Roe Sue

Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, astonishing sums are paid today for the works of these artists. Their dazzling pictures are familiar - but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussman's spectacular transformation. For over twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian war and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvasses depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossom and boating scenes. This intimate, colourful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes as well as their studios and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind their paintings. Review: A deft account of their varying shades of character and fortune. Roe's quietly successful book tells of ultimate triumph, but shows its human cost -- Jane Stevenson * Daily Telegraph * Roe is good at bounding from one eye-catching anecdote to another -- Martin Grayford * Sunday Telegraph * The great strength of Roe's book is the way that it manages to synthesise the wealth of published biographical and scholarly work on half a dozen artists into a coherent narrative of kith and kinship -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Her book is widely researched but has a neat, light touch * Independent on Sunday *