Last night, I finished watching
The Impressionists, which was a little hokey: there was little real-life grimness fully realized; the soundtrack had that educational "Ah-the-beauty-of-what-we-learned" sound to it the whole time; and the painters were treated as a band of low-fi superheroes like a painterly Fantastic Four, each with his own superpower.
Still, there was this nice dialogue between film and canvas where the movie tried to capture the settings and subjects of the now famous paintings. In this process the mini-series found a way to articulate simply (kind of pedantically) what it was these painters carved out for themselves in the history of art, what was behind their methods and obsessions. And I was happy to have that realization refreshed.
What I was more reminded of is how much I wish I could look and dress 19th century: