This important publication accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, London, of paintings by Edvard Munch, one of the world's greatest modern artists. The exhibition and catalogue showcase 18 major works from the collection of KODE Art Museums in Bergen. The works span the most significant part of Munch's artistic development and have never before been shown as a group outside of Scandinavia
One of Britain's most important and influential painters, Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) is justly celebrated for his dynamic portraiture, his poignant 'fancy pictures', his ambitious history paintings and his role as the first President of Britain's Royal Academy.
Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Wallace Collection, this catalogue provides a fresh perspective on the artist, focusing on his innovative, often highly experimental approaches to the practice and materials of painting.
Building on the many discoveries made during a four-year research project into the outstanding collection of the artist's works at the Wallace Collection, Joshua Reynolds: Experiments in Paint investigates his radical manipulation of pigments, oils, glazes and varnishes. It traces his experiments with colour, tone and handling, reveals his continual temptation to rework and revise his pictures, and illuminates his highly creative responses to the new exhibition culture of his day. It also suggests the extent to which the artist's work was founded upon a radical agenda of pictorial assemblage, in which he mixed anew the motifs, narratives and visual effects he drew from in the great art of the past. Finally, it demonstrates how Reynolds's innovations as a painter were often the product of collaboration - in part, with his assistants and his students, but, more importantly, with his patrons and subjects, with whom he continually explored the possibilities of gesture, expression, performance and role-play.
Seven essays by leading scholars, curators and conservators, situate Reynolds's practice of experimentation - of both technique and of subject - in relation to those conducted at leading societies of science and learning at the time, and specifically to Josiah Wedgwood, one of Enlightenment Britain's greatest experimentalists in the arts. Technical analysis of some of his most important paintings will be revelatory, and close-up photography and detailed entries on a range of Reynolds's pictures - at the centre of which are the Wallace Collection's own collection of works by the artist - will shed light on the fascinating and ongoing process of experimentation that spanned the Reynolds's entire career.
This work, published on the 94th birthday of Diana Scarisbrick, honours her extraordinary career as the 'world's leading jewellery historian'. Twenty scholars, most of whom have known and benefited from Scarisbrick's vast knowledge over many decades, have contributed essays to this book. Liber Amicorum centres around the historian to which it is dedicated, Diana Scarisbrick. The work of the twenty contributors owes much to her own pioneering research in the feeled of jewellery history. The book opens with a brief biographical summary of Scarisbrick's life before exploring her assiduous work in the field of jewellery history. A subsequent bibliography of Scarisbrick's career work is provided which includes articles, interviews, and books published from 1970 to the present day, and serves as evidence of her eminence. The work as a whole functions as a 'small token of appreciation for all that she has contributed to the world of jewellery history'. The essays in this publication cover topics that range from Roman jewellery to the contemporary production of jewellery. Not constrained by a focus on one particular time period, these essays are indicative of the breadth of influence that Diana Scarisbrick's career has had. Contributions cover several different themes: amongst the objects discussed are gems, rings, chalices, bindings and crown jewels. The themes covered include jewel theft, methods of jewellery production, and the collections of individuals. Throughout each essay the insightful historical research of the contributors is beautifully supported by high quality illustrations. These bring the book to life, highlighting the splendour and fragility of some of the objects that are discussed.
Dagmar Korbacher with essays by Stephanie Buck and Frauke Steenbock and additional contributions by Beatrice Alai and Georg Josef Dietz In 1882 the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett (Prints and Drawings Museum) acquired, from the collection of the Duke of Hamilton, Sandro Botticelli's spectacular series of drawings on parchment illustrating scenes from Dante's 'Divine Comedy'. It also acquired nearly all the items in the duke's priceless collection of illuminated manuscripts. The wider British public only became aware of these masterpieces when rumours of the Berlin museum's attempts to woo the Scottish duke started circulating in the press. No less than Queen Victoria and her daughter, wife of the German crown prince, appealed for these treasures to remain in the UK. In spite of their efforts, the Berlin museum pulled off a sensational coup in acquiring the Hamilton collection. Since then the Botticelli drawings and the splendid Hamilton manuscripts have formed the cornerstone of the Kupferstichkabinett's collection and are regarded as amongst the very greatest treasures of the Berlin State Museums.
