Lallemand surveys three great French painters in these titles. All three books are similar in format, providing a biography in the introduction followed by four chapters that expand on the life and show its relationship to the art. The text is illustrated with many large, full-color details of the paintings and, at the end of each chapter, with more full-color plates discussed in the preceding text, making for an elaborate, involving study. The captions accompanying the illustrations are particularly informative. Also included are many reproductions from collections not often shown, such as the Barnes Foundation, a delight for even the connoisseur. During the latter part of his life, Manet, a conservative bourgeois who sought the approval of the French academy, explored some of the more modern ideas of the Impressionist painters. Lallemand discusses his development from his first salon entry, a portrait of his parents, through the scandal and scorn heaped on Olympia and Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, to a posthumous 1884 retrospective exhibition in which his work was acclaimed. While Manet considered himself a figure painter, Monet preferred working with landscape. The author describes the artist from his painting Impressionism-Sunrise, which ironically named the art movement, to painterly expressionism in his garden at Giverny in his eighties. Although never an Impressionist, Cezanne was a contemporary of both Monet and Manet. Lallemand takes us from Cezanne's early romantic, dark and gloomy paintings through his more realistic development aided by Pissaro and his love of Estaque to his later abstractions based on still lifes, card players, and groups of figures and Mount St. Victoire. In all three books, Lallemand's style is lucid and his subjects appealing. While many other titles have been published on these three artists, none provides so much value for the price. Recommended for most collections. Ellen Bates, New York