Ross King talks about The Judgement of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism.
While the Civil War raged in America, another very different revolution was beginning to take shape across the Atlantic: one fought in the studios of Paris against the art world's ancient regime. Ross King delivers a page-turning account of real-life rivalry in the act of artistic creation, personified by Edouard Manet as he challenged the conservative French academy and the supremacy of its most celebrated painter, Ernest Meissonier. Illuminated by their legendary supporters and critics - Zola, Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, Whistler, Monet, Hugo, Degas - Ross King shows that their contest was not just about Art, it was about how to see the world. The author of Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, and two novels (Ex-Libris and Domino), Ross King lives in England- Codys
Bio
Ross King
Born and raised in Canada, Ross King has lived in England since 1992. His writing career began in 1995 with the publication of a historical novel, Domino, about the world of masquerades and opera in 18th-century London. Its successor, Ex-Libris, was a novel about book selling, codes and spies in 17th-century Europe.
King is best known to American readers as the author of the nonfiction Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture. The seed of the book was planted when King read a brief account of the building of Brunelleschi's dome in Giorgio Vasari's 16th-century Lives of the Artists. That, and a trip to Florence, piqued his interest in learning more about the dome. When he couldn't find a book that told him what he wanted to know, he decided to write it. The book was an instant hit in the U.S.: a 2001 Book Sense Nonfiction Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller.