Search results for ""Pallas Athene Publishers""

Funny and wry, McCue chronicles the little linguistic nonsenses with which the baboons betray themselves - Quentin LettsA sequel to the highly popular first volume, Postings, 2 supplies yet more linguistic and social absurdities by editor and bibliophile Jim McCue, best known for his edition, with Christopher Ricks, of T. S. Eliot's poetry. Elegantly presented and an ideal small gift, this volume complements McCue's wit with even more delightful, historical printers' decorations from over the centuries.Also available: Postings, ISBN 9781843682424

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A collection of absurdities, many online, gleefully collected by the editor and bibliophile Jim McCue, best known for his edition (with Christopher Ricks) of Eliot's poetry. Elegantly presented and an ideal small Christmas present.

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At the age of 48, when she moved to the Isle of Wight, Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was given a camera by her daughter: "It might amuse you, Mother, to try to photograph during your solitude at Freshwater." The gift was to begin Cameron’s short but prolific career as one of photography’s first great artists. "From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour, and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour." The modern interest in Cameron’s photography began with the pioneering 1926 book by her great-niece Virginia Woolf and art critic Roger Fry. Their essays and the original plates are reprinted here, together with Cameron’s own account of her life in photography, Annals of My Glass House, her only surviving poem, On a Portrait, and an introduction by Tristram Powell. Thirty-nine plates and other illustrations have been added, including many of Cameron’s most famous images.

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Fully revised and updated edition, now in full colour and with two new chapters: Brunoy and Parc Saint Cloud. The spectacular medieval castle where Henry V died, Napoleon’s private château, dancing in fifties guinguette cafés, a Victorian gunpowder factory – these are just some of the unexpected delights discovered by Annabel Simms just half an hour from Paris. Following the format of her small classic, An Hour from Paris, and written with the same delight in the little-known treasures of the Île de France, the revised edition of Half an Hour from Paris now presents twelve new destinations easy to reach from central Paris, each with a carefully planned walk, ample meanderings through the cultural, historical and social milieu, comprehensive practical information and clear, detailed maps.

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Written by his collateral descendant, sculptor Andrew Wordsworth, this insightful biography studies Wordsworth's poetry to understand more fully this deeply private and often enigmatic personality, and it observes the artist's life to better grasp the meaning of the deceptively immediate verses which conceal many layers of meaning. Andrew Wordsworth doesn't hesitate to describe faithfully his illustrious ancestor's complex and aloof personality, and his successes as well as his shortcomings. For example, he explains how after The Prelude (completed in 1805 but published posthumously) he composed little of note and his project with Coleridge, The Recluse, remained a literary pipe-dream. Perhaps, Wordsworth himself was the 'Recluse', increasingly isolated, ensconced in his bucolic corner in the Lake District, surrounded by his close family circle (the harem, as Coleridge called it): his sister Dorothy, his constant companion, and later his wife Mary and his daughters - tragically, Dorothy was to be afflicted by a mental illness for the last 20 years of her life. Moreover, Wordsworth became progressively conservative and nationalistic, abandoning entirely his earlier liberal ideals which led him to join the French revolutionaries several years earlier. One wonders if this need for a settled and steady life and for tradition was a reaction to the many upheavals he had experienced in his early life; he was orphaned as a young child and grew up separated from his brothers and sisters: he didn't see Dorothy for nine consecutive years. However, this lack of interest in the outside world and its progress was perhaps one of the causes stemming the flow of his creativity which nonetheless would change the course of English poetry forever. As Dr David Whitley notes, Well-Kept Secrets intersperses the narrative exploring Wordsworth's life with a wealth of poetic verses. This structure clearly shows how Wordsworth's art was intimately linked to his existence and how it was a means - more or less conscious - to come to terms with the world, with himself and the many contradictions running like chasms across his personality. It also enables Andrew Wordsworth to shed some new light on the interpretation of the poetry and to better understand the poet as a man.

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In this little book for children, first made in 1793, William Blake charted the course of human life and experience in eighteen enigmatic emblems. Twenty-five years later, he revisited the book, adding three plates of explication and some captions. It remains one of his most accessible, yet disconcerting works.

