Acknowledgments

Alsdorf, Bridget

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Acknowledgments

Bridget Alsdorf

Description: Fellow Men: Fantin-Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-Century French...

Fellow Men: Fantin-Latour and the Problem of the Group in Nineteenth-Century French Painting

~LIKE the paintings at its heart, this book is an individual effort inconceivable without the contributions of others. First, I owe a tremendous debt to Tim Clark: for the way he lit up when I suggested working on Fantin-Latour and the problem of the group years ago, and for the way his enthusiasm and support have sustained my work on the topic ever...

Author

Bridget Alsdorf

PublisherPrinceton University Press

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00049.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-18495

Acknowledgments

Like the paintings at its heart, this book is an individual effort inconceivable without the contributions of others. First, I owe a tremendous debt to Tim Clark: for the way he lit up when I suggested working on Fantin-Latour and the problem of the group years ago, and for the way his enthusiasm and support have sustained my work on the topic ever since. I can never repay the care and intelligence he devoted to this project in its formative years at the University of California, Berkeley, nor can I express how much I admire his commitment to art, to scholarship, and to his students. Anne Wagner, Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, and Kaja Silverman were also crucial to the project’s development, and have likewise remained mentors and models of intellectual rigor.

At Princeton, I have been surrounded by wonderfully supportive and generous colleagues. My deepest thanks go to Rachael DeLue, Brigid Doherty, Hal Foster, and Thomas Leisten, all of whom have contributed in immeasurable ways to my professional progress, not least to the realization of this book. Philip Nord’s interest in my work has also been heartening, and I am especially grateful to him for reading and commenting on the introduction. My writing group—Wendy Belcher, Janet Downie, and Brooke Holmes—deserves thanks for many evenings of friendship and mutual help.

At Princeton University Press, I wish to thank multiple editors who have contributed their time and talents to this book, including Hanne Winarsky, Christopher Chung, Alison MacKeen, and Sara Lerner. For her careful copyediting, I thank Jennifer Harris. I count myself especially fortunate to have received two detailed and deeply knowledgeable reader reports from Holly Clayson and Nancy Locke. Both contributed in many ways to my revisions, and I hope I have done justice to the generous spirit of their suggestions. Likewise, I owe a great deal to Marnin Young for his careful reading of the revised manuscript. His intelligence and vast knowledge of the period significantly improved the book in its final stages. Jeremy Melius also provided crucial and characteristically insightful help with chapters 2 and 5.

My research and writing were supported by various sources, including a travel grant from the Luce Foundation, a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Education, and a Chester Dale Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA), Washington, DC. I wish to thank my associate fellows at CASVA, and especially Elizabeth Cropper, for their enthusiastic interest in the project, and I am grateful to those who have given me further opportunities to present it publicly, including Janice Bergman-Carton, Holly Clayson, André Dombrowski, Nancy Locke, Jane Newman, Charles Palermo, and graduate students at UCLA and Rutgers University. Princeton University and a Chester Dale Fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art funded a year of leave from teaching that proved essential to completing revisions, and the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton generously contributed to the cost of the book’s production through the Barr Berree Foundation Fund.

For research help and practical assistance, in the United States and abroad, I wish to thank Marie-Françoise Bois-Delatte, Sandra Brooke, Hans Buijs, Kathleen Burns, Elissa Calfin, John Ceballos, Brigitte Donon, Sherry Ehya, Maria Florencia Galesio, Anne-Maria Garcia, Jeremy Hajdenberg, Bertram Kaschek, Betsy Kohut, Susan Lehre, Mathilde Martineau, Anne McCauley, Alison McQueen, Patricia de Montfort, Maureen O’Brien, Sarah Van Ooteghem, Anne Tempelaere-Panzani, Nicole Quellet, Lisa Regan, Nigel Thorp, and Kathryn Wayne, as well as the excellent librarians, curators, and support staff at the Département des Estampes et photographies of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Institut National de l’Histoire de l’Art, the Documentation du Musée d’Orsay, the Département des Arts Graphiques at the Musée du Louvre, the Getty Research Institute, CASVA, and Marquand Library at Princeton University. Gloria Groom, Douglas Druick, and Sylvie Brame deserve special thanks for making my thorough study of Fantin-Latour possible. Without their generosity and good graces, my research would have foundered at a critical stage. I must also acknowledge Druick’s indispensable scholarship, in collaboration with Michel Hoog, on Fantin, which has served as a valuable foundation for this book.

Material from chapter 2 previously appeared as “Fantin’s Bailed Toast to Truth,” Getty Research Journal 3 (Jan. 2011): 53–70. Material from chapter 5 previously appeared as “La fraternité des individus: les portraits de groupe de Degas,” 48/14: La Revue du Musée d’Orsay 30 (Pali 2010): 30–43. My thanks to both journals for allowing me to republish this material in revised form, and to Laurence Madeline for her invitation to contribute the article on Degas.

Last but far from least, a close network of family and friends has nourished this project in vital ways. Katherine Chan, Andrea Conrad, Christina Ferando, Drew Foster, Nicole Jenkins, Adrian Nivola, Alyssa Rapp, and Lisa Regan all listened closely—and distracted me brilliantly—when I needed it most. I thank my brothers, Andrew and Dirk, for their humor; my grandmother, Marilynn, for her generosity and strength; and my mother, Barbara, for her sterling example and constant love and support. My father, Jeff, has read and commented on every chapter (in some cases multiple times) at a level of honesty and intellectual engagement that I am exceptionally lucky to have in a parent. No one has been more important to my education.

I dedicate this book to my fellow men, Todd and Nicholas Cronan. Todd was with me when the first glimmer of its idea appeared, and was the first to convince me it was truly worth doing. Since that day, he has seen the project through with me in all its stages, providing me with steadfast support, smiling encouragement, practical advice and incisive criticism, somehow always sensing when was the right time for each. He inspires me daily as both husband and scholar; I cannot thank him enough. As for Nick, who knows nothing of this book or what went into it, the hopes and happiness preceding his birth provided the most powerful motivation for its completion.

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