This volume featuring the collection of the Musee Fabre spans three centuries and includes works by 55 of the greatest French painters including Nicolas Poussin, Jaques-Louis David, Eugene Delacroix, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, and Gustav Courbet. An exceptional array of iconic paintings covers all artistic movements from 1600 to 1900, including Baroque, Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Impressionism. The painters represented worked in every genre, from portraiture, religious and mythological subjects, and landscapes to still lifes. The volume provides a comprehensive overview of French art, following its evolution from the highly sophisticated and classical art of Poussin in the early 17th century to the complete rethinking of painting by Courbet at the threshold of Impressionism in the second half of the 19th century.

Michel Hilaire is director of the Musee Fabre, Montpellier. Jorg Zutter is assistant director, head of international art at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. Olivier Zeder is deputy director of the Muse Fabre. Other contributors to the book include Sylvain Amic (Musee Fabre), Petra ten-Doesschate Chu (University of Seton Hall), Hilliard Todd Goldfarb (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), Jo Hedley (Wallace Collection, London), Christopher Riopelle (National Gallery, London), and Pietre Rosenberg (Musee du Louvre, Paris).