Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Images are beautiful bright and vivid. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The life of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867) spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the artist’s native France (1) Born less than nine years before the storming of the Bastille the painter would eventually bear witness to three revolutions and the rise and fall (and eventual resurrection) of a rapid succession of monarchical republican and imperial regimes. Such political instability was accompanied by enormous shifts in the social domain. Over the course of the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century the industrial revolution finally took hold in France bringing with it such life-altering developments as the introduction of factory production rail travel and most momentously perhaps the rise of modern consumerism a process signalled most spectacularly by the transformation of the capital city of Paris from a dank and congested still essentially medieval city into a gleaming metropolis of spacious boulevards lined with an ever-expanding array of commercial establishments aimed at satisfying the shopper’s every desire (2). Our ability to grasp the enormous impact of these innovations on daily life in the nineteenth century is due in large part to the equally significant advances that were made in the realm of what we now refer to as ‘mass media. The mechanization of image production-the most revolutionary result of which was undoubtedly the photograph- and the emergence of the mass-circulation press led to a proliferation of representation unlike any that had ever occurred previously. This superabundance of texts and images documenting virtually every aspect of human existence has left a remarkably rich historical archive which is one of the things that makes the nineteenth century seem so familiar to us today – that makes it in short recognizable as the first phase of the truly modern era. (MP)