Detail from The Canal, Amsterdam, 1889, James McNeill Whistler, The Hunterian, University of Glasgow

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Edmond de Goncourt

Nationality: French
Date of birth: 1822
Place of birth: Nancy
Date of death: 1896
Category: writer, art

Identity:

The brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt were novelists and writers on art, particularly of the 18th Century.

Life:

They were also early enthusiasts for Vermeer, and supporters of the Impressionists. Edmond wrote on Japanese woodcuts in the 1890s. Their jointly written novels, notably Germinie Lacerteux, and those of Edmond, such as Les Frères Zemganno, are of the realist tendency. The Journals of the Goncourts provide a marvellous panorama of Parisian literary and artistic life from the 1850s to the 1890s.

Bibliography:

Monneret, S., L'Impressionisme et son époque, Paris, 1978-79.