James Rubin is one of the world's foremost specialists in the history, theory, and criticism of nineteenth-century avant-garde European Art, especially that of France. His interests are interdisciplinary, with special attention to cultural history, art and politics, and art and philosophy. Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he was taken by his mother to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum at a young age. He was educated at Phillips Academy Andover, where he discovered the Addison Gallery, and Yale (B.A.), where he first discovered art history. From there, and during the Vietnam War, he went to Paris to study at the Institut d'Art et d'Archéologie of the Sorbonne (license-ès-lettres in art history), returning to Harvard University for his PhD (1972). He has taught at Harvard, Boston University, Princeton University, The Cooper Union, and Stony Brook, the State University of New York, from which he is now retired. He has published over 70 articles and essays on subjects ranging from the eighteenth century to the present. He has given over 80 public lectures in North America, Western and Eastern Europe, and Asia. He is the author of 16 published books on Impressionism and on artists such as Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Paul Cezanne. Several of these have been translated into other languages, including French, Greek, Korean, Japanese, and Dutch. He travels frequently, speaks fluent French, and lives in Manhattan, New York and Mittelbergheim, Alsace. He is a dual national, married to Liliane Béatrix Braesch of Strasbourg, France. Their son, Henry-Alex, is a cineéaste for Smuggler and a winner of an Oscar nomination and many other awards. Their daughter, Delphine McNeill, is a fashionista and co-founder of Livotte Tops, Ltd. In London. Their Boston Terrier's name is Texas Pete.