Aug 5, 2026

Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century

Sara Pappas

Hosted by Gina Stamm

Buy Book

Summary

Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually emblematized by the works of Édouard Manet and then the Impressionists. Instead of the usual revaluation of this turning point, Sara Pappas argues for the importance of the failure to find a cohesive story for the art world in the period itself, a difficulty that carries forward to galleries today. In order to demonstrate the importance of incongruity and disorder, Pappas brings together two worlds that may seem incompatible: nineteenth-century literary writers involved in naturalism and the organization of permanent collections of later nineteenth-century French art in today's museums. Drawing on the art novels and art criticism of these writers, the book provides optimal access to the questions that continue to haunt the categorization and display of nineteenth-century art.

Guest Sara Pappas is Associate Professor of French and Visual Culture at the University of Richmond. In addition to this volume, she has published articles on topics from 19^th century art criticism by literary figures such as Baudelaire and Zola to the Expositions universelles to contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley’s influence on French art, as well as co-curating an exhibit of Nineteenth Century French and Russian Art at the Harnett Museum of Art. Dr. Pappas, thank you for being with us today.

Host Gina Stamm is Associate Professor of French at The University of Alabama, with research concentrated on the environmental humanities and speculative literatures of the 20th and 21st centuries, from Surrealism to contemporary science fiction and feminist utopias, in Metropolitan France and the francophone Caribbean, with a book manuscript under
review on posthumanist ecological engagement in the surrealist movement.