No movement in the history of art is so beloved as that which we label ‘Impressionism’, and no artists’ names are as familiar as those of its stars: Manet and Monet, Pissarro and Morisot, Degas and Renoir. But why did Impressionism blossom at a particular moment in Paris and in that form? Sebastian Smee’s brilliant new book offers compelling answers.

Educated in Adelaide and at the University of Sydney before becoming national art critic for The Australian, Smee moved to the United States in 2008 to write for the Boston Globe. He is now art critic for The Washington Post. As well as books on Lucian Freud, Picasso, and Matisse, Smee is well known for The Art of Rivalry (2016), which probed the relationships between four pairs of artists: Matisse and Picasso, de Kooning and Pollock, Freud and Bacon, and Degas and Monet. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism for his ‘vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation’. Paris in Ruins is no exception.