The Art of Parisian Chic: Modern Women and Modern Artists in Impressionist Paris

Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic explores how women and artists in Impressionist Paris (1855-1885) crafted their public images to exploit and resist stereotypes. French societal expectations and beauty ideals shaped how women were seen and how they chose to present themselves in public – whether on the street, in a photograph, or in a portrait on the walls of the annual Paris Salon. On Paris's broad new boulevards and in its public parks and theaters, women dressed to impress anonymous strangers as well as their friends. They even circulated aspirational photographs of themselves. Looking at a rich array of visual sources – from portraits to modern-life paintings, and from photographs to fashion plates – Justine De Young reveals how women were seen, how they aspired to be seen, and how they navigated public life in Second Empire and Belle Époque Paris. This book considers how fashionable feminine “types” made famous in books, caricatures, and paintings created a visual lexicon and stylistic guide for women. Men and women alike relied on these types – cocotte (mistress), jeune veuve (young widow), amazone (independent equestrienne), demoiselle de magasin (shopgirl), and Parisienne (chic Parisian woman) – to judge the class, character, morality, and worth of strangers. With a rich set of illustrations from the Impressionist canon and beyond, The Art of Parisian Chic shows how modern women used fashion and these stereotypes to construct and reinvent their identities.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Chapter 1 – Introduction: The Art of Parisian Chic Chapter 2 – La Cocotte – The Extravagant Mistress Chapter 3 – La Jeune Veuve – The Young Widow Chapter 4 – L'Amazone – The Independent Equestrienne Chapter 5 – La Demoiselle de magasin – The Savvy Shopgirl Chapter 6 – La Parisienne – The Symbol of Paris Chapter 7 – Conclusion Notes Selected Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Justine De Young is Associate Professor and Chairperson, History of Art, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York (US). She previously taught art and fashion history at Harvard, Wellesley, Lesley, and Northwestern universities in the US. She is editor of Fashion in European Art (Bloomsbury, 2019) and the founding editor of the Fashion History Timeline website.

Review :
Organized in a shimmering constellation of five iconic Parisian female types, The Art of Parisian Chic decodes the details of dress, behavior, and styling that defined late 19th-century Parisian femininity, making legible a wealth of visual information for a 21st-century audience. De Young deftly traces the invention of chic, an ineffable concept that endures today. A penetrating analysis of contemporary costume, criticism, and women, both real and imagined, and a foundational contribution, The Art of Parisian Chic breathes new life into the study of 19th-century French art and culture. Justine De Young equips her readers with new tools to discern fashionable feminine types in the Paris of the Impressionist era, presenting new considerations of canonical paintings, but also broader visual contexts in which to understand them.