The Art of Parisian Chic

Using artworks by Berthe Morisot, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and others, The Art of Parisian Chic explores how women and artists in Impressionist Paris (1855-1885) crafted their public images to exploit and resist stereotypes.

French societal expectations and beauty ideals shaped how women were seen and how they chose to present themselves in public – whether on the street, in a photograph, or in a portrait on the walls of the annual Paris Salon. On Paris’s broad new boulevards and in its public parks and theaters, women dressed to impress anonymous strangers as well as their friends. They even circulated aspirational photographs of themselves. Looking at a rich array of visual sources – from portraits to modern-life paintings, and from photographs to fashion plates – Justine De Young reveals how women were seen, how they aspired to be seen, and how they navigated public life in Second Empire and Belle Époque Paris.

This book considers how fashionable feminine “types” made famous in books, caricatures, and paintings created a visual lexicon and stylistic guide for women. Men and women alike relied on these types – cocotte (mistress), jeune veuve (young widow), amazone (independent equestrienne), demoiselle de magasin (shopgirl), and Parisienne (chic Parisian woman) – to judge the class, character, morality, and worth of strangers. With a rich set of illustrations from the Impressionist canon and beyond, The Art of Parisian Chic shows how modern women used fashion and these stereotypes to construct and reinvent their identities.