Picasso, Matisse and Modernism in Paris, 1900-1910

In Montmartre

'Heady, lively, engaging...brings Montmartre's heyday back to life' Sunday Times 
 
'Brilliant' Guardian 
 
The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps, but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization of painting, writing, music and dance produced a panorama of activity characterized by the early works of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Modigliani, the appearance of the Ballet Russe and the salons of Gertrude Stein. 
 
In Montmartre is the fascinating story of the birth of Modernism in Paris. Full of life, colour and squalour, and incredible painting and sculpture, Sue Roe vividly brings to life the bohemian Parisian art scene between 1900-1910.

Sue Roe is the author of several books, including the New York Times bestselling collective biography The Private Lives of the Impressionists, and Gwen John: A Life. She lives in Brighton.

The real revolution in the arts first took place not, as is commonly supposed, in the 1920s to the accompaniment of the Charleston, black jazz and mint juleps, but more quietly and intimately, in the shadow of the windmills - artificial and real - and in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre during the first decade of the century. The cross-fertilization of painting, writing, music and dance produced a panorama of activity characterized by the early works of Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Derain, Vlaminck and Modigliani, the appearance of the Ballet Russe and the salons of Gertrude Stein. 
 
In In Montmartre, Sue Roe vividly brings to life the bohemian world of art in Paris between 1900-1910.

Gwen John

Out of the shadows and into the limelight - revealing, lively new biography of the sensual, quietly rebellious woman (sister of Augustus John and lover of Rodin) who as an unmistakeably great artist in her own right.

Roe has drawn on much new material...to great effect. She reveals with painful acuity the unshakeable internal logic of sexual obsession, conveying it in fluent novelistic style. She is also an astute, if traditional, art critic

Sue Roe is a novelist, poet and critic.  A former lecturer in Creative Writing at UEA, she now lives in Sussex. This is her first biography.

In 1942, at the height of his fame, Augustus John predicted that 'fifty years from now I shall be known as the brother of Gwen John'. Gwen John (1876 - 1939) is indeed now recognised as a great artistic innovator, yet for years her life remained shrouded in the myth of the solitary recluse. Born in Pembrokeshire, Gwen followed her brother to the Slade. Her future was bound up with Augustus, his women and his coteries, yet she was also daring and highly original, living determinedly in her own way. Defiant yet shy, she painted and modelled amid the Bohemian circles of early twentieth-century Paris and embarked on a long, intense love affair with France's most legendary artistic figure, the sculptor Rodin. A friend of Symbolist poets and post-Impressionist painters, later she turned increasingly to religion, achieving a deep serenity which masked her inner turbulence, creating her haunting paintings - delicate, austere, restrained and still. Based on her lively and passionate unpublished letters and copiously illustrated, this vivid new biography challenges our prejudices about the ways we evaluate women artists and finally uncovers the life of this ardent and complicated personality, one of the finest artists of her day. 
 
Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.

The Private Lives Of The Impressionists

A vivid, intimate, evocative exploration of the hidden personal lives of the great Impressionist painters.

A deft account of their varying shades of character and fortune. Roe's quietly successful book tells of ultimate triumph, but shows its human cost

Roe is good at bounding from one eye-catching anecdote to another

The great strength of Roe's book is the way that it manages to synthesise the wealth of published biographical and scholarly work on half a dozen artists into a  coherent narrative of kith and kinship

Her book is widely researched but has a neat, light touch

Sue Roe is a freelance writer and teacher. A former Lecturer at the University of East Anglia and current lecturer at the University of Sussex, she is the author of a novel, Estella, Her Expectation, a collection of poems, The Spitfire Factory, and Writing and Gender: Virginia Woolf's Writing Practice. She is also co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to Virginia Woolf, and her most recent book is the widely praised Gwen John: A Life. She lives in Brighton.

Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt. 
 
Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, astonishing sums are paid today for the works of these artists. Their dazzling pictures are familiar - but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? In a vivid and moving narrative, biographer Sue Roe shows the Impressionists in the studios of Paris, rural lanes of Montmartre and rowdy riverside bars as Paris underwent Baron Haussman's spectacular transformation. 
 
For over twenty years they lived and worked together as a group, struggling to rebuild their lives after the Franco-Prussian war and supporting one another through shocked public reactions to unfamiliar canvasses depicting laundresses, dancers, spring blossom and boating scenes. 
 
This intimate, colourful, superbly researched account takes us into their homes as well as their studios and describes their unconventional, volatile and precarious lives, as well as the stories behind their paintings.

Sue Roe

Highly colourful . . . they're all here, the big names of the time - behaving badly, and, at times, quite madly too

Roe is a talented writer, fascinated by la vie Boheme . . . She can find phrases that perfectly capture the feeling of a neighbourhood

Brings together some of the chief protagonists in one of the 20th century's most inventive art movements. A vivid read

She vividly charts the birth of surrealism . . . a tale rich in absurdity and outlandish characters, from Cocteau and Max Ernst to Dali and Picasso

Sue Roe describes with plenty of colour how surrealism was born and developed in Montparnasse . . . Roe marshals [the figures behind dada and surrealism] with great finesse

Enjoyable, engaging, rollicking - the storytelling is lively

Admirable. What an eye for art Roe has. Brilliant

An elegant synthesis of complex material... it excels: Roe is a skilled and graceful writer.

Lively and engaging... in her entertaining, ingeniously structured account Roe brings Montmartre's heyday back to life.

[Roe]skilfully weaves her descriptions of artworks into her romp through the artists' struggles and fractious relationships.

A colourful narrative describing the travails and triumphs of an equally colourful cast.

With evocative imagery Roe sketches out the intensely visual spectacle on which Montmartre's artistic community was able to draw

The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dali

During the 1920s, in the Parisian neighbourhood of Montparnasse, a unique flowering of avant-garde artistic creativity became the cradle of Dada and Surrealism. In this crowd biography, Sue Roe tells the story - from Duchamp to Dali, via Man Ray and Max Ernst - of the salons and cafes, alliances and feuds, love affairs and scandals, successes and suicides of one of the most important and long-lasting artistic achievements of the twentieth century.

Sue Roe

Praise for In Montparnasse

Highly colourful . . . they're all here, the big names of the time - behaving badly, and, at times, quite madly too

Roe is a talented writer, fascinated by la vie Boheme . . . She can find phrases that perfectly capture the feeling of a neighbourhood

Brings together some of the chief protagonists in one of the 20th century's most inventive art movements. A vivid read

Highly colourful . . . they're all here, the big names of the time - behaving badly, and, at times, quite madly too

Roe is a talented writer, fascinated by la vie Boheme . . . She can find phrases that perfectly capture the feeling of a neighbourhood

Brings together some of the chief protagonists in one of the 20th century's most inventive art movements. A vivid read

Highly colourful . . . they're all here, the big names of the time - behaving badly, and, at times, quite madly too

Roe is a talented writer, fascinated by la vie Boheme . . . She can find phrases that perfectly capture the feeling of a neighbourhood

Brings together some of the chief protagonists in one of the 20th century's most inventive art movements. A vivid read

Books by Sue Roe

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