Accompanying an exhibition that brings back to the UK some of the greatest of the former Hamilton treasures, this book includes no less than thirty of Botticelli's exquisite 'Dante drawings'. The series is of the highest order of importance and rarity, and this book will be an exceptional opportunity to explore the great Renaissance master's interpretation of one of the canonical texts of world literature. Ten drawings will be included from each of the three 'books' or realms of the Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The drawings will be accompanied by an extraordinary selection of illuminated manuscripts from the time of Botticelli, including the monumental 'Hamilton Bible'. Acknowledged to be one of the most important illuminated manuscripts in the world, this splendid princely volume is depicted in Raphael's portrait of Pope Leo X. It has not been lent anywhere for 17 years and has never returned to the UK since it left in 1882. The Dante series will be further enhanced by the Courtauld Gallery's own collection, which includes the master's large altarpiece of The Holy Trinity with Saints John and Mary Magdalene, dating to the same years as the Dante series.
Bibliophile treasures of the highest calibre, all the works in this dazzling group are created by the best artists of their day for illustrious patrons, members of the leading families of Italy - the Medici, the Sforza and the kings of Naples. The manuscripts' splendid variety and luminous colours exemplify what Dante termed the «smiling pages» when describing, in his Commedia, the art of manuscript illumination which so captured the public imagination in 19th century.
One of the masterpieces of The Courtauld Gallery's collection of Spanish drawings is a sheet known as Cantar y bailar (Singing and dancing), page 3 from Goya's Album D, also known as the 'Witches and Old Women' album.
Bringing together all the extant album pages, currently numbered up to 23, this catalogue proposes a reconstruction of the album that would include the sheets from which Goya's page numbers have been erased or trimmed away.
Goya began to create 'journal albums' of drawings relatively late in life, after the shattering illness that left him stone deaf before the age of fifty. It was a practice he would sustain until his death, creating eight albums (named with letters A to H) that originally included a total of some 550 drawings. Visually, technically and intellectually coherent, these albums are unified in their discrete techniques and types of support, and paginated (after the first). In these album pages Goya committed to paper his views, with or without written comments, on human nature and the world around him. Each album has its own distinctive subject matter, style and technique.
The later history of the eight albums, already expertly chronicled, remains under investigation. The disbound album sheets were remounted in large volumes by Goya's son, then sold en bloc by his grandson. Following their final dispersal by Federico de Madrazo and Valentín Carderera in the 1860s and 1870s, many gaps remain in all the albums.
This exhibition and the research underpinning it on Album D are the pilot for an international project for the reconstruction of Goya's graphic oeuvre. The publication will test the extent of Album D and explore the possible sequence and thematic coherence of the sheets. The individual Album D drawings will be reproduced as a proposed reconstructed sequence, each with detailed catalogue entry and technical information. In addition, the publication will define the context of the album by including a number of closely related works by Goya.
By 1750 Britain was - as author Jacqueline Riding shows - at peace with her traditional enemy, France, and had finally extinguished the threat from the Catholic Jacobites. The art of William Hogarth - particularly his great canvas O The Roast Beef of Old England of 1749 - duly reflected this new sense of security and pride in being British. The economy was booming. Trade was expanding. And newly-confident Britons were no longer looking to Italy or France for their cultural exemplars, particularly in the field of architectural design.
It was the ferment of activity, the eclectic building boom which underlines Britain's wealth and optimism, and which marks the nation out as the new Venice, which is the real subject of Canaletto's great canvases. Almost all of Canaletto's views focused on a new architectural commission or a recent urban development, and were specifically designed to celebrate the latest achievements of British architecture and engineering. The Italian master was not alone. The vigorous and infectious patriotism of his works mirrored emerging nationalistic trends in popular culture during the 1740s, a decade which witnessed the canonization of William Shakespeare as a British hero, the creation of Handel's Messiah and Arne's immortal 'Rule Britannia', and, as Oliver Cox shows, the propagation of the nationalistic cult of King Alfred - and, more bizarrely, of the 'flying king' Bladud in Bath.
As Pat Hardy explains, the presence of a significant group of artists working in London prior to Canaletto's arrival, led by Samuel Scott, along with the strength of existing artistic practices and traditions and the vibrant print market for maps and surveys of London, suggests that the impact of the arrival of Canaletto was more complicated than may have previously been perceived.
At the same time, Canaletto's legacy survived throughout the eighteenth century, in the hands of native artists such as William Marlow.
Ce somptueux catalogue, accompagnant l'exposition à la galerie Philip Mould & Company, raconte l'histoire du grand attachement que Vanessa Bell et Duncan Grant portaient à leur maison de Charleston Farmhouse et présente le travail produit par les artistes entre les deux guerres mondiales. Cette magnifique collection d'oeuvres est merveilleusement présentée aux côtés d'essais éclairant et illustrés, d'un entretien et d'un catalogue complet.
Accompanying a landmark exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, this book examines the remarkable drawings made by Dürer as a young man from 1490 to 1495, especially those made during his journeyman years, or Wanderjahre - considered the final part of a craftsman's training - and a second shorter trip which immediately followed and seems to have brought the artist to Italy. These trips form the framework for the book, which focuses on the young artist's figure studies and has at its heart the Courtauld Gallery's double-sided drawing of a Wise Virgin and Two studies of the artist's left leg. This superbly ambitious work serves as a springboard to explore in depth the role of drawing at this stage of Dürer's career. It allows us to address a series of crucial questions: how Dürer formed 'his hand', how he responded to artistic challenges presented by contemporary and earlier art (both on a stylistic and an iconographic level), how his pursuit of professional success was linked with the quest for an individual artistic identity, and how the strategy of recording his own creative achievements in drawings dovetails with his claim for a new status for the artist in his city.
The scholarly and beautifully illustrated catalogue is introduced with five essays by distinguished experts. Stephanie Buck examines the documentary evidence and attempts to reconstruct the motivations and activities of Dürer's travels as a young man. David Freedberg discusses Dürer's obsessive observation and recording of himself in portraits and in studies of his limbs. These represent the first critical steps in the artist's developing understanding of the body, and of the ways in which its movements could not just show emotion, but rouse the equivalent sense of torsion, tension and pathos in the bodies and minds of his viewers. Stephanie Porras looks at Dürer's copies of drawings or prints circulating in Nuremberg workshops or acquired during the Wanderjahre, which were used as a means of seeking inspiration, of challenging himself to draw more sophisticated figures and dynamic compositions.
Michael Roth asks the question of how the three strands of the art of the line - drawing, engraving and woodcut - structurally correspond in Dürer's work and, consequently, how drawing merges with certain manual aspects of printing. A final essay presents new technical research on Dürer's early drawings undertaken collaboratively in a number of leading collections of the artist's work, and aims to enrich our understanding of the young Dürer's approach to the medium of drawing.
This richly illustrated and beautifully produced scholarly catalogue of the superlative collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronze figurative statuettes from the Hill Collection, accompanies an exhibition of the collection at The Frick Collection, New York opening late January 2014.
Spanning from 1470-1740, the bronzes presented are of exceptional quality and exemplify the development of bronze statuettes from 1470 in Renaissance Italy to their dissemination across the artistic centres of Europe. The Hill Collection is distinguished by rare, autograph masterpieces by Italian sculptors such as Andrea Riccio and Giambologna, and has the most important collection of Baroque bronzes by Giuseppe Piamontini in the world. Its holdings of works by Giambologna and his school is the strongest found in any single collection, with the sole exception of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence, and evokes the splendour of the late Renaissance courts, while the richness of the international Baroque is represented by religious themes by Alessandro Algardi, northern bronzes by Adriaen de Vries and Hubert Gerhard, and a remarkable assemblage of French 116th-and early 17thcentury bronzes in the classical mode, by Barthélemy Prieur and from the circle of Ponce Jacquiot.
The Hill Collection reveals the range of artistry, invention and technical refinement characteristic of sculptures created when the tradition of the European statuette was at its height.
The catalogue includes detailed biographies of each of the artists represented, and is introduced with essays by the distinguished authors. Patricia Wengraf is one of the world's leading dealers in bronzes, sculpture and works of art, and in her particular speciality, bronzes of the 15th-18th centuries, her knowledge and connoisseurship are of world repute. Denise Allen is Curator of Renaissance Paintings and Sculpture at the Frick Collection. Claudia Kryza-Gersch, formerly Kunstkammer, Vienna, is an independent scholar renowned for her studies of North Italian bronzes of the 16th and 17th centuries. Dimitrios Zikos, Florence, an independent scholar is renowned for his knowledge of the Florentine archives from c. 1550-1740, he has curated many exhibitions at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
The self-portrait of Baccio Bandinelli in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, shows the sculptor pointing not to a work of marble or bronze, but to a drawing.
