Restoration: The Fall of Napoleon in the Course of European Art, 1812–1820.
Thomas Crow,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018.
208 pp.; 12 b&w and 160 color illus.; index.
$39.95 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9780691181646

Reviewed by Elizabeth Mansfield, The Pennsylvania State University

"Each of the six chapters of Restoration considers a pair or trio of artists whose responses to the collapse of the French Empire are juxtaposed in order to highlight the tensions and uncertainties constitutive of a post-Napoleonic visual mode....“Restoration unrestored” are the book’s final words, and they aptly summarize the artistic confrontation with post-Napoleonic Europe as presented by Crow. They resonate, too, with Crow’s sustained negotiation of the complex legacy of Jacques-Louis David. A consummately canonical artist whose reputation—during his lifetime and ever since—has nevertheless waivered in response to the attitudes and expectations of changing audiences. It is a question not of whether but when the Restoration canon will next be unrestored."

http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn19/mansfield-reviews-restoration-by-thomas-crow