Book excerpt: The City of Glasgow possesses an internationally renowned collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. This magnificent book, the catalogue for a major exhibition, features sixty-four of the finest paintings in this collection, including important works by Rousseau, Corot, Monet, Renoir, Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Picasso, Derain, Matisse, and Rouault. The lavishly illustrated book provides a short essay on each work as well as full catalogue details. There are also four introductory essays by prominent scholars that set the paintings in context. Irene Maver examines the social, political, and economic environment of Glasgow from its beginnings until the First World War; Frances Fowle charts the taste for French art in the west of Scotland during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century; Hugh Stevenson explores the early history of the city's collection and its assimilation of contemporary French paintings; and Belinda Thomson discusses how Glasgow's collection relates to the wider historical context of French painting of the period.