Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller (1793-1865), one of Austria's most significant 19th-century painters, remains relatively little-known in France although his portraits and landscapes are represented in French museums (the Louvre and the Petit Palais in Paris, and the Museum of Châteauroux).

This richly illustrated monograph-the first book in French on Waldmüller-was published to accompany a small but significant exhibition of his work held at the Louvre, followed by a larger exhibition at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

With its essays by eminent specialists, it will serve as a reference work for art historians while introducing the general public to the work of a fascinating artist whose painting is almost photographic in its meticulous realism-though Waldmüller seems not to have used the new but rapidly expanding art of photography.

The book covers every aspect of his art: the precise and elegant portraits that made him famous and earned him the living he badly needed; his grandiose and poetic landscapes (particularly the Austrian scenes of the Salzkammergut and the Vienna woods, but Sicilian scenes too); his ambitious and sophisticated still lifes; and of course his outstanding genre scenes, set in Vienna and its picturesque surroundings. The latter depict particular events or extol the virtues of the poor and pious, and are charming representations of an astonishingly pure and wholesome world.