Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In this book, Patricia Mainardi presents a new analysis of the major shift in nineteenth-century art from large public to small private works by examining the political and institutional factors that were in effect. Mainardi brings to life the complex institutional world of official art in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, presenting the relevant individual personalities, group interests, conflicts, and shift in a policy with clarity and detail. Writing in a lively, often witty style, she throws much new light on such subjects as the decline of history painting, the rise and eventual triumph of genre painting, the influence exerted in France by the art of England, Belgium, and Germany, and the inevitable collapse of the official exhibition system.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The new wave of scholarship on the social history of art has produced many of the most interesting recent contributions to the field. This is especially true in the area of 19th-century art history, which has experienced a surfeit of technical and formal analyses. As a young methodology, social history has been criticized for political partisanship on the part of some of its exponents, and a kind of still-born documentarism on the part of others. The present volume reveals both the virtues and vices of the latter. Virtually everything one would want to know about the social generation and political vicissitudes of the French Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 is contained in this study. What is missing is the big picture: a context that discusses the whole phenomenon of 19th-century world's fairs, beginning in England in 1851; a sense of why these expositions were so important to art, as opposed to cultural history; and a closer examination of individual exhibits, such as those contributed by Japan and China, their first appearance in the West in any number since the 17th century. Within these limitations, however, this remains a thorough and well-researched volume and, finally, an important reference tool for college and university libraries.-D.J. Johnson, Rhode Island School of Design