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In the year of the bicentenary of John Ruskin's birth, Suzanne Fagence Cooper documents the astonishing revival of interest in Ruskin's ideas and values. In his own day, he was revered as a pioneering art critic - champion of J M W Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites - as well as an artist, educator and campaigner. However, by the mid-20th century, his views seemed outmoded, relegated to the footnotes of historical debate. The Ruskin Revival: 1969-2019 celebrates the re-engagement with his radical world-view. Beginning with a conference held in 1969 at Ruskin's last home, Brantwood in the Lake District, this study charts the renewed fascination with his biography, as well as Ruskin's role in reshaping discussions about the environment, criticism and arts education. It also documents the afterlife of Ruskin's letters and paintings, through exhibitions and catalogues. The struggle to secure his inheritance - both his archive in the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, and his home at Brantwood - makes a fitting last chapter to the tale. Whether we see him as a prophet, teacher, philanthropist or artist, Ruskin's life and work seem to have become more urgent, 200 years after his birth.

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Never reprinted since their first, posthumous appearance in 1935, these woodcuts were the only printed versions of his work to receive Rodin's full approval. Mostly self-educated, Rodin was a passionate re-reader of his favourite books, and Ovid's Love Elegies occupied a special place in his imagination. These woodcut illustrations were taken from the astonishingly free and improvisatory life drawings he made in his later years. For many people these are the most entrancing manifestation of his genius. Privately published in 1939 in a very strictly limited edition, these 31 beautiful images are very rarely seen. This edition marries Rodin's illustrations to Christopher Marlowe's glittering translation, which was ceremonially burnt by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1599.

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Written by the art dealer and friend who was among the first to recognise Rousseau's importance, these Recollections present a movingly personal portrait of the artist known as Le Douanier (the Customs Officer).

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The last work of Burne-Jones: a series of woodcut illustrations to the first chapters of Genesis, making a perfect epitome of his art. Reprinted from the original edition of 1902.

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The brilliance of Peter Paul Rubens' career changed forever the perceptions of painting and painters. Here was a man whose astonishing gifts were allied to a personality so cosmopolitan, engaging, and virtuous that he could mingle as easily with kings as with fellow painters. Rubens' character and achievements fascinated his contemporaries, and these three biographies of the artist show the impact of his life and art on three very different observers. Baglione, an Italian painter and art historian, records the remarkable success of Rubens visits to Rome; Sandrart, a German painter, writes on the later years of his career; and de Piles, one of the greatest early art critics, offers an evaluation of Rubens style that remains one of the most influential ever written.

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"...his stories are always interesting, lively and well written, giving an insight to the art world as he experienced it." — Literary Review Julian Spalding's career as a curator and creator of museums was amongst the most controversial and effective of his time. In this collection of essays and memoirs he revisits some of the important events and battles of the last 40 years, when he spearheaded resistance to the cult of conceptual art being promoted from the centre. Witty, illuminating, coruscating and blazingly intelligent, this book is a vital guide to the ways in which we consume art today, for good or ill.

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In 1851 John Ruskin came to the defence of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by writing two letters to The Times, refuting widespread criticism of their paintings. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet entitled Pre-Raphaelitism, beginning almost a decade of public support for the work of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and their associates. Already established as one of the leading writers on art, he took a personal risk in defending the Pre- Raphaelite cause, but saw a parallel in the hostile reaction to the paintings of his artistic idol J. M. W. Turner. In Millais especially, Ruskin hoped to nurture a worthy successor in landscape painting, arguing that the Pre-Raphaelites’ attention to truth and detail offered the opportunity to establish a “new and noble school” of British art. This is the first compilation of all of Ruskin’s published writings relating to the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the celebrated passage in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) exhorting young artists to “go to nature in all .... rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing,” later claimed by Hunt to have been an inspiration. As well as Pre- Raphaelitism (1851), rarely reprinted since, and the fourth of the 1853 Edinburgh lectures, it includes all the comments on paintings in the annual Academy Notes (1855-9) which pertain to Pre-Raphaelitism, underlining Ruskin’s significant contribution to the movement’s popular success and the widespread acceptance of its principles. From the period after 1860, when Ruskin was concentrating more on social issues, come the the little-known articles published in the Nineteenth Century magazine under the title The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism (1878), and a number of lectures, including the last of his Slade Lectures, The Art of England (1883), delivered just a few years before his mental faculties failed. Edited with a commentary and preface by Stephen Wildman, Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, University of Lancaster, and with an introduction by Robert Hewison, one of Ruskin’s successors as Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford.

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Robert Ross was one of the first people that Aubrey Beardsley met when he arrived in London to make his name in 1892. Within six years the young artist was dead; but the work he produced in that short time revolutionised British art, and he was fixed forever in the public imagination as one of the leading spirits of the decadent era. Like many others, Ross was taken not only by the evident originality and genius of Beardsley’s work, but also by his character, remembering the ‘delightful and engaging smile both for friends and strangers’, his modesty, wit, erudition, and – contrary to popular opinion – his ‘briskness and virility’, or, as Beerbohm put it, his ‘stony common sense.’ Beardsley’s reputation, both artistic and personal, was caught up in the hurricane that overtook avant garde art after the trial of Oscar Wilde. Ross set out in his pioneering biography to redress the balance. He memorialised the worth of the man he knew, and established the seriousness of his art, its roots in the work of the Old Masters (of whom Beardsley had considerable knowledge). This combination of personal memoir and informed analysis by someone at the heart of the artistic world of the 1890’s makes this biography one of the most fascinating and evocative documents of the period. This republication is a close copy of the first stand-alone edition of 1909. It comes complete with all its original illustrations (and the advertisements for Beardsley’s publications) and the catalogue of Beardsley’s works by Aymer Vallance, which is still the cornerstone of Beardsley studies. It is introduced by Matthew Sturgis, Beardsley’s most distinguished recent biographer.

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The 1890s have become legendary: the period of Wilde, Beardsley and the Yellow Book; a decadent twilight at the close of the Victorian century, when young poets weary of life sat about drinking absinthe and talking of strange sins. The provenance of this beguiling picture is peculiar, for the myth of the Decadent Nineties was created during the period itself. It was an age of artistic self-consciousness, during which writers and painters believed that they had to create not only their works but also their personalities. In Passionate Attitudes, Matthew Sturgis examines the varying extents to which ambitious poets, penurious painters, canny publishers and a controversialist press all conspired to promote the notion of decadence. He explores in detail the cataclysmic effect upon English decadence of the spectacular trial and subsequent conviction of Wilde in 1895, a fall which was to cast a blight over the whole generation. As well as the luminaries Wilde, Beardsley and Beerbohm, Sturgis portrays Arthur Symons, the poet of the music halls, who divided his energies between promoting Verlaine and chasing after chorus girls; Ernest Dowson, the demoralised romantic of the Rhymers Club; Count Erik Stenbock, who kept a snake up his sleeve and went mad; and John Gray, who may have been the model for Wilde's Dorian. John Lane published most of their books; Owen Seaman and Ada Leverson parodied their manners. Elegantly written, Passionate Attitudes provides a hugely informative and richly entertaining account of the zeitgeist behind the glorious decade of excess.

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'To critics who said that the full-lipped so-called 'Beardsley mouth', which adorned many of his women, was 'inexpressive and ugly', the artist countered, 'Well, let them criticise. It's my mouth and not theirs. I like big mouths. People like the little mouth - the "Dolly Varden" mouth, if that describes it better. A big mouth is the sign of character and strength. Look at Ellen Terry with her great, strong mouth. In fact, I haven't any patience with small-mouthed people.' 'The popular idea of a picture is something told in oil or writ in water to be hung on a room's wall or in a picture gallery to perplex an artless public.' 'To my mind, there is nothing so depressing as a Gothic cathedral. I hate to have the sun shut out by the saints.' 'What a nice ample creature George Sand is: like a wonderful old cow with all her calves.' And other witty, urbane insights on life, art, and culture, illustrated with selected drawings from his Grotesques series.

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For many people the greatest artist, and the quintessential Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) was a painter, architect, theatre designer, engineer, sculptor, anatomist, geometer, naturalist, poet and musician. His Last Supper in Milan has been called the greatest painting in Western art. Illegitimate, left-handed and homosexual, Leonardo never made a straightforward career. But from his earliest apprenticeship with the Florentine painter and sculptor Andrea Verrochio, his astonishing gifts were recognised. His life led him from Florence to militaristic Milan and back, to Rome and eventually to France, where he died in the arms of the King, Francis I. As one of the greatest exponents of painting of his time, Leonardo was celebrated by his fellow Florentine Vasari (who was nevertheless responsible for covering over the great fresco of the Battle of Anghiari with his own painting). Vasari's carefully researched life of Leonardo remains one of the main sources of our knowledge, and is printed here together with the three other early biographies, and the major account by his French editor Du Fresne. Personal reminiscences by the novelist Bandello, and humanist Saba di Castiglione, round out the picture, and for the first time the extremely revealing imagined dialogue between Leonardo and the Greek sculptor Phidias, by the painter and theorist Lomazzo, is published in English. An introduction by the scholar Charles Robertson places these writings and the career of Leonardo in context. Approximately 50 pages of colour illustrations, including the major paintings and many of the astonishing drawings, give a rich overview of Leonardo's work and mind.

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Michelangelo Buonarrotti (1475-1564) is perhaps the greatest artist in the entire Western tradition. In painting, sculpture and architecture he created works that went beyond anything imagined before. The David - miraculously created, as Vasari describes, out of a piece of marble botched by another sculptor - the Sistine Ceiling, the Sistine Last Judgement, before which the Pope knelt in terrified prayer when it was first unveiled: these works have lost none of their awe-inspiring power. Michelangelo's impact was immediate, and he achieved a level of fame and influence that was unprecedented. It is not surprising, therefore, that the painter Giorgio Vasari should have made him the culmination of his Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, the first true work of art history. Vasari was a close colleague as well as a fellow artist and fellow Florentine. The biography printed here, from Vasari's much improved second edition, draws a picture of Michelangelo the man and the artist that has an immediacy and an authority that have not been surpassed. The introduction by David Hemsoll situates this great work in the context of 16th century Italian art.

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Jim Dearden's latest book, A John Ruskin Collection, brings together a lifetime's worth of articles on the lives of John Ruskin and those around him. In each, Dearden's vast knowledge of Ruskin and exceptional capacity for recollection deftly and sensitively illuminate his subjects, moving through both their emotional, intellectual and artistic lives and their everyday domestic routines. We are guided through Ruskin's portraits of Rose La Touche, asked to consider why he sold Turner's The Slave Ship, invited to investigate how his father, John James Ruskin, travelled to his office, or provided with a window, onto the lives of the Severn family while at Brantwood, using their drawings and sketches. As Tim Hilton describes in his Preface, the result is like reading an incredibly elaborate family history. However, through his sensitive and precise investigations, and his tireless appetite for detail, Dearden not only helps us to understand the lives of Ruskin and his family, friends and servants, but also achieves an impressive evocation of the nature of 19th-century life. This book will captivate readers who enjoy the interweaving of a life well studied, whether they are new to Ruskin or already well immersed.

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Whistler was one of the most original, if also tirelessly self-promoting artists of the later 19th century. After his disastrous run-in with John Ruskin, the greatest critic of the previous generation, Whistler poured his thoughts and feelings about art into this lecture, which made him if anything more notorious, but was also widely admired for its insights and wit. It is reproduced here exactly as he had it printed, with an essay by the leading scholar Margaret MacDonald putting it into the context of Whistler's career and times.

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With a rare combination of great economy of means and unfailing panache, Antony Cleminson’s drawings of palatial buildings and urban settings are endlessly delightful and fascinating. Collected from more than 60 years of travelling with his wife Jan, a concert violinist, they take in England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Croatia, Russia, Jordan, Syria, and Yemen. They bring not only extreme sensitivity to place, but also an engineer’s understanding of structure, and an historian’s understanding of style. Pencil, chalk, charcoal, red and black ink, and India ink are some of the media used, and the book is printed on genuine Ingres paper to reproduce these beautiful drawings as closely as possible. Will appeal to those with a love of architectural heritage in Europe and the Middle East.

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Although Adam Elsheimer (1578-1610) painted on an almost miniature scale and died very young from, it was said, the overwork that resulted from the intensity of his methods, his paintings remain some of the most strangely poetical in the history of Western art. They were also extremely influential: Elsheimer's often recondite subject matter, his astonishing ability to render night scenes, his uniquely lyrical use of landscape deeply affected generations of artists; one of the first to fall under his spell was Rubens. Most of what we know about Elsheimer's life and sadly curtailed career comes from the biographies reprinted in this volume, which also includes personal reminiscences by friends and other painters. Unavailable for many years, these writings bring Elsheimer's extraordinary art to life. A new introduction by Claire Pace sets the paintings and these writings into the context of their times.

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Marriage a la Mode is the most famous of William Hogarth's 'progresses' or series paintings, the story of a marriage de convenance and its unhappy consequences in fashionable 18th-century London. Contemporaries relished teasing out the meaning of all its rich detail, and the most extensive and popular of all the commentaries on the artist's accomplishment: was that of the witty, many-sided German, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Brilliantly translated, thoroughly annotated, this text is accompanied by the earlier and less-known commentary by Hogarth's friend, the French-Swiss enameller Jean-Andre Rouquet, and by a selection of Lichtenberg's remarks (in letters to friends) on his purposes and problems in interpreting Hogarth's work. Included also is another and very rare 'explanation' of the plates, an anonymous 1746 pamphlet titled Marriage A-la-Mode-An Humorous Tale, in Six Cantos. A foreword on Lichtenberg, and an historical essay on Hogarth's work by Mr. Coley, supply necessary background on artist and commentary. Of Hogarth's greatness there is little that need be said. But it is worth noting that, of his several 'progresses' or 'modern moral subjects', only Marriage a la Mode centres on the upper levels of British society - the aristocracy and the mercantile class.

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Experience the sights and sounds of the City of Lights like a true native with this expanded edition Bill Gillham has been visiting Paris for decades. For him, the pleasure is not in revisiting the tourist sights, but rather in immersing himself in a particular quartier, discovering little shops and bistros, exploring markets, parks, and local entertainment, and finding the quirks and particularities of the city's day-to-day life. In this unique guidebook, Bill takes travellers to 21 of his favourite areas in Paris--some central, some suburban, all off the beaten track. Neglected or completely ignored by ordinary guide books, each of these locales has a purely individual, Parisian character and make superb bases for traditional sightseeing, and in particular an ideal way of seeing Paris with children. All the information about where to stay; how to get about; where to shop and eat; which museums, parks, playgrounds to not miss; and what to avoid is provided along with lush photographs that give a hint of the pleasures to be gleaned. All the information has been meticulously updated, and many sections have been enlarged and improved.

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The Stones of Venice has been described as the greatest guidebook ever written. Read by all who went there and thousands who did not, it opened Victorian eyes to the glories of a city even then under threat, and transformed the study and practice of architecture for ever. It took Ruskin almost half a million words to launch his devastating attack on the Renaissance – ‘the school which has conducted men’s inventive and constructional faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower Street’ and to explain how to see and make true architecture. They were ‘glorious words, but too many,’ as J. G. Links put it while preparing this edition. Links, himself the greatest exponent of Venice of the 20th century, designed this abridgement to convey all the excitement, urgency, love of Venice and unmatchedly beautiful prose to a new generation of readers.

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A richly illustrated book about the celebrated connoisseur, collector and philanthropist Sir Richard Wallace (1818-1890), published by the Wallace Collection to mark the bicentenary of his birth. Includes 490 illustrations and new information on Wallace’s origins and life.

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Samuel Palmer was one of the most original artists Britain has produced. Still a teen when he was plucked from "the pit of modern art," he embarked on an intensely personal journey that led to an astonishing outpouring of mystical drawings and later to England's first artistic colony, "The Ancients," based in the idyllic landscape of Shoreham. This book reprints the first major writings on Palmer, which were published for a retrospective exhibition in 1881. They include a biography by his son, A. H. Palmer, and a critical appreciation by Pre-Raphaelite artist and critic F. G. Stephens.

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The most exhilarating painter of the Renaissance and arguably of the whole of western art, Tintoretto was known as 'Il Furioso' because of the attack and energy of his style. His vaunting ambition is recorded in the inscription he placed in his studio: l disegno di Michelangelo ed il colorito di Tiziano ("Michelangelo's drawing and Titian's colour"). The Florentines Vasari and Borghini, and the Venetians Ridolfi and Boschini wrote the earliest biographies of the artist. The four accounts are related to each other and form the backbone of the critical success of Tintoretto. Borghini is the first one to give some information about Marietta Tintoretto, also an artist, and Ridolfi is the richest in anecdotes about the artist's life and personality - including the one about the inscription which he may, however, have invented. Boschini, a witty Venetian nationalist, wrote his account in dialect verse. El Greco, whose marginal notes to Vasari are included for the first time in English, Calmo and Franco knew Tintoretto personally and their writings give a real flavour of this complicated man. Unavailable in any form for many years, these biographies have been newly edited for this edition. They are introduced by the scholar Carlo Corsato, who places each in its artistic and literary context. Approximately 50 pages of colour illustrations cover the full range of Tintoretto's astonishing output.

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Discover half-hidden chateaux and artists' country houses; walk, boat or dance by the river; explore old towns and country footpaths; and eat in family-run restaurants with 1950s decor - and prices to match. Based on over 20 years' experience of exploring the Paris countryside by train, each visit includes the essential historical context and practical information to help you discover places unknown to many Parisians. Written with humour and a flair for the unusual and authentic, the text is illustrated with original photos and local maps. It includes a unique guide to using the excellent local train network.

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Gauguin's great diary from Tahiti almost never saw the light of day in its original form. The manuscript was sent by the artist from his island refuge to his friend Charles Morice in Paris, and published in 1901 with immediate success, under the two names of Paul Gauguin and Charles Morice. Morice, with Gauguin's permission, had 'edited' and enlarged it to make it more readable. How much of the charm and crispness of the manuscript had been lost in the process was anyone's guess. It was to be 40 years before Gauguin's original version came to light, and it is published here in a translation by the poet Jonathan Griffin, together with a detailed description by the art historian Jean Loize, who re-discovered the manuscript. Loize shows that Morice had in parts altered Gauguin's text beyond recognition - a startling discovery that entirely changed ideas about Gauguin's style and intentions. This genuine version of Noa Noa is not only an important document, it is also a beautiful piece of writing: amusing, acid, wide-eyed, moving. Gauguin feared that, unedited, it would seem absurdly crude; and no doubt it would have, to most readers in his day. Today we can appreciate its sketch form, jerky directness, authentic freshness. This edition is illustrated with the watercolours, wood-engravings and drawings that Gauguin assembled for the book.

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Reprinted for the first time since 1889, this is the first biography and considered appraisal of one of England's most prodigiously talented painters. Sir John Everett Millais, P. R. A. (1829-1896) was the most precociously talented artist England has ever produced. His astonishing facility gained him entry as the Royal Academy's youngest ever pupil. At just 19 he founded with six other painters the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which revolutionised the English art world with a visionary intensity of both subject matter and style. Millais was its most creative member; as Jason Rosenfeld says in the introduction to this volume, "the sheer quality and distinctness of each of Millais's paintings of the 1850s is unmatched by any Western artist of the period." Yet there is much more to Millais' career than Pre-Raphaelitism. Some of the most emotive narrative paintings of the Victorian era, its greatest portraits, and especially some of its most beautiful, if neglected, landscapes, came from his brush - as did some of its most notoriously successful paintings, like Bubbles, the "fancy picture" that was made into an advertisement for Pears' Soap. This volume includes not only Millais's only published work of art criticism, the pithy "Thoughts on Our Art of Today," but also the first extended biography and appraisal of his work by the important critic M. H. Spielmann. This hugely engaging "Sketch" gives both a warm and personal picture of the man and a level-headed evaluation of the qualities - and defects - of his work as they appeared to contemporaries. Neither essay has been in print for more than a century.

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The Illustrations of the Book of Job were Blake's last masterpiece of printmaking. Commissioned by the painter John Linnell, they were based on watercolours Blake had made around 1805. Three hundred copies were printed in 1826, and they earned Blake high recognition from fellow artists. They remain some of his greatest works. The 21 prints are reproduced here actual size.

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A practical guide to visiting the many treasures of Libya - desert landscapes, vast classical ruins and vibrant modern cities. Wendy Buthfer lived and worked in Libya for 10 years and knows it in depth.

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For all its pivotal importance historically and politically, not to mention gastronomically, Brussels remains one of the least known cities in Europe. Derek Blyth has lived in Brussels for many years, and his book takes the visitor to the secret and surprising places of Brussels as well as round the grandiose monuments and spectacular museums. Thirteen walks, illustrated with historical paintings, engravings and photographs explore the centre of Brussels. Further pleasures described include not only the forests and villages on the outskirts of Brussels, but also Waterloo, the matchless art nouveau architecture, the superb cemeteries, and surrealist art in the métro. Comprehensive practical information gives a connoisseur’s guide to the restaurants of Brussels, some of the finest in Europe.

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This is a beautifully produced catalogue accompanying the Holburne Museum's groundbreaking retrospective of Henry Moore's sculptures that could fit in the hand. At the heart of Moore's practice was the directness of working on a small scale, whether carving small stones or pieces of wood, casting lead, modelling in clay or, in later years, modelling in plasticine around a found stone or bone to be cast in bronze.The exhibition will include sculptures in stone, wood, terracotta, plaster, lead, plasticine and bronze, and span themes recurrent in his work: the reclining female figure, the mother and child, the human head, and the fallen warrior. It will include maquettes for some of his best-known, public sculptures alongside lesser-known works, including the display for the very first time in a museum exhibition of a recently discovered early lead cast of Mother & Child.The catalogue presents 85 illustrations with an introduction by Chris Stephens.

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Shelley called poets, ‘the unacknowledged legislators of the world’. Here John Ramsden describes their now largely forgotten contribution to economics. From Defoe to Pound, poets looked at the economic orthodoxy of their day, saw much that was unacceptable, and tried to suggest alternatives. Some of their suggestions led onto perilous ground; but many of their criticisms have since been vindicated. Often witty and always opinionated, these 11 writers offer fresh perspectives on the economic theories that still rule our lives. The poets included are Defoe, Swift, Coleridge, Scott, Shelley, de Quincey, Ruskin, Morris, Shaw, Belloc and Pound. Together they span a vast range of opinion and knowledge of the world. Some were closely involved with policy, some were radical, even revolutionary, others were reactionary: all of them contributed very personal and often illuminating insights into the dismal science.

