: Narrativity and (French) Painting
Peter Cooke and Nina Lübbren
Section I
Ancien Régime
1 Units of Vision and Narrative Structures: Upon Reading Poussin’s Manna
Claudine Mitchell
2 Figures of Narration in the Context of a Painted Cycle: The North Bays of the Grande Galerie at Versailles
Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc
3 The Crisis of Narration in Eighteenth-century French History Painting
Susanna Caviglia
4 Obscure, Capricious and Bizarre: Neoclassical Painting and the Choice of Subject
Mark Ledbury
SECTION II
Restoration and July Monarchy
5 Delacroix and ‘The Work of the Reader’
Beth S. Wright
6 Narrative and History in Léopold Robert’s Arrival of the Harvesters in the Pontine Marshes
Richard Wrigley
7 Narrative Strategies in Paul Delaroche’s Assassination of the Duc de Guise
Patricia Smyth
SECTION III
Second Empire and Third Republic
8 Eloquent Objects: Gérôme, Laurens and the Art of Inanimate Narration
Nina Lübbren
9 Tyrannical Inopportunity: Gustave Moreau’s Anti-narrative Strategies
Scott C. Allan
10 Theatricality Versus Anti-Theatricality: Narrative Techniques in French History Painting (1850−1900)
Pierre Sérié
11 The Conflicted Status of Narrative in the Art of Paul Gauguin
Belinda Thomson
SECTION IV
Key Issues of Pictorial Narrative
12 Narrativity, Temporality and Allegorisation, from Poussin to Moreau
Peter Cooke
13 Towards a Study of Narration in Painting: The Early Modern Period
Étienne Jollet
Index
Biography
Peter Cooke is Senior Lecturer in French Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. His most recent book is Gustave Moreau: History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism.
Nina Lübbren is Art Historian and Principal Lecturer in Film Studies, and Deputy Head of Department of English, Communication, Film and Media, Anglia Ruskin University, UK.
" As long as art is made for storytelling creatures, it is by telling good stories about it that we will understand it best, and this fine book contributes to that humanistic practice." - Andrei Pop, University of Chicago






