Acknowledgments

Locke, Nancy

Save Cite Share

Free

Acknowledgments

Nancy Locke

Manet and the Family Romance

~I KNOW I AM NOT the only writer on Manet who felt she almost inhabited the paintings, or who started investigating Manet’s art out of a sense of personal necessity. These essays have their origins in a seminar paper I undertook with the guidance and encouragement of Timothy J. Clark. I would like to attribute most of their strengths and none of their...

Author

Nancy Locke

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-21824

Acknowledgments

I KNOW I AM NOT the only writer on Manet who felt she almost inhabited the paintings, or who started investigating Manet’s art out of a sense of personal necessity. These essays have their origins in a seminar paper I undertook with the guidance and encouragement of Timothy J. Clark. I would like to attribute most of their strengths and none of their weaknesses to things I learned from him and from my colleagues in a seminar called “Context and Form: Problems in the Social History of Art” at Harvard in 1985. The paper led to a dissertation and to a subsequent development of some of its tenets, along with a repudiation of others.

Much of the dissertation was written during a year of support from the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities. Research in Paris was undertaken with the support of a Lurcy Traveling Fellowship awarded by a Harvard University fellowships committee. I also spent a valuable semester undertaking initial research with the help of a Harvard Merit Fellowship (Arthur Lehman Fund, underwritten by the family of the late John L. Loeb). My second reader, Henri Zerner, offered many important suggestions at various stages, including a healthy skepticism. Since I have had a position at Wayne State University in Detroit, its Office of Research and Sponsored Programs has been unfailingly supportive of my continued research and revisions; I would like to thank Dan Walz and Richard Lintvedt. A faculty research grant and a special dispensation came at crucial stages of the process. Insights gleaned while working on other Manet projects supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities summer stipend and a Humanities Center fellowship from Wayne State University also found their way into final passages. It is a pleasure to work in a university setting that has been so supportive of my work, and I would name Jeffrey Abt, Richard Bilaitis, Walter Edwards, Mame Jackson, David Magidson, and Linda Moore among the responsible parties. My chair, dean, and university research department have also generously assisted in funding the costs of permissions and photographs for the book, and I am extremely grateful to them. I would also like to acknowledge a gift from Annetta Miller toward the illustration costs.

I owe a great deal to what I learned from Beatrice Farwell during a summer of working with her on Manet with a National Endowment for the Humanities Younger Scholars grant. Several people were helpful with resources, notably Inge Dupont at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Claude Bouret at the Cabinet des Estampes of the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris; Peter Sutton and the late Robert Boardingham at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; R. Stanley Johnson, Chicago. Along the way, I benefited from scores of helpful suggestions, large and small, particularly from Svetlana Alpers, Marie-Claire Belleau, Richard Bienvenu, Norman Bryson, Walter Cahn, Anna C. Chave, Hollis Clayson, Patricia Crown, Raquel Da Rosa, Paul Franklin, Elisabeth Fraser, Annie Gutmann, Danielle Haase-Dubosc, Ewa Lajer-Bucharth, Howard Lay, Jann Matlock, Alexander Nagel, Claudia Rousseau, Fredrick Seguin, John Shearman, Craig Tomlinson, César Trasobares, Anca Vlasopolos, Anne M. Wagner, and Christopher S. Wood.

Several individuals and groups have offered opportunities to present aspects of this work that have invariably expanded my thinking. I would like to acknowledge Patricia Crown at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Mary Miller at Yale University, and the members of the History of Psychiatry Section at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center.

There are a few people whose help deserves special mention. Juliet Wilson Bareau provided information and answered questions, reinforcing some previously tentative figural identifications which were of particular importance. She also helped locate pictures in private collections, as did Joachim Pissarro and Sophie Pietri. My close friend and critic throughout this process has been Yule Heibel; my work has been greatly enriched by our exchanges over the years. Christopher Billick has given invaluable technical assistance. Christopher Campbell, who has helped me to look again and again at the paintings themselves, has been a tremendous source of moral and editorial support. David and Beverly Campbell helped in innumerable ways. The arrival of Catherine Locke Campbell made the final stage of work the most interesting of all.

Throughout this process it has been a pleasure to work with Patricia Fidler, Nancy Grubb, Sarah Henry, Devra Kupor, Curtis Scott, Ken Wong, and Kate Zanzucchi at Princeton University Press. The book has been improved immeasurably by the keen eye of Sharon Herson.

My greatest debt in every sense is to my parents. This work is dedicated to Lucy S. Locke and to the memory of John Raymond Locke (1925–1991).

Previous chapter

Base text size -

Chapter images ()