Impressionists: Before and After

Édouard Manet, Paul Gauguin, Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh—readers are in for captivating stories where the characters and unmistakable handwriting of great masters come vividly to life!

A new book by the author of the bestseller “Masters and Masterpieces”!

Igor Viktorovich Dolgopolov (1917–1991) was an honored figure of the arts of the RSFSR, an art critic and writer, an educator, and the chief artist of the legendary Soviet magazine “Ogonyok.” As a student of A. Deineka, he became a figure of truly “Vazaryan” scale: throughout his life, he strove to assemble the history of world art into a single coherent picture. His essays on outstanding artists, later brought together into books titled “Masters and Masterpieces,” were published in enormous print runs even while the author was alive.

Dolgopolov’s texts are written easily and vividly, with refined taste and true literary talent: they are engaging narratives where the fates, temperaments, and creative principles of painters are revealed, and their famous paintings are analyzed in detail. In this book, readers will meet the Impressionists, their predecessors, and those who continued their search: Eugène Delacroix, Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, Édouard Manet, Frédéric Bazille, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Antoine Bourdelle. The edition is supplemented by a biographical essay about Igor Dolgopolov.