The History of Paris in Painting

It's not just an ordinary coffee table book. Fitted with legs, The History of Paris in Painting could be the coffee table—496 pages, nearly a foot and a half long and a foot wide, weighing some 13 lbs.  To be properly admired—and its excellent text read—it calls for a big, old-fashioned lectern. But for those who love painting and/or Paris, it is joy galore, summoning up superlatives like gorgeous, fabulous, splendiferous and more.

Robert Delaunay, The Eiffel Tower, 1926

Victor Dargaud, The Statue of Liberty by Bartholdi in the Workshop of the Gayet Foundy, Rue de Chazelles, Before Her Departure for New York, 1883

Georges Seurat, Le Chahut, 1889-90

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Covering the 14th to the late 20th centuries, the beautifully produced book offers 304 color plates, including four panoramic gatefolds, and a handful of photographs. Starting with manuscript illuminations by medieval masters Jean Fouquet and the Limburg brothers, the book charts the city's progression from island fortress in the Seine to modern metropolis as portrayed by Clouet, Holbein, de Champaigne, Watteau, Chardin, Fragonard, David, Delacroix, Degas, Manet, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Léger, Utrillo and scores of other lesser-known artists whose work will come as a delightful surprise to many readers, like Nicolas Raguenet's 1756 fold-out water tournament, watched by a throng of tiny onlookers in the tall houses that once stood on the Seine's bridges.

Edited by eminent scholars Georges Duby and Guy Lobrichon, The History of Paris in Painting is published in English by Abbeville Press, New York (2009). $235. (First published in French by Editions Citadelles et Mazenod, Paris.) Buy the book here.

Originally published in the April 2010 issue of France Today.