Search results for ""author painters"

In photos, drawings and words, Sign Language pays homage to the lost art of urban outdoor sign painting. In a working environment both novel and ambitious, author John S. Paul found success, noting, "No other job gave me such a direct impact on the urban landscape, or such physical engagement. Painting signs over Broadway in 1984 was a rare look down from the elevated height of a heroic messenger." Few books have ever provided such an insider perspective into this unique livelihood of days past. In 40 photos and 30 poems and stories, the author creates an immersion into a rarefied world on danger and beauty, raising the sense of the importance of moments and blurring the boundary between public and private space.

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David Park (1911-1960), transplanted Bostonian turned ground-breaking West Coast painter, led the way in creating what became known as Bay Area Figurative Art - a daring move during the post-World War II years when abstract expressionism held sway. In this beautifully illustrated biography, compiled from comprehensive and sweeping interviews, Nancy Boas traces Park's resolute search for a new kind of figuration, one that would penetrate abstract expressionism's thickly layered surfaces and infuse them with human presence. Boas changes our understanding of Park as a painter, highlighting his strong influence on Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and other artists at the California School of Fine Arts and the University of California, Berkeley. She plunges us into the lively 1940s and 1950s Bay Area art scene, pointing to Park's work as a bold alternative to the abstractions of Clyfford Still. As the book deepens our admiration for Park's figurative paintings, it affirms his stature as a major figure in American art, one who spurred the figurative impulse across the United States and abroad.

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A compelling tale of art, love and war...A man lives alone in a watchtower by the sea. On the circular walls of the tower he is painting a grand mural - the timeless landscape of a battle. He is a former war photographer, and the painting is his attempt to capture the photo he was never able to take; to encapsulate, in an instant, the meaning of war. But one day a stranger knocks on his door and announces that he has come to kill him. The man is a shadow from his past, one of the myriad faces of war, and now the consequences of his actions are brought home to him. As the novel progresses, the story of both the soldier and the artist emerge, entwined with a doomed love affair, and the progress of a painting that is infused with the history of art.Intense and turbulent this is a book about art, war, love and the human capacity for both violence and empathy. It asks very profound questions about human nature and the role of the artist, but it is also has the intensity of a psychological thriller as the painter trades stories with the man who has come to kill him - like the Knight playing chess with Death in the Seventh Seal....

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With the rise of museums in the 19th century, including the formation in 1824 of the National Gallery in London, as well as the proliferation of widely available published reproductions, the art of the past became visible and accessible in Victorian England as never before. Inspired by the work of Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Diego Velázquez, and others, British artists elevated contemporary art to new heights through a creative process that emphasized imitation and emulation. Elizabeth Prettejohn analyzes the ways in which the Old Masters were interpreted by critics, curators, and scholars, and argues that Victorian artists were, paradoxically, at their most original when they imitated the Old Masters most faithfully. Covering the arc of Victorian art from the Pre-Raphaelites through to the early modernists, this volume traces the ways in which artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Orpen engaged with the art of the past and produced some of the greatest art of the later 19th century. Published in association with the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

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In this creative and engaging reading, Richard Kuhns explores the ways in which Decameron'ssexual themes lead into philosophical inquiry, moral argument, and aesthetic and literary criticism. As he reveals the stories' many philosophical insights and literary pleasures, Kuhns also examines Decameronin the context of the nature of storytelling, its relationship to other classic works of literature, and the culture of trecento Italy. Stories and storytelling are to be interpreted in terms of a wider cultural context that includes masks, metamorphosis, mythic themes, and character analysis, all of which Boccaccio explores with wit and subtlety. As a storyteller, Boccaccio represents himself as literary pimp, conceiving the relationship between storyteller and audience in sexual terms within a tradition that goes back as far as Socrates' conversations with the young Athenians. As a whole, Boccaccio's great collection of stories creates a trenchant criticism of the ideas that dominated his social and cultural world. Addressed as it is to women who were denied opportunities for education, the author's stories create a university of wise and culturally observant texts. He teaches that comic, religious, sexual, and artistic themes can be seen to function as metaphors for hidden and often dangerous unorthodox thoughts. Kuhns suggests that Decameronis one of the first self-conscious creations of what we today call "a total work of art." Throughout the stories, Boccaccio creates a detailed picture of the Florentine trecento cultural world. Giotto, Buffalmacco, and other great painters of Boccaccio's time appear in the stories. Their works and the paintings that surround the characters as they prepare to leave the plague-ridden city, with their representations of Dante, Aquinas, and other thinkers, are essential to understanding the ways the stories work with other works of art and illuminate and enlarge interpretations of Boccaccio's book.

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Another Fabulous Art History Thriller by the Bestselling Author of Oil and Marble, Featuring the Master of Renaissance Perfection: Raphael! Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling is one of the most iconic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here, in Raphael, Painter in Rome, Storey tells of its creation as never before: through the eyes of Michelangelo’s fiercest rival—the young, beautiful, brilliant painter of perfection, Raphael. Orphaned at age eleven, Raphael is determined to keep the deathbed promise he made to his father: become the greatest artist in history. But to be the best, he must beat the best, the legendary sculptor of the David, Michelangelo Buonarroti. When Pope Julius II calls both artists down to Rome, they are pitted against each other: Michelangelo painting the Sistine Ceiling, while Raphael decorates the pope's private apartments. As Raphael strives toward perfection in paint, he battles internal demons: his desperate ambition, crippling fear of imperfection, and unshakable loneliness. Along the way, he conspires with cardinals, scrambles through the ruins of ancient Rome, and falls in love with a baker’s-daughter-turned-prostitute who becomes his muse. With its gorgeous writing, rich settings, endearing characters, and riveting plot, Raphael, Painter in Rome brings to vivid life these two Renaissance masters going head to head in the deadly halls of the Vatican.

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Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life.Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.

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A Painter’s Lifeis a rare glimpse into the mind of an uncompromising painter. Mari Lyons was a life-long “every-day” painter and from an early journal she kept for a short time she reveals the heartbreaks, the pain of rejection, the intense and abiding love of her work, and the quiet triumphs of a painter juggling the demanding life of a mother of four, a busy husband, constant financial pressure; she had a fierce desire to make ever-better work, and for her work to become more visible in the world. Later talks she gave at the Munson William Proctor Institute and Rider University frame the journal entries with the aesthetic concepts that animate her work. This look at her inner life is made more palpable by a selection of more than eighty-five representative paintings in color, along with sketches and photographs. Mari studied with Max Beckmann as a teenager, and later at Bard College, Yale-Norfolk, and with Stanley William Hayter. Her early work received high praise in college and from her first exhibition at the Polari Gallery in Woodstock when she was nineteen and still a student. She married at twenty-one, had three children in as many years, and then moved from the Midwest to New York City, where her fourth child was born.At first influenced by the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s, she painted non-objectively but soon found the rich thingness of the world irresistible and her work developed into what she called “painterly figuration.” Her journals and notes reveal the intimate details of her long mediation between these two commitments. In time she exhibited regularly at the First Street Gallery in Chelsea and received praise in such places as The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Sun, Forbes FYI, and elsewhere. Today her paintings are in The Museum of the City of New York, The New York State Museum, Bard College, The Montana Historical Society, Mills, Wellesley, and Russell Sage colleges, The Montana Museum of Art, and many other museums and private collections.

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With Artist as Author, Christa Noel Robbins provides the first extended study of authorship in mid-20th century abstract painting in the US. Taking a close look at this influential period of art history, Robbins describes how artists and critics used the medium of painting to advance their own claims about the role that they believed authorship should play in dictating the value, significance, and social impact of the art object. Robbins tracks the subject across two definitive periods: the “New York School” as it was consolidated in the 1950s and “Post Painterly Abstraction” in the 1960s. Through many deep dives into key artist archives, Robbins brings to the page the minds and voices of painters Arshile Gorky, Jack Tworkov, Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, Sam Gilliam, and Agnes Martin along with those of critics such as Harold Rosenberg and Rosalind Krauss. While these are all important characters in the polemical histories of American modernism, this is the first time they are placed together in a single study and treated with equal measure, as peers participating in the shared late modernist moment.

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Irish-born designer Eileen Gray (1878-1976) is widely known today as a pioneer of both Art Deco and Modernism. In a career spanning nearly 80 years she produced innovative designs for furniture, lighting, carpets, interiors and architecture. Much less well known is that throughout her life as a designer and an architect she never stopped producing small paintings and drawings. This book is the first to focus on Eileen Gray's important but essentially private work as a painter.Eileen Gray considered herself a designer and an architect, not a painter: she viewed her work as a painter with great modesty, treating it as a private occupation and a vehicle for artistic expression during periods when she could not design furniture. Much of her artwork has disappeared, either lost in the Second World War or destroyed by the artist herself. But a body of works on paper, produced between the 1920s and the 1950s, has survived: elegant, geometric drawings and gouaches of muted tonality and subtle power.This book, which reproduces unseen material from the Eileen Gray archive and draws on Gray's correspondence with her niece Prunella Clough on the nature of painting, will be a revelation to her many followers and admirers.

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Even during the artist's lifetime, contemporary art lovers considered Rembrandt van Rijn to be an exceptional artist. In this revelatory sequel to the acclaimed Rembrandt: The Painter at Work, renowned Rembrandt authority Ernst van de Wetering investigates precisely why the artist, from a very early age, was praised by prominent connoisseurs. He argues that Rembrandt, from his very first endeavors in painting, embarked on a journey past all the foundations of the art of painting that, according to (up until now misinterpreted) contemporary written sources, were considered essential in the seventeenth century. Rembrandt never stopped searching for solutions to the pictorial problems that confronted him; this led over time to radical changes in course that can't simply be attributed to stylistic evolution or natural development. In a quest as rigorous and novel as the artist's, van de Wetering reveals how Rembrandt became the best painter the world had ever seen. Gorgeously illustrated throughout, this groundbreaking exploration reconstructs Rembrandt's closely guarded theories and methods, shedding new light both on the artist's exceptional accomplishments and on the practice of painting in the Dutch Golden Age. Published in association with Amsterdam University Press.

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This kid-friendly biography of esteemed Mexican painter Frida Kahlo uses a graphic novel format to tell the true story of the woman who led an artistic revolution.After an accident at age 18 dashed her dream of attending medical school and becoming a doctor, Frida Kahlo turned to painting as a form of therapy. Over the next few years, she developed an introspective and surrealist style that soon became a sensation in the art world. By incorporating aspects of Mexican folk art with deeply personal themes, Kahlo’s paintings revolutionized not only Mexican art but the very essence of what art could be. Frida Kahlo: Revolutionary Painter! is a biography of this groundbreaking artist, told in a full-color graphic novel format that will appeal to a wide audience.

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This story is part of Reading Champion, a series carefully linked to book bands to encourage independent reading skills, developed with Dr Sue Bodman and Glen Franklin of UCL Institute of Education (IOE).This traditional tale tells the story behind the Chinese proverb Draw the dragons, dot the eyes and the eye-dotting ceremony. A painter refuses to draw in the eyes of the dragons, but the Emperor will not listen...Reading Champion offers independent reading books for children to practise and reinforce their developing reading skills.Fantastic, original stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and a reading activity. Each book has been carefully graded so that it can be matched to a child''s reading ability, encouraging reading for pleasure.

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Diane Phelan's vibrant collection of Americana quilt paintings featuring a rainbow of quilts surrounded by flowers, cottages, barns, country stores and Amish country life are the inspiration for this spectacular quilting book. Diane's paintbrush is comparable to a threaded needle. From a collection of more than 90 painted quilts, eight have been adapted and are showcased with complete how-to instructions. Eight full-size quilts created in Diane's stunning colour palette Favourite patterns such as log cabin, double wedding ring, lone star, star flower, Dresden plate and basket blocks

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012 Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page. The memories are Safta's also. For the man is Augustin, son of the cook at the manor house which was Safta's family home. Born six months apart, they grew up with a connection that bypassed words. But while Augustin's world remained the same size Safta's expanded to embrace languages, society - and a fleeting love, one long, hot summer. But then came war, and in its wake a brutal Stalinist regime, and nothing would remain the same.

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A beautiful overview of fascinating paintings of the classical world and the Holy Land by a beloved American artist Frederic Church (1826–1900), one of the leading painters of 19th-century America and the Hudson River School, also journeyed around the globe to find fresh inspiration for his highly detailed compositions. Among Church’s lesser-known masterpieces are his paintings of the Middle East, Italy, and Greece, produced in the late 1860s through late 1870s, which explore themes of human history and achievement. Taking a closer look at this geographical and thematic shift in Church’s practice, this handsome book brings together the artist’s major paintings of Athens, Rome, Jerusalem, and the surrounding region. The essays concentrate on a set of six major paintings of architectural and archaeological marvels; one essay also spotlights Olana, Church’s home in New York State, which reflects the influence of Middle Eastern design. This impressive volume stands apart in its new approach to the artist’s work and its quest to determine why and how this quintessentially American figure was drawn to scenery and themes from the other side of the globe.Distributed for the Detroit Institute of ArtsExhibition Schedule:Detroit Institute of Arts (10/22/17–01/15/18)Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, NC (02/08/18–05/13/18)Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (06/03/18–08/26/18)

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Drawing on printed and archival sources, including Munch's extensive unpublished writings, Munch's Ibsen provides a comprehensive account of the connection between the two great Norwegian modernists. Situating the interlocking careers of Edvard Munch and Henrik Ibsen within Norway's cultural history, Joan Templeton establishes Ibsen's primordial importance for Munch as a pioneering modernist voice. She examines the over 400 illustrations Munch made of Ibsen's plays, one of the greatest homages a painter ever made to a writer, showing how Ibsen's imaginative universe was an essential and integral part of Munch's life and work as a whole. Templeton studies the illustrations as readings of Ibsen's plays and as examples of some of Munch's best work in various media: the witty, tender drawings of Peer Gynt; the eloquent oil sketches of Ghosts; the powerful woodcuts of The Pretenders; the sumptuous oil paintings of John Gabriel Borkman. She shows how some of the strongest of the illustrations result from Munch's accommodation of his own symbolic structures to Ibsen's text. She also demonstrates how Munch sometimes refigured Ibsen's texts to fit his own experiences and convictions in a process of reification that is as interesting as his fidelity. She offers a detailed analysis of Munch's famous portraits of Ibsen and a historical and analytical account of Munch's work on the Ibsen stage productions through which he painted himself into theatrical history. Munch's Ibsen will appeal to students of modern literature and art, art history, the history of the modern theatre, Scandinavian art and culture, and interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities.

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Julie Klassen Is the Gold Standard for Inspirational Regency Fiction Sophie Dupont, daughter of a portrait painter, assists her father in his studio, keeping her own artwork out of sight. She often walks the cliffside path along the north Devon coast, popular with artists and poets. It's where she met the handsome Wesley Overtree, the first man to tell her she's beautiful. Captain Stephen Overtree is accustomed to taking on his brother's neglected duties. Home on leave, he's sent to find Wesley. Knowing his brother rented a cottage from a fellow painter, he travels to Devonshire and meets Miss Dupont, the painter's daughter. He's startled to recognize her from a miniature portrait he carries with him--one of Wesley's discarded works. But his happiness plummets when he realizes Wesley has left her with child and sailed away to Italy in search of a new muse. Wanting to do something worthwhile with his life, Stephen proposes to Sophie. He does not offer love, or even a future together, but he can save her from scandal. If he dies in battle, as he believes he will, she'll be a respectable widow with the protection of his family. Desperate for a way to escape her predicament, Sophie agrees to marry a stranger and travel to his family's estate. But at Overtree Hall, her problems are just beginning. Will she regret marrying Captain Overtree when a repentant Wesley returns? Or will she find herself torn between the father of her child and her growing affection for the husband she barely knows?

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Rembrandt's paintings have been admired throughout centuries because of their artistic freedom. But Rembrandt was also a craftsman whose painting technique was rooted the tradition. This sweeping examination of Rembrandt's oeuvre is the result of a lifelong search for the artist's working methods, his intellectual approach to painting and the way in which his studio functioned. Ernst van de Wetering demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to tackle questions about authenticity and other art-historical issues. Approximately 350 illustrations, half of which are reproduced in colour, make this book into a monumental tribute to one of the worlds most important painters.

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Dealing with color is a complex topic: influenced by standards, fashions, and trends, we derive our ideas and concepts from color theories, intuition, and personal preferences. Most color classification systems available today are based on purely quantitative principles and include well over 1,500 colors. So how do we choose a particular color? Building on the success of the first edition, Katrin Trautwein presents a revised selection of 225 colors: new ones that develop a special beauty in the LED-light replaced some previous colors. Each color is presented with a handmade paint sample. Information on each color’s composition and origin is provided, and the features that distinguish it for architecture and design work are described.

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An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter is the story of a moment in the life of the German artist Johan Moritz Rugendas (1802-1858). Greatly admired as a master landscape painter, he was advised by Alexander von Humboldt to travel West from Europe to record the spectacular landscapes of Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. Rugendas did in fact become one of the best of the nineteenth-century European painters to venture into Latin America. However this is not a biography of Rugendas. This work of fiction weaves an almost surreal history around the secret objective behind Rugendas' trips to America: to visit Argentina in order to achieve in art the "physiognomic totality" of von Humboldt's scientific vision of the whole. Rugendas is convinced that only in the mysterious vastness of the immense plains will he find true inspiration. A brief and dramatic visit to Mendosa gives him the chance to fulfill his dream. From there he travels straight out onto the pampas, praying for that impossible moment, which would come only at an immense pricean almost monstrously exorbitant price that would ultimately challenge his drawing and force him to create a new way of making art. A strange episode that he could not avoid absorbing savagely into his own body interrupts the trip and irreversibly and explosively marks him for life.

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August Benziger was one of the most sought-after portrait painters of his time. His subjects ranged from Popes to princes, from presidents to businessmen. This biography brings us closer to his subjects who carried history from the 19th to the 20th century.

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First scholarly monograph devoted to Klee's poetry illuminates the reciprocity of poetry and painting in Klee's creative world and in early modernism. It is no coincidence that most of the artists at the vanguard of early 20th-century modernist art were poets as well as painters. Paul Klee (1879-1940) was among them. Known today almost exclusively as a visual artist, he was alsoa poet who experimented across a range of poetic forms. In 1901, while still vacillating between a career as a painter and one as a poet, Klee predicted he would end up expressing himself through the word, "the highest form of art." This first scholarly monograph devoted to Klee's poetry proposes that he lived up to that prediction. It considers poems he identified as such and visual images that are poetic in their compositional techniques, metaphorical imagery, and linear structures. It provides selected examples of Klee's poetry along with English translations that capture the spirit and literal meaning of the German originals. It places the poems and related images within the spectrum of contemporary poetic practice, revealing that Klee matched wits with Christian Morgenstern, rose to the provocations of Kurt Schwitters, and gave new form to the Surrealists' "exquisite corpses." Paul Klee, Poet/Painter is a case study in the reciprocity of poetry and painting in early modernist practice. It introduces a little-known facet of Klee's creative activity and re-evaluates his contributions to a modernist aesthetic. Kathryn Porter Aichele is Associate Professor in the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

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Rembrandt's intriguing painting technique stirred the imaginations of art lovers during his lifetime and has done so ever since. In this book, now revised, updated, and with a new foreword by the author, Rembrandt's pictorial intentions and the variety of materials and techniques he applied to create his fascinating effects are unraveled in depth. At the same time, this 'archaeology' of Rembrandt's paintings yields information on many other levels and offers a view of Rembrandt's daily practice and artistic considerations while simultaneously providing a more dimensional image of the artist.

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A compelling reconsideration of Rembrandt’s printed oeuvre based on new research into the artist’s life and work As a pioneering printmaker, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) stood apart from his contemporaries thanks to his innovative approach to composition and his skillful rendering of space and light. He worked with the medium as a vehicle for artistic expression and experimentation, causing many to proclaim him the greatest etcher of all time. Moreover, the dissemination of the artist’s prints outside of the Dutch Republic during his lifetime contributed greatly to establishing Rembrandt’s reputation throughout Europe. Sumptuously illustrated with comparative paintings and drawings as well as prints, this important volume draws on exciting new scholarship on Rembrandt's etchings. Authors Jaco Rutgers and Timothy J. Standring examine the artist’s prints from many angles. They reveal how Rembrandt intentionally varied the states of his etchings, printed them on exotic papers, and retouched prints by hand to create rarities for a clientele that valued unique impressions.Published in association with the Denver Art MuseumExhibition Schedule:Denver Art Museum (09/16/18–01/09/19)

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Siena of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was one of the great cities of Europe and its artists—Duccio, Simone Martini, and Ambrogio and Pietro Lorenzetti—were among those who reshaped the nature and place of painting first in Italy, then across Europe. Drawing on the extraordinary riches of Sienese archives, on early unpublished secondary sources, and on the recent work of historians, Hayden Maginnis situates early Sienese painters within their society and their city and provides the first comprehensive account of the economic, social, religious, and intellectual world of Siena’s artists. Where did painters live? How much were they paid? What was their social status? Were painters aware of the novel importance of thirteenth-century optics? Were the famous Sienese painters isolated figures, surrounded by a few secondary figures, or were they part of a larger community? These and a host of related questions structure Maginnis’s book, which demonstrates how firmly painters’ lives were embedded in the values and customs of their society and how important the particular character of their society was for the patronage artists received. The World of the Early Sienese Painter is the second volume of a trilogy Maginnis began with Painting in the Age of Giotto (1997). The third volume will turn from the broad social and cultural history of the present book to a history of early Sienese painting.

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Through Edgar Degas’s beloved paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Susan Goldman Rubin conveys the wonder and excitement of the ballet world. Degas is one of the most celebrated painters of the impressionist movement, and his ballerina paintings are among the most favorite of his fans. In his artwork, Degas captures every moment, from the relentless hours of practice to the glamour of appearing on stage, revealing a dancer’s journey from novice to prima ballerina. Observing young students, Degas drew their poses again and again, determined to achieve perfection. The book includes a brief biography of his entire life, endnotes, bibliography, where to see his paintings, and an index.

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Harold Harvey, a true son of Cornwall', has been one of the most under-rated and least written about members of the Newlyn School' of artists which flourished from 1880 to 1930. The son of a bank manager, he grew up in Penance, and after studying under Norman Garstin and a spell in Paris, he settled to a quiet life in Newlyn with fellow-artist Gertrude, painting The Cornwall he knowS from the inside.In his introductory essay, Professor Kenneth McConkey sets Harvey in the context of the art moments of the time, and shows how his early genre' paintings of rustic and marine life, so characteristic of the early Newlyn artists, gradually gave way to more sophisticated subject matter Harvey was noted for his sumptuous interiors and a flatter and more decorative style of painting. His early work might be compared with that of Stanhope Forbes, while his later paintings show clear affinities with those of fellow painters such as Laura Knight and Dod Procter.Professor McConkey's essay compleme

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Gustave Caillebotte was more than a painter: he collected postage stamps, designed and raced yachts, cultivated rare orchids, collected Impressionist masterpieces, and organised Impressionist exhibitions. Gustave Caillebotte as Worker, Collector, Painter presents the first comprehensive account of Caillebotte''s passions and achievements, and reveals for the first time their profound impact upon his art. Where previous studies have examined Caillebotte's interest in working men, this book develops earlier approaches by excavating Caillebotte's work on in its own terms, to understand what it meant to him. Caillebotte was born to an haute bourgeois milieu in which he was never entirely comfortable and so he refused the life of idle luxury that his inherited wealth afforded him. Instead, he actively sought out opportunities to work hard, and laboriously studied others hard at work. Working at a moment in which definitions of work and class were being reshaped to suit the nee

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This is a portrait of Diego Velázquez, from his arrival at the court of King Philip IV of Spain, to his death 38 years and scores of paintings later. It is a portrait of a relationship that is not quite a friendship, between an artist and his subject. It is a portrait of a ruler, always on duty, and increasingly burdened by a life of public expectation and repeated private grief. And it is a portrait of a court collapsing under the weight of its own excess. Unfolding through series of masterly set-pieces and glancing sketches, this is a novel of brilliance, imagination and sheer style -- about what is shown and what is seen, about art and life.

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'A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art' Nina Stibbe, author of Love, NinaA beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean.*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS' PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024*'We see with everything that we are'On the morning of 12 October 1654, a gunpowder explosion devastated the Dutch city of Delft. The thunderclap was heard over seventy miles away. Among the fatalities was the painter Carel Fabritius, dead at thirty-two, leaving only his haunting masterpiece The Goldfinch and barely a dozen known paintings. The explosion that killed him also buried his reputation, along with answers to the mysteries of his life and career.What happened to Fabritius before and after this disaster is just one of the discoveries in a book that explores the relationship between art and life, interweaving the lives of Laura Cumming, her Scottish painter father, who also died too young, and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age.This is a book about what a picture may come to mean: how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap.**A SUNDAY TIMES, DAILY EXPRESS AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023**'Brilliant ... rush out and buy it' Edmund de Waal, bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

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Chronicling the author’s 10,000-mile “Great Lakes Circle Tour,” this travel memoir seeks to answer a burning question: Is there a Great Lakes culture, and if so, what is it? Largely associated with the Midwest, the Great Lakes region actually has a culture that transcends the border between the United States and Canada. United by a love of encased meats, hockey, beer, snowmobiling, deer hunting, and classic-rock power ballads, the folks in Detroit have more in common with citizens in Windsor, Ontario, than those in Wichita, Kansas—while Toronto residents have more in common with Chicagoans than Montreal's population. Much more than a typical armchair travel book, this humorous cultural exploration is filled with quirky people and unusual places that prove the obscure is far more interesting than the well known.

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Though his father had faced bankruptcy, James Clarke Hook (1819–1907) nevertheless managed to paint himself into country-gentlemanhood, becoming famous for his landscapes of British coastal scenes and his ability to evoke not just the sights but also the sounds and even the smell of the sea.James Clarke Hook, Juliet McMaster’s lively biography of the brilliant but underappreciated Victorian painter, brings the reader through Hook’s rigorous training at the Royal Academy Schools, his travelling studentship in Florence and Venice, and his work as a historical painter, to the discovery of his métier as a painter of contemporary rural and coastal scenes. Part of the secret of Hook’s success was his resolution to paint the final large canvas of his seascapes onsite, braving wind and weather – for which he invented an easel that was adaptable to uneven terrain. McMaster’s research led her to retrace the painter’s footsteps to the rocky headlands and sheltered bays where, over a hundred years ago, Hook had set up his easel to capture the tang of sea. McMaster connects Hook, an academician for half a century, with the major figures and movements of Victorian art – including the Pre-Raphaelites John Everett Millais and Holman Hunt, the etcher Samuel Palmer, and the painter and sculptor G.F. Watts.James Clarke Hook worked alongside the fishermen and rural families who populate and enliven his canvases; this book reinvigorates our understanding of his artistic process and unique sense of place.

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'This was utterly brilliant and satisfying. Yumi and the Nightmare Painter will be the best of the secret project novels, and it is easily one of Sanderson's finest books in his career' Novel NotionsFrom Number 1 New York Times bestselling author Brandon Sanderson - creator of The Stormlight Archive, the Mistborn Saga, and countless bestselling works of science fiction and fantasy - comes this gripping story set in the Cosmere universe told by Hoid, where two people from incredibly different cultures must work together to save their worlds from certain disaster.Yumi has spent her entire life in strict obedience, granting her the power to summon the spirits that bestow vital aid upon her society - but she longs for even a single day as a normal person. Painter patrols the dark streets dreaming of being a hero - a goal that has led to nothing but heartache and isolation, leaving him always on the outside looking in. In their own ways, both of them face the world alone.Suddenly flung together, Yumi and Painter must strive to right the wrongs in both their lives, reconciling their past and present while maintaining the precarious balance of each of their worlds. If they cannot unravel the mystery of what brought them together before it's too late, they risk forever losing not only the bond growing between them, but the very worlds they've always struggled to protect.******Praise for Brandon Sanderson'Epic in every sense' The Guardian on The Way of Kings'Brandon Sanderson's reputation is finally as big as his novels' The New York Times on Words of Radiance'If you're a fan of fantasy and haven't read the Mistborn trilogy yet, you have no excuses' Forbes on Mistborn

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