Master-Strokes Across the Ages

Through a juxtaposition of paintings and contemporary photographs, Lin Arison links the past to the present in her book "Travels With Van Gogh and the Impressionists: Discovering the Connections" (Abbeville Press). An unusual blend of the personal and historical, her colorful work is at the same time a memoir, travelogue, and art history text. "It's about art, but it's really more about human beings," Ms. Arison, whose late husband was Carnival Cruise Lines founder Ted Arison, said.

While traveling in France, Ms. Arison was inspired to investigate the people and places that appear in a number of Impressionist paintings. At the Museé d'Orsay, she found herself captivated by the dark, smoldering eyes of Edouard Manet's frequent subject, Berthe Morisot. Even more intriguing was the room of paintings by Morisot, an upper-middle-class woman who became a member of the Impressionist circle and married Manet's brother Eugène.

Ms. Arison's research led her to meet several descendants of Morisot, including the artist's great-great-granddaughter Lucie Rouart, whose presence "echoes that of her ancestor precisely: confident and yet vulnerable, resolute and profoundly graceful." With the help of photographer Neil Folberg, Ms. Arison then turned her investigations into a visual connection to the past. In 2003, Mr. Folberg photographed Ms. Rouart in the manner that her great-great-grandmother had been painted by Manet in 1872. Around the same time, Mr. Folberg shot two of Morisot's great-great-great-granddaughters at play — in the same manner that Morisot had painted children in her 1892 work "Young Girls at the Window."

The text of the book describes in detail the process of discovery and creation, highlighting the stories often obscured by the actual works of art. Unlike academic art historians, Ms. Arison explores the less-than-romantic lives of the artists beyond their bohemian personas. She shares the belief of Joachim Pissarro, curator of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art (and direct descendant of Impressionist Camille Pissarro), who said: "It is time for us to take these artists down from their ivory tower."

Ms. Arison's research ranges from the hilly wheat fields that van Gogh painted to dancers' poses that Degas captured to Mont Saint-Victoire beloved by Cezanne. Interwoven throughout are more photographs by Mr. Folberg, who collaborated previously with Ms. Arison on her 2002 travel book "A Love Story in Mediterranean Israel." In addition to his photographs, Ms. Arison included the Impressionists' works to give the sense of how the vistas and faces that artists captured more than a century ago can be interpreted in a new way. "My instructions [to Mr. Folberg] were to create an informed image," Ms. Arison said. "He got under the skin of the artist, got to know them … studied the brushstrokes, studied the lighting."

The photographs serve both as an artistic documentary of Ms. Arison's discoveries and Mr. Folberg's own photographic interpretations of the Impressionists' work. He includes light-soaked images of the artists' homes, descendants, and habitats as they exist today. Yet he also takes the liberty of trying on each artist's eyes, using his camera as their paintbrush, and their history as his canvas. In the section about Renoir, Mr. Folberg's photographs possess the same translucent, glowing, sugar-sweet quality of Renoir's palette; as Ms. Arison waxes about Degas, he photographs modern-day jockeys as they awkwardly adjust their boots. "The photographs are what the Impressionists would have done in this time with photography," Ms. Arison said.

It is Ms. Arison's candid intertwining of her personal experience with her discoveries that breathe life into the book. Though she had not previously studied art history, she dived into the firsthand research with the fervor of a painter. Any lack of her background in art history only adds to the book; the excitement she finds in uncovering and weaving together the threads of the artists' lives becomes infectious.

The project began when Ms. Arison and her 15-year-old granddaughter were passing through the small village of Auvers-sur-Oise to visit the atelier of painter Charles-Francois Daubigny. Along the way, they stumbled upon Auberge Ravoux, the place of Van Gogh's death. Ms. Arison and her granddaughter were disappointed to find the atelier closed and locked tight. They were about to depart for Paris when they found the small inn-turned-museum where Van Gogh had staggered back to die after shooting himself in a nearby meadow.

She recalls: "I had fallen in love with a little village — fallen in love with a little inn … and a story about a man whose life had been so difficult."

In the desolate room where Van Gogh had slowly bled away his last hours, the artist's words from a letter to his brother hang framed on the wall: "One day or another, I believe that I will find a way to have an exhibition of my own in a café." Ms. Arison, whose husband passed away not long before she started the book, also found that the project became a catharsis during a time of deep pain in her own life. "Art healed me," she said.

"Here I was, in deep mourning … and the stories of these artists gave me so much consolation."

And that was true not just in the work, but in specific manuscripts she read, such as a note that Van Gogh wrote to his brother: "I may not conquer, but neither shall we be conquered; perhaps we exist neither for one thing nor for the other, but to give consolation or to prepare the way for a painting that will give even greater consolation." "The stories of these artists — there was consolation, there was healing," Ms. Arison said. "Even the artists who depict the craziest parts of our lives — Van Gogh's painting of Dr. Gachet, even Munch's 'The Scream' — the artists are saying, this is human, this is valid."

Just as she derived most of her knowledge from the original sources of the artists' lives (their homes and families), she bases most of her writings on letters written by the artists.