In 2000, deeply shaken by her husband's recent death, author and world traveler Lin Arison took a trip through France with her granddaughter Sarah. Though Arison was in mourning, and Sarah was initially skeptical about art, the two surprised themselves by discovering renewed joy in the work of the Impressionists and the settings that inspired them.In the years that followed, Arison's personal odyssey became an extraordinary collaboration with photographer Neil Folberg, a collaboration culminating in "Travels with Van Gogh and the Impressionists: Discovering the Connections." In one unique volume, Arison ushers readers from Auvers to Arles, Giverny to Mont Sainte- Victoire, in her quest to rediscover the lives, dwellings, and paintings of the Impressionists. En route, she debunks long-held myths about Van Gogh and Berthe Morisot, befriends twenty-first-century descendants of some of the masters, and finds inspiration in the Impressionists' mutually supportive relationships. Gracefully blending memoir, travelogue, art history, and biography, Arison's intimate narrative brings new insight to our understanding of these artists and their legacy.Interspersed with Arison's text, and with handsome reproductions of the original masterpieces, Neil Folberg's photographs capture the central spirit of the Impressionists' work and reapply that spirit to contemporary subjects and settings.
Following an intuitive sensibility that never misses its mark, Folberg deploys each artist's individual vision to new and striking ends, undergoing an artistic transformation of his own in the process.Together, Arison's words and Folberg's images explore the enduring impact of France's great late nineteenth-century painters, and the ways in which their revolutionary visions of their own world still impart great meaning and beauty to ours.
