From the late 1960s, when Janice H. Levin and her husband, Philip, made their first foray as collectors into the competitive field of Impressionism, until her final purchase (of a Boudin) in 1998, Mrs. Levin assembled a remarkable, and remarkably personal, art collection, mostly of paintings but also of works on paper and small bronzes, all by French artists or artists working in France. Once acquired by Mrs. Levin, these objects were enjoyed almost exclusively by her private circle of family and friends, in the domestic sphere of her New York apartment. Some of the works have never before or rarely been published, and many have not been exhibited in decades. The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, for which this publication is the accompanying catalogue is thus the first opportunity for the public to enjoy the abundant fruits of Mrs. Levin's impulse to collect: specifically, five Renoirs, three Monets, three Pissarros, four Vuillards, four Bonnards, and much more, dating to as early as the early 1840s for a Corot portrait to as late as 1954 for a Giacometti bust.
Each of the works is illustrated in full color and discussed in the context of the artist's development, the commission or situation in which the artist made it, and its inherent formal and compositional qualities.

Richard Shone is an editor at The Burlington Magazine in London and is the author of several books on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art