Iskin, Ruth E. Modern Women and Parisian Consumer Culture in Impressionist Painting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. 298. ISBN: 0521840805

Art historian Ruth Iskin's rich and engaging study explores the relationship between impressionist painting and Parisian consumer culture, bringing together two scholarly fields whose fascinating parallels have never before benefited from such a comprehensive and insightful exploration. Iskin's impeccably researched book succeeds in casting a new light on some of the most iconic images of impressionist art by making visible what was most striking about these paintings to nineteenth-century viewers. Iskin does this in part by drawing on contemporary advertisements, caricatures and initial reviews. She reminds us that early critics often round that "paintings of modern life and cheap signs of consumer culture were all too closely connected" (8). The references to consumer culture in Caillebotte's gorgeous image of Haussmannized alienation, Paris, A Rainy Day, for example, are barely noticeable today. But in 1877, the multitude of umbrellas that appeared to have been "freshly taken from the racks" of a department store were visually jarring, threatening to overtake the people carrying them, as an initial critic noted (117-18); the clothing of the main couple was an all-too realistic study in luxury Parisian goods, right down to the woman's delicate earring. Degas's 1878 Cafe Singer (Singer with a Glove), to take another example, was mocked in Le Charivari as a veritable advertisement for the dark glove in its foreground, a bourgeois accessory popularized by department stores with mammoth glove departments. And the opera glass in Mary Cassatt's In the...