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, London (12 March–7 June 2015), and the result of the four-year research project, this catalogue focuses on Reynolds's innovative, often highly experimental approaches to the practice and materials of painting. It investigates his radical manipulation of pigments, oils, glazes and varnishes, and traces his experiments with colour, tone and handling. It reveals his continual temptation to rework and revise his pictures, illuminates his highly creative responses to the new exhibition culture of his day and explores his continual adaptations of the art of the Old Masters. In doing so, it encourages us to look at the work of this famous eighteenth-century British artist in a new and often surprising light. Technical analysis of some of Reynolds's most important paintings will be revelatory, and close-up photography and detailed examination of a range of pictures – at the centre of which are the Wallace Collection’s own outstanding collection of works by the artist – will shed light on the fascinating and ongoing process of experimentation that spanned Reynolds’s entire career. The book situates Reynolds’s practice of experimentation, of both technique and of subject, in relation to that 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. 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.

This groundbreaking architectural history examines what people actually wanted in their institutional and private patronage over the last two centuries as opposed to what architects and theorists thought they should want - as seen through the prism of Oxford's principal building contractor and craft practitioner, Symm & Company.

Accompanying a focused display at The Courtauld Gallery that will bring together for the first time Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s only three known grisaille paintings – the Courtauld’s Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery (which is barred from travel), The Death of the Virgin from Upton House in Warwickshire (National Trust) and Three Soldiers from the Frick Collection in New York – this book will examine the sources, function and reception of these three exquisite masterpieces. The panels will be complemented by prints and contemporary replicas, as well by other independent grisailles in order to shed light on the development of this genre in Northern Europe.Despite his status as the seminal Netherlandish painter of the 16th century, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525–1569) remains an elusive artist: fewer than forty paintings are ascribed to him. Of these, a dozen are cabinet-sized. These small-scale works offer key insights as they often bear a personal significance for the artist and were sometimes given as gifts to friends and patrons. Presenting these works together for the first time is not only an extraordinary and unprecedented opportunity but it will be extremely revealing, considering their unusual nature in both Bruegel’s oeuvre and 16th-century art in general. Monochrome painting in shades of grey was a mainstay of Netherlandish art from the early 15th century, most often present on the wings of altarpieces and preparatory sketches for engravings. In contrast, Bruegel’s panels constitute one of the earliest and rare examples of independent cabinet pictures in grisaille, created for private contemplation and enjoyment. This seemingly austere type of painting has often been imbued with religious or political significance. On a purely artistic level, it enabled the painter to showcase his skill by limiting his palette. The publication, which includes a technical investigation of the three panels, will provide the opportunity to reassess the practical aspects of the grisaille technique and the many ways in which this effect was achieved. Indeed, Bruegel’s three monochromatic paintings display quite different techniques, raising the question of the painter’s intent. This is the latest in the series of books accompanying critically acclaimed Courtauld Gallery displays, following on from Collecting Gauguin (2013), Antiquity Unleashed (2013), Richard Serra (2013), A Dialogue with Nature (2014), Bruegel to Freud (2014) and Jonathan Richardson (2015).

An unparalleled collection of rings dating from the 3rd to the 19th century, presented not chronologically but rather grouped into timeless themes - birth, love, betrothal, marriage, mourning and death - thereby achieving greater insight about the beliefs , sentiments, status, and practices of their former owners.

The self-portrait of Baccio Bandinelli in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston, shows the scupltor 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 scupltors 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 scupltors 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 teh 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 bot rough sketches and more finished drawings with related three-dimensional 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 profieciency in ornamental design. Artists who soought 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 scupltors 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.

In Rose Eichenbaum's latest book on the confluence of art making and human expression, she sits down with thirty-five modern day storytellers—the directors of theater, film, and television. Eichenbaum's subjects speak with revealing clarity about the entertainment industry, the role and life of the director, and how theatrical and cinematic storytelling impacts our culture and our lives. The Director Within includes interviews with Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show), Julie Taymor (The Lion King), Mel Brooks (Blazing Saddles), Tim Van Patten (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire), Hal Prince (The Phantom of the Opera), Barry Levinson (Rain Man), and many others. The interviews are skillfully crafted, sensitively executed, and brimming with honesty and insight. The accompanying portraits demonstrate Eichenbaum's mastery of photography and convey the truth, depth, and intimacy of their subjects. The Director Within is an inspirational, informative, and entertaining resource for anyone interested in creativity, art making, and artistic collaboration. The book includes a listing of works from each of the directors.

Collection of 30 texts, 1915-1928, & 3 facsimiles, some in first English translation, plus Nina Kogan on Cubism and Ilya Chashnik on Suprematism. Chronological sections trace Malevich’s analyses of Cubism and Futurism, the Supremus Society of Artists, Suprematism Triumphant, UNOVIS, Theory of Creativity as Artistic Culture, and the Non-Objective World of Sensations. A presentation of sensations from Cézanne to Suprematism is followed by a discussion of how consciousness and the environment influence artistic creativity in P. Railing, Malevich on Creativity.

The ancient Celtic world evokes debate, discussion, romanticism and mythicism. On the one hand it represents a specialist area of archaeological interest, on the other, it has a wide general appeal. The Celtic world is accessible through archaeology, history, linguistics and art history. Of these disciplines, art history offers the most direct message to a wider audience. This volume of 37 papers brings together a truly international group of pre-eminent specialists in the field of Celtic art and Celtic studies. It is a benchmark volume the like of which has not been seen since the publication of Paul Jacobsthal’s Early Celtic Art in 1944. The papers chart the history of attempts to understand Celtic art and argue for novel approaches in discussions spanning the whole of Continental Europe and the British Isles. This new body of international scholarship will give the reader a sense of the richness of the material and current debates. Artefacts of rich form and decoration, which we might call art, provide a most sensitive set of indicators of key areas of past societies, their power, politics and transformations. With its broad geographical scope, this volume offers a timely opportunity to re-assess contacts, context, transmission and meaning in Celtic art for understanding the development of European cultures, identities and economies in pre- and proto-history. Essays in honour of Vincent Megaw on his 80th birthday.

This study explores different visions of contemporary London using the tools of cultural and literary studies and comparing works by Iain Sinclair and Will Self. Both indebted to the tradition of psychogeography, these two authors consider the act of walking as the best way to investigate the changes, evolutions and revisions of the city. For both, London is basically an experience where the physical and topographical environment evokes the endless reservoir of films, novels, images, and cultural materials that finds in this city a fruitful source of inspiration. The book features individual chapters devoted to the analysis of Great Apes, Sorry Meniscus, London Orbital, and The Book of Dave.

During the quarter of a century before the thirteen colonies became a nation, the northwest quadrant of North Carolina had just begun to attract permanent settlers. This seemingly primitive area may not appear to be a likely source for attractive pottery and ornate silverware and furniture, much less for an audience to appreciate these refinements. Yet such crafts were not confined to urban centers, and artisans, like other colonists, were striving to create better lives for themselves as well as to practice their trades. As Johanna Miller Lewis shows in this pivotal study of colonial history and material culture, the growing population of Rowan County required not only blacksmiths, saddlers, and tanners but also a great variety of skilled craftsmen to help raise the standard of living.Rowan County's rapid expansion was in part the result of the planned settlements of the Moravian Church. Because the Moravians maintained careful records, historians have previously credited church artisans with greater skill and more economic awareness than non-church craftsmen. Through meticulous attention to court and private records, deeds, wills, and other sources, Lewis reveals the Moravian failure to keep up with the pace of development occurring elsewhere in the county.Challenging the traditional belief that southern backcountry life was primitive, Lewis shows that many artisans held public office and wielded power in the public sphere. She also examines women weavers and spinsters as an integral part of the population. All artisans -- Moravian and non-Moravian, male and female -- helped the local market economy expand to include coastal and trans-Atlantic trade.Lewis's book contributes meaningfully to the debate over self-sufficiency and capitalism in rural America.

In 1965 Janis Sternbergs made a few playful lines in some sand on his studio table and was struck by the image he had created. A photograph of this confluence of shadows showed what seemed to be a great earth sculpture of vast depth and breadth. So began an art form which united the talents and skills of engraver, sculptor, painter, and photographer. And when Sternbergs added color effects to his images by use of photo-screen process printing, he employed the skills of still another medium -- one in which he is a recognized master.In this book Sternbergs first explains and demonstrates many of the techniques he has developed in producing his dramatic sand "paintings." In a series of illustrations designed to instruct the neophyte sand artist, we see a variety of commonplace tools used to explore the many possibilities of sand as a material for spontaneous work.What one supremely creative mind has done with the medium can be seen in the catalog of Sternbergs's sand images which follows the instructional portion of the book. The 154 black and white photographs not only suggest the range and potential of sand imagery, but attest as well to the imagination and versatility of the artist.

