By Audrey Anderson
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Sebastian Smee was warmly welcomed at the Needham Free Public Library (NFPL) by a large crowd in the Community Room. Registration for this event filled up quickly, as eager fans of art criticism and journalism looked forward to hearing from the celebrated Smee, who is known as a gifted wordsmith.
Smee’s 2024 book “Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism” was the focus of his talk in Needham. He introduced the two main characters of his story, Berthe Morisot and Édouard Manet, by saying that they both had paintings accepted to the traditionalist, Napoleonic, state-sponsored annual Salon in Paris before 1870. As they lived through the “Terrible Year” of political upheaval with Napoleon’s fall and the subsequent Prussian siege of Paris of 1870-71, both artists, along with others, ventured into an alternative view of painting. Along with Morisot and Manet, only Edgar Degas also lived in Paris through the Prussian siege. Other Impressionists, living outside of Paris, admired and emulated Manet’s loose brush strokes, scenes of modern life, and the sense of vulnerability displayed in his paintings.
In 1874, Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, and others participated in the first of eight exhibitions of what came to be known as Impressionist painting. Morisot was often a model for Manet’s paintings, and they were rumored to have had a romantic interest in each other, despite Manet’s being married. Morisot eventually married Manet’s brother Eugene. Nevertheless, Morisot and Édouard Manet did learn from and influence each other’s work. Morisot’s subjects were mostly women in domestic scenes that conveyed the vulnerable political times. Her looser, individual brush strokes eventually showed up in Manet’s work, which focused on modern scenes of daily life and not the strife that they had just lived through.
Australian born and educated Smee won the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for a collection of ten articles of criticism written as art critic for “The Boston Globe.” His work was commended for “vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works of art to life with love and appreciation.” Smee also taught nonfiction writing at Wellesley College for several years. His other books include “The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art,” “Lucian Freud 1922-2011: Beholding the Animal” (2015), and “Lucian Freud On Paper” (2009). Smee is currently an art critic for “The Washington Post.”
