At pivotal moments in his career, Claude Monet would go out with a fellow artist, plant his easel beside his friend’s, and paint the same scene. Painting with Monet closely examines pairs of such works, showing how attention to this practice raises tantalizing new questions about Monet’s art and about impressionism as a movement. Is impressionist painting an objective attempt to capture reality as it really is? Or is it a subjective expression of the artist’s unique way of perceiving things? How can artists create a movement without conformity extinguishing individuality? Harmon Siegel reveals how Monet explored problems like these in concrete, practical ways while painting alongside his teachers, Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind; his friends, Frédéric Bazille and Pierre-Auguste Renoir; and his hero, Édouard Manet. At a time of major cultural upheavals, these artists asked how we can know reality beyond our personal perception. Siegel provides new insights into the aesthetic, philosophical, and ethical stakes for these painters as they responded to a rapidly changing society. Beautifully illustrated, Painting with Monet sheds critical light on how Monet and his fellow impressionists, painting side by side, professed their capacity to know the world and affirmed their belief in what Siegel calls the reality of others. 

Join Harmon Siegel and Carmen Rosenberg-Miller for an online conversation about seeing and experiencing impressionism together. In preparation for this exciting discussion, we invite all attendees to read the introduction to Painting with Monet 

REGISTRATION

The online conversation will take place on Tuesday 28 January 2025 at
9 am (PST) / 12 noon (EST) / 5 pm (BST) / 6 pm (CEST).

This webinar is free and open to all, but registration is required as space is limited. 

Please click the button below to register for the event: you will receive a Zoom link to the email address you provide when registering.

BIOGRAPHIES

Carmen Rosenberg-Miller is a scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century art. She is currently working on her first book project, based on her Ph.D. dissertation, entitled Impressionism and Empathy: Representing Difference in the Art of Raffaëlli and His Circle. Her book studies the problem of intersubjective representation in French art of the 1870s and 1880s. Through close study of Jean-François Raffaëlli’s artwork and writing, as well as his collaborations with well-known figures, including Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edmond de Goncourt, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Auguste Rodin, the book interrogates the philosophical stakes of realism and its late reimagination. In support of her research, Rosenberg-Miller received a Fulbright Award in Paris at the Musée d’Orsay. Rosenberg-Miller has published articles in The Burlington Magazine, La Revue de l’art, and nonsite. Before receiving her Ph.D. from Princeton (2022), she received an M.A. from The Courtauld Institute of Art (2014) and a B.A. from Columbia University (2011). She teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York. 

Harmon Siegel is currently a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His research asks how modern art shapes identity, exploring how we come to identify as the people who we are in relation to others and social institutions. His first book, Painting with Monet (Princeton University Press), investigates how modern paradigms of artistic selfhood struggle to reconcile an ideal of singular individuality with the reality of social interdependence. Siegel has published articles in Art Bulletin, American Art, and nonsite, and writes regular criticism for Artforum.