Washington Allston (1779-1843), the first major American artist trained in Europe, produced important paintings, explored sculpture and architecture, and published poetry and art criticism. On his return to America he became influential in the cultural and intellectual life of New England. Allston "knew everyone" and corresponded with many of the leading figures of his day, including Wordsworth, Longfellow, Irving, Sully, and Morse. Nathalia Wright's edition is the most comprehensive work to date on Allston, bringing together all known letters by and to him and describing his principal activities in years for which correspondence is lacking. Allston holds an important place in the history of American culture and European art and has long deserved such a volume, which offers a fascinating view of the world of arts and letters during the early American flowering.

In the hauntingly beautiful sculptures of Tilmann Riemenschneider, the Late Gothic art of Germany achieved its highest expression. Now, for the first time in English, the eminent art historian Justus Bier accords Riemenschneider the extended attention he so richly deserves.Riemenschneider ( ca. 1460--1531) holds a pivotal place in the development of German art. Rejecting the anonymous soulfulness of earlier Gothic sculpture, he created a style reflecting the deeply spiritual character of his time, yet one that also anticipated the humanism of the Italian Renaissance so soon to revolutionize European art.Bier crowns a lifelong study with this reconsideration of Reimenschneider's life and work, with emphasis on works in North American museums. More than 140 photographs illustrate 46 of the artist's major sculptures.

A facsimile edition of Kazimir Malevich, SUPREMATISM 34 Drawings, was published in 1990 by Artists Bookworks accompanied by an introduction to the drawings by Patricia Railing; it is now out-of-print. This 2014 reprint of Malevich’s little book contains a new translation from the Russian and a new introductory text by Patricia Railing, “Reading the 34 Drawings”. The Russian text and plates were scanned from an original copy and the size of this little book conforms to the lithographed Russian edition of 1920.

Before the foundation of academies of art in London in 1768 and Philadelphia in 1805, most individuals who were to emerge as artists trained in workshops of varying degrees of relevance. Easel painters began their careers apprenticed to carriage, house, sign or ship painters, whilst a few were placed with those who made pictures. Sculptors emerged from a training as ornamental plasterers or carvers. Of the many other trades in a position to offer an appropriate background were ‘limning’, staining, engraving, surveying, chasing and die-sinking. In addition, plumbers gained the right to use oil painting and, for plasterers, the application of distemper was an extension of their trade. Central to the theme of this book is the notion that, for those who were to become either painters or sculptors, a training in a trade met their practical needs. This ‘training’ was of an altogether different nature to an ‘education’ in an art school. In the past, prospective artists were offered, by means of apprenticeships, an empirical rather than a theoretical understanding of their ultimate vocation. James Ayres provides a lively account of the inter-relationship between art and trade in the late 17th to early 19th centuries, in both Britain and North America. He demonstrates with numerous, illustrated examples, the many cross-overs in the ‘art and mystery’ of artistic training, and, to modern eyes, the sometimes incongruous relationships between the various trades that contributed to the blossoming of many artistic careers, including some of the most illustrious names of the ‘long’ 18th century.

The Courtauld Gallery houses one of the most significant collections of works on paper in Britain, with approimately 7,000 drawings and watercolours and 20,000 prints ranging from the REnaissance to the 20th Century. Accompanying the second Summer Showcase at the Gallery, this book serves as an introduction to the largest but least well-known part of the Gallery's outstanding collection - its holdings of prints. This selection of some thirty particularly remarkable and intriguing exapmles spans more than 500 years and encompasses a variety of printmaking techniques. The catalogue opens with Andrea Mantegna's ambitious engraving of The Flagellation of Christ (around 1465-70), in which the Italian Renaissance artist powerfully reinvents this often-depicted Passion scene. By contrast, the grand scale of a ten-part engraving after Michelangelo's celebrated Last Judgment by French printmaker Nicolas Beatrizet exemplifies the ability of a print to reproduce a monumental work of art in spectacular fashion. Subjects of Christian iconography dominate 15th- and 16th-century printmaking but from early on were complemented by secular topics,w ith printmakers catering for a demand amongst colledctors for new imagery. A superb example is Pieter Bruegel the Elder's Rabbit Hunt (1560), the only print known to be executed by the artist himself and one of a group of master prints bequeathed to the collection by Count Antoine Seilern in 1978. Bruegel chose the etching technique whereby its relative freedom and ease is more closely comparable to drawing, allowing him to render a scene with remarkable naturalism.The possibilities of printmaking greatly expanded in subsequent centuries. Prints could record historical events such as battles or pageants, as in the exquisite etchings of Jacques Callot and Stefano della Bella. Canaletto's views of 18th-century Venice play wilful games wiht the city's geography and are shown alongside the striking architectural inventions of his contemporary