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William Blake (1757-1827), hailed as 'the glorious luminary' by William Rossetti, is one of the great mystics in the history of Western art. His hallucinatory paintings, watercolours and, in particular, the illustrations he made for his books of poetry are instantly recognisable, and have inspired generations of artists in his wake. Although he was largely ignored by his contemporaries, or derided as mad, a number of perceptive critics and commentators took great interest in both the man and his work. This volume brings together some of the most illuminating writings by people who knew Blake, and brings this astonishing visionary to life. They include the frank appraisal by the hugely perceptive diarist Crabb Robinson, never before published in full in English, and the first full biography by Blake's friend and fellow artist John Thomas Smith, as well as Alexander Gilchrist's Preliminary, which heralded the arrival of Blake in the 19th Century.

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Following on from the success of her large book, Tasting Georgia: A Food and Wine Journey in the Caucasus, award winning food, wine and travel writer and photographer Carla Capalbo is launching a new series of pocketbooks on Georgian food, wine and culture. The first in the collection, Khachapuri and Filled Breads, focuses on this popular mainstay of Georgian cuisine, giving the recipes for 10 of the country's most delicious regional breads. In addition to the many versions of cheese-filled khachapuri, the fully illustrated book will include breads filled with greens, meats and potatoes.

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In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain's greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin's ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin's role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite's The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin's role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen's College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin's worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin's writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin's ruling principle: `There is no wealth but Life' is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.

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Degas was a celebrity in Britain in his lifetime, thanks originally to George Moore's pioneering essay, The Painter of Modern Life. When Degas died Moore reprised the essay with some further recollections, in part as a riposte to the memoir published by Degas's great admirer and follower, Walter Sickert. Sickert's essay, sparkling, engaged, witty and occasionally combative, is amongst the best of his writings. Together these memoirs represent some of the most vivid responses to Impressionism in English - as well as painting an intimate picture of arguably the most important and most influential - and the most humane - of the painters of the later 19th century. Hitherto difficult to find, these essays are reprinted here with an introduction by Anna Gruetzner Robins and are illustrated with 30 pages of colour plates covering the span of Degas's dazzling career.

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"None of Venice's innumerable chroniclers have portrayed the Serenissima's character with quite such a combination of the scholarly, the informal and the intimate...Over the years thousands of readers, starting this book, have been relieved to encounter its famously undemanding approach to the city - 'Generally the first thing to do in Venice is to sit down and have some coffee': but by the time they get to the end of it, all the same, they will have learnt virtually everything that an educated stranger needs to know about the place, its art and its history, besides being subtly entertained throughout.'" - From the Introduction by Jan Morris.

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"A page turner, even for those familiar with the subject...The surprising truth that emerges is no less human, and no less revealing about the Victorians than the myths; on the contrary it gives a far more compelling insight into what relationships, family and money really mean." — Country Life "Ruskin’s marriage was doomed from the start, but not for the reason most people think, argues this well-researched book." — The Times Effie Gray was an innocent victim of a male-dominated society, repressed and mistreated. Or was she? John Ruskin, the greatest art critic and social reformer of his time, was a callous misogynist and upholder of the patriarchy. Or was he? John Everett Millais, boy genius, rescued the heroine from the tyrannical clutches of the husband who left his wedding unconsummated for six years. Or did he? What really happened in the most scandalous love triangle of the 19th century? Was it all about impotence and pubic hair? Or was it about money, power and freedom? If so, whose? And what possibilities were there for these young people caught in a world racked by social, financial and political turmoil? The accepted story of the Ruskin marriage has never lost its fascination. History books, novels, television series, operas and now a star-filled film by Emma Thompson (to be released in 2013) have all followed this standard line. It seems to offer an easy take on the Victorians and how we have moved on. But the story isn't true. In Marriage of Inconvenience Robert Brownell uses extensive documentary evidence - much of it never seen before, and much of it hitherto suppressed - to reveal a story no less fascinating and human, no less illuminating about the Victorians and far more instructive about our own times, than the myths that have grown up about the most notorious marriage of the 19th century.

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The most comprehensive anthology of writings by visitors to the eternal city ever compiled – witty, profound and endlessly entertaining. Drawing on French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Scandinavian and American sources, Ronald Ridley has compiled a vivid collage-portrait of Rome through the centuries, illustrated with three hundred images and published in three elegant volumes: The Middles Ages to the Seventeenth Century, The Eighteenth Century and The Nineteenth Century. Presented here is the first volume. How did visitors arrive? Where did they stay? What were their expenses? What did they see of churches, palaces, villas and antiquities? What did they like or dislike of what they saw? What did they think of Rome in all its contemporary facets? What events did they witness? What portraits do they provide of people in Rome at the time of their visit? Excerpts from memoirs by more than two hundred visitors give a myriad fascinating insights and together provide a detailed account of Rome over nearly a millennium.

