Book Club: Monday, October 5, 2026, 2-4pm. Fellows and External Fellows – Zoom only event

October 5, 2026,  2-4 pm – Fellows and External Fellows

Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism by Sebastian Smee (2024)

Discussion Leader: Lisa Steele

From the summer of 1870 to the spring of 1871, famously dubbed the “Terrible Year” by Victor Hugo, Paris and its people were besieged, starved, and forced into surrender by Germans – then imperiled again as radical republicans established a breakaway Commune ultimately crushed by the French army after bloody street battles and the burning of central Paris.

Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot and Edgar Degas were trapped in the city during the siege a nd were deeply enmeshed in its politics. Others including Pierre-August Renoir and Frederic Bazille joined regiments outside of the capital, while Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro fled the country just in time. In the aftermath, these artists developed a newfound sense of the fragility of life. That feeling for transience – reflected in Impressionism’s emphasis on fugitive light, shifting seasons, glimpsed street scenes, and the impermanence of all things – became the movement’s great contribution to the history of art. At the heart of it all is a love story; that of Manet, by all accounts the father of Impressionism, and Morisot, the only woman to play a central role in the movement from the start.

Smee, a much decorated art critic, brings to life the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the pressures of the siege and the chaos of the Commune had a profound impact on modern art. (Available in all formats; 368 pages)

Note: Beginning July 7, 2026 the Art Gallery of Ontario is offering The Impressionist Revolution: Monet to Matisse. This sweeping overview of impressionism illustrates the origins of the movement and its considerable impact on two successive generations of avant-garde painters. Drawn from the extensive holdings of the Dallas Museum of Art, the exhibition includes key works by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch and more.

The link to register is https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/D4jy8jrqUD

The deadline to register is the Monday morning the day of the event at 8 am. The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.

If you have any questions, please contact the organizer, Mary Jane Ashley at maryjane.ashley@utoronto.ca.