Escapades impressionnistes, de Paris à Honfleur

At what floor of the place Dauphine did Pissarro stand to paint the Seine without being bothered by the dust? Who remembers that at the hotel-Drouot in 1878, during the Hoschedé auction, a Corot was sold for 7 francs? Do you know that according to a brand new theory Vincent van Gogh death at the auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise was actually a murder by two bad boys in a scenario in the Pasolini style? By combining knowledge and anecdotes, Schlesser leads his readers, on the beaten paths of Impressionism of course (how could the Folies-Bergère or the Grands Boulevards not be included in this list?) but we also go off beat by nurturing his texts with the latest data taken from research. We would have loved to spend an afternoon with him at the Ferme Saint-Siméon so that he could tell us how Alphonse Allais had changed mère Toutain’s horses into zebras with a pot of paint… We would have reprimanded him if he had forgotten to tell us that the Impressionists fetishist beverage, the absinthe seen in Caillebotte’s painting Dans un café, forbidden in 1915, is now again authorized. He should taste the one of the Combier distillery in Saumur...

• Escapades impressionnistes, de Paris à Honfleur, by Thomas Schlesser, Parigramme, 2012, 224 p., €19.90.