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"An informed and detailed assessment by someone with a deep understanding of art" - Martin Gayford, The Sunday Telegraph "It has sufficient breadth of content and clarity of purpose to have wide appeal among the uninitiated, and yet would not be out of place on the shelves of the most knowledgeable art pundit" - Frances Spalding, Art Quarterly This pocket guide to the art of the Western world, covers all the essential places to visit and sets the major works in the collections in their historical and social context. Helen Langdon takes us not only to the best-loved museums around the world but also to a vast selection of minor but equally fascinating galleries, churches, villas and houses, where she draws our attention to outstanding paintings and sculptures. Introductory essays to the art of each country, together with extensive indexes and glossaries, and over 200 colour illustrations that range from some of the world’s greatest works of art to unfamiliar treasures, make this a pocket compendium of Western art that will be as useful to the student as the traveller.

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I have never read a text which goes even half as far as this one in expressing the particular poignancy which lay at the heart of the impressionist movement. I say this as an art critic. As a novelist I would simply like to pay my tribute to the mastery of language, portraiture and storytelling which Figes has now at her command. - John BergerA small masterpiece - Susan Hill A luminous prose poem - Joyce Carol OatesThis shimmering novel is an extraordinary portrait of a day in the life of an artist at work and at home. In prose as luminous as the colours Monet is using to portray his garden, Eva Figes guides us from dawn (midnight blueblack growing grey and misty') through midday (the sun was high now shrinking what little shadow remained, fading colours, the pink rambler roses on the fence by the railway track looked almost white') to evening (the tide of shadows rising as the sunset glow faded outside.') Monet's wife, grieving for a lost

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"A total delight, a brilliant vignette of 17th-century Rome, the Baroque and the Catholic church – warts and all – rolled into an erudite narrative.... with an ease of writing that is rare in art history." - Simon Jenkins By 1650, the spiritual and political power of the Catholic Church was shattered. Thanks to the twin blows of the Protestant Reformation and the Thirty Years War, Rome, celebrated both as the Eternal City and Caput Mundi (the head of the world) had lost its pre-eminent place in Europe. Then a new Pope, Alexander VII, fired with religious zeal, political guile and a mania for building, determined to restore the prestige of his church by making Rome the must-visit destination for Europe's intellectual, political and cultural elite. To help him do so, he enlisted the talents of Gianlorenzo Bernini, already celebrated as the most important living artist: no mean feat in the age of Rubens, Rembrandt and Velazquez. Together, Alexander VII and Bernini made the greatest artistic double act in history, inventing the concept of soft power and the bucket list destination. Bernini and Alexander's creation of Baroque Rome as a city more beautiful and grander than since the days of the Emperor Augustus continues to delight and attract.

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One of Newsweek's six best travel books of the last decade. Winner Guild of Food Writers, Food and Travel Award 2018. Winner Best Food Book of 2017, Gourmand Cookbook Awards. Shortlisted for the Art of Eating Prize. Shortlisted for the IACP, Culinary Travel Book Award. Award-winning food and wine writer and photographer Carla Capalbo has travelled across Georgia collecting recipes and gathering stories from traditional food and wine producers in this stunning but little-known country, nestled between the Caucasus Mountains and the Black Sea. The result is a beautifully illustrated cookbook and personal travel guide. Meet Georgia's best chefs and cooks and sample their vibrant, colourful cuisine, including vegetables blended with walnuts and aromatic herbs, subtly spiced stews and the irresistible cheese-filled khachapuri breads that are served on every table. Georgia is one of the world's oldest winemaking areas, with wines traditionally made in clay qvevri buried in the ground. These wines are some of today's most sought-after by fans of natural and organic viticulture.

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Ruskin is one of the most influential and exhilarating writers in English. Art critic, architectural visionary, social reformer, climate warner and incomparable teacher; Ruskin's words not only transformed Victorian England but speak to us with increasing urgency today. This, the first general introduction to Ruskin for many years, places him in the social, economic and aesthetic world of Victorian Britain that he transformed - and shows how this transformation has much to teach us today. The extensive illustrations range from private notes and lecture diagrams to presentation drawings, including some of the most beautiful images of the 19th century and many never before published. Published in association with the Ruskin Foundation.

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