It has long been observed that Impressionists and their followers heeded Charles Baudelaire's call to paint modern life. Paris and the Countryside explores modernity, a cultural notion, with a parallel emphasis on the development of modernism, an art historical concept. Essays focus on the city and the countryside. Together they examine the notions of modernity and modernism in late nineteenth-century France, acknowledging, summarizing, and interpreting the wide array of artistic responses to the modern world.