Cheap Rosamond Bernier: The French Impressionists - An Accessible Paradise (Video) (Rosamund Bernier, Rosamond Bernier) Price

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Rosamond Bernier's final lecture on French Impressionism
"An Accessible Paradise" is the fourth and final lecture in a series on "The French Impressionists" by Rosamond Bernier, the founder of the art magazine "L'OEIL" in 1955. Previous lectures introduced us to "The Cast of Characters," "Modern Art and Modern Manners: 1860-1974" (Manet and Monet), and "Paris by Day and by Night" (Degas). In her final lecture Bernier, decked out in a flowing yellow gown, looks at the work of Pierre-Gustave Renoir, Camille Pissaro, Paul Cézanne, and Paul Gauguin. The last name on the list becomes important because he signals a major change in art that effectively ends the Impressionist period. Bernier is not only interested in how the railroads provided access to the countryside around Paris, thereby turning it into a cut-rate paradise, but the fate of the Impressionists.

Standing on the stage of The Metropolitan Museum of Art while a screen displays two paintings at a time, Bernier moves back and froth between art history and art appreciation with ease. When she gets to the end she notes that this was a time when Manet was dead, Monet was cultivating his garden, Renoir was off on his own being Renoir, Degas had become the poet laureate of ablution, and only Pizzaro was true to the movement and still open to learning as well as teaching. But with Cézanne proving that art had never been more alive. At this point, you simply want to go back and begin the lecture series again. The second time through you will learn even more about the famous artists and great works of the French Impressionists.

Bernier's lectures at the Metropolitan are always sold out months ahead of time and this is but one of several series of videotapes of her lectures available. "Taste at the Top" looks at the impact of royal patronage on art, pairing up monarchs like Christina of Sweden and Catherine the Great for an evening's educational enrichment, while her series on "The Modern Masters" focuses on the painters she knew in Paris, such as Pablo Picasso and Henry Matisse, when she was an editor for "Vogue." These latter tapes always contrasts the artist she knew with the artist nobody knew.