Ross King -- The Judgment Of Paris

Ross King fleshes out a familiar story -- art world turned inside out, Paris, 1860s and '70s -- with copious research that makes Old Guard Ernest Meissioner and Édouard Manet, brash heralds of the new, into genuine people with art styles vigorously at odds. The Impressionists, hot on the heels of Manet, soon take on their originally derisive name, and Monet makes a stunning appearance at the 1865 Salon. King tells of the classical heritage behind the gentleman's outstretched, gesturing hand in Manet's picnic on the grass, "Le Déjeuner sur l'herb," and adds that the men in their ordinary clothes shocked almost as much as the nude beside them. People in paintings wore costumes, in the mid-19th century, and nudes in paintings kept to themselves rather than hanging out with the dressed. Despite a welter of footnotes and a solid weight of bibliography, King fails to provide adequate credit lines for the illustrations so it's hard to tell where those works reside. Pity, because the Cincinnati connection is lost. "The Races at Longchamp," a painting identified as an oil, reproduced in the book in color, is actually the watercolor study now at the Fogg Museum at Harvard. It was a study for a destroyed oil painting of that name. Manet himself cut up the oil, signed and dated at least two fragments as separate paintings and one of them, "Women at the Races," is at the Cincinnati Art Museum. King mentions "Women at the Races" in passing, as a work individually conceived. It's more interesting to know its actual background, and the watercolor passed off as an oil is disturbing. (Jane Durrell) Grade: B