Restoration: The Fall of Napoleon in the Course of European Art, 1812-1820

by Thomas Crow

2020 Silver Medalist in Humanities

Jury Statement (Silver Medal)

This beautifully written and produced book opens new perspectives onto an eight-year period of political chaos through an examination of the lives of key artists and works of art. In new and often revelatory readings of the work of a dozen painters, some well-known and others less familiar to all but specialist readers, Thomas Crow subtly intertwines a number of seemingly contradictory historical trajectories — the fall of Napoleon, the European restoration, and even a tentative sense of liberatory progress. Lucid, engaging, and enlightening, this is a masterly, almost epigrammatic work by a historicist art historian at the top of his game.