Bandinelli was particularly proud of his skills as a draughtsman, and he was prolific in his production of works on paper. This set him apart from contemporaries in his profession;
Many Renaissance sculptors left us no drawings at all. Accompanying an exhibition at the Gardner Museum, this publication will put Bandinelli's portrait in context by looking at the practice of drawing by sculptors from the Renaissance to the Baroque in Central Italy.
A focus of the book will be Bandinelli's own drawings and the development of his practice across his career and his experimentation with different media. Bandinelli's drawings will be compared with those of Michelangelo and Cellini. The broader question considered, however, is when, how and why sculptors drew. Every Renaissance sculptor who set out to make a work in metal or stone would first have made a series of preparatory models in wax, clay and/or stucco. Drawing was not an essential practice for sculptors in the way it was for painters, and indeed, most surviving sculptors' drawings are not preparatory studies for works they subsequently executed in three dimensions.
By comparing both rough sketches and more finished drawings with related threedimensional works by the same artists, the importance of drawing for various individual sculptors will be examined.
When sculptors did draw, it often indicated something about the artist's training or about his ambitions. Among the most accomplished draftsmen were artists like Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio and Cellini, who had come to sculpture by way of goldsmithery, a profession that required proficiency in ornamental design. Artists who sought to become architects, meanwhile - the likes of Michelangelo, Giambologna and Ammanati - similarly needed to learn to draw, since architects had to provide plans, elevations and other drawings to assistants and clients and had to imagine the place of individual figures within a larger multi-media ensemble. Certain kinds of projects, moreover - fountains and tombs, for example - required drawings to a degree that others did not. Sections on the Renaissance goldsmith-sculptor and sculptor-architect will allow comparison of the place drawing had in various artists' careers.
Beginning with a chapter dedicated to the importance of draftsmanship in the education of sculptors, showing works by Finiguerra, Cellini Bandinelli and Giambologna, the book will be split up into chapters dealing with the various challenges sculptors faced while drawing objects in the round, reliefs, and architectural structures. A central section will focus on Bandinelli, demonstrating the importance drawing held for him while he was preparing sculptures and as an independent token of his artistry.
When English naturalist Joseph Banks (1743-1820) accompanied Captain James Cook (1728-1779) on his historic mission into the Pacifi c, the Endeavour voyage of 1768-1771, he took with him a team of collectors and illustrators. They returned with unprecedented collections of artefacts and specimens of stunning birds, fi sh and other animals as well as thousands of plants, most seen for the fi rst time in Europe.
They produced, too, remarkable landscape and fi gure drawings of the peoples encountered on the voyage along with detailed journals and descriptions of the places visited, which, with the fi rst detailed maps of these lands (Tahiti, New Zealand and the East Coast of Australia), were afterwards used to create lavishly illustrated accounts of the mission. These caused a storm of interest in Europe where plays, poems and satirical caricatures were also produced to celebrate and examine the voyage, its personnel and many 'new' discoveries.
Along with contemporary portraits of key personalities aboard the ship, scale models and plans of the ship itself, scientifi c instruments taken on the voyage, commemorative medals and sketches, the objects (over 140) featured in this new book will tell the story of the Endeavour voyage and its impact ahead of the 250th anniversary in 2018 of the launch of this seminal mission.Artwork made both during and after the voyage will be seen alongside actual specimens. And by comparing the voyage originals with the often stylized engravings later produced in London for the offi cial account, the book will investigate how knowledge gained on the mission was gathered, revised and later received in Europe. Items separated in some cases for more than two centuries will be brought together to reveal their fascinating history not only during but since that mission. Original voyage specimens will feature together with illustrations and descriptions of them, showing a rich diversity of newly discovered species and how Banks organized this material, planning but ultimately failing to publish it. In fact, many of the objects in the book have never been published before.
The book will focus on the contribution of Banks's often neglected artists - Sydney Parkinson, Herman Diedrich Spöring, Alexander Buchan as well as the priest Tupaia, who joined Endeavour in the Society Islands - none of whom survived the mission. These men illustrated island scenes of bays, dwellings, canoes as well as the dress, faces, possessions and ceremonies of Pacifi c peoples. Of particular interest, and only recently recognised as by him, are the original artworks of Tupaia, who produced as part of this mission the fi rst charts and illustrations on paper by any Polynesian. The surviving Endeavour voyage illustrations are the most important body of images produced since Europeans entered this region, matching the truly historic value of the plant specimens and artefacts that will be seen alongside them.
Children have always fascinated artists and Painting Childhood will explore some of the most iconic paintings of children produced over the past 500 years. Featuring stunning portraits, amusing genre scenes and touching 'fancy pictures', the book will examine both the creative process and the specifi c challenges posed by painting children: from how to capture the fl eeting moments of youth to how to encourage young subjects to sit still.
Accompanying the exhibitions Painting Childhood: From Holbein to Freud and Childhood Now, the book will discuss a wealth of masterpieces from British collections by artists including Hans Holbein the Younger, Anthony van Dyck, Jan Steen, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Johan Zoff any and John Everett Millais. These iconic paintings will be considered alongside the preparatory sketches that were made for them and the works that were made after them in an exploration of the creative process and the artistic 'conversations' that occurred throughout the centuries.
Painting Childhood will also explore 'intimate portraits' - artist's portrayals of their own children. Paintings, sketches and sculptures by Stanley Spencer, Louise Bourgeois, Jacob Epstein and Lucian Freud, among others, present highly personal insights into the place of family within an artist's life, and the ongoing dialogue between biography and creativity.
This theme extends to the present day, and the work of three contemporary fi gurative painters - Chantal Joff e, Mark Fairnington and Matthew Krishanu. Drawn to children as subjects, each of these London-based artists depict childhood in very diff erent ways.
Together, they provide fresh perspectives on what constitutes childhood today and reaffi rm the place of painting as a diverse and powerful artistic practice.
One of the fi nest collections of Impressionism anywhere in the world was assembled by the English industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947).
During the 1920s, Courtauld acquired seminal works by all of the major Impressionists, from Renoir's early masterpiece La Loge to Manet's last great work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. His collection grew to include such iconic works as Gauguin's great Tahitian nude Nevermore and one of Van Gogh's most famous paintings, Self- Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Courtauld was particularly devoted to Cézanne and put together the largest collection of his work in the United Kingdom, including the epic Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine and one of the celebrated Card Players. After a decade of collecting, Courtauld gave the majority of these remarkable works to establish The Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery in London.
This will be the fi rst time that Samuel Courtauld's collection has been shown in Paris in over 60 years. The landmark exhibition will bring together masterpieces from The Courtauld Gallery alongside works formerly in Courtauld's collection and now dispersed internationally. It will be a unique opportunity to enjoy some of the greatest modern French paintings of the 19th century and will shed light on Courtauld's pioneering role in shaping public taste for Impressionism in the United Kingdom.
The lavishly illustrated catalogue presents new research on the personality of Samuel Courtauld as well as his taste, collecting habits and wide-ranging philanthropy.
It also explores afresh his network of dealers and places him within the wider context of contemporary collectors of Impressionism throughout Europe and the United States. The exhibition features almost a hundred works, each given its own entry and enhanced with close-up images and comparative illustrations to provide an in-depth exploration of this extraordinary collection.
An unparalleled collection of 41 rings dating from the 3rd to the 19th century, presented not chronologically but rather grouped into timeless themes - birth, marriage, everyday life, death and eternity - thereby achieving greater insight about the beliefs, sentiments, status, and practices of their former owners.
Since his first purchase in 1970, Benjamin Zucker has assembled one of the largest collections of Jewish marriage rings in private hands and a collection of diamond jewellery that is unrivalled, even by De Beers. With each ring selected for its exceptional quality of stones, rarity, and level of artistry, the collection features many fine examples of signet rings ranging from the 3rd to the 17th century;
Ancient Roman friendship and engagement rings; medieval posy rings; Renaissance and Baroque wedding rings; Jewish marriage rings, and memorial and death's head memento mori rings from the 17th to the 19th century. They include a significant grouping of precious diamond-set rings. Many boast provenances dating back generations to Europe's most prominent collecting families, including the de Clercqs and the Rothschilds. In this remarkable book, these rings are newly studied by experts, including an essay by Zucker himself.
Ultimately, these exquisite jewels - many of which have been the subject of national and international museum exhibitions, loans, and publications - form a remarkable testament to the discerning eye of Benjamin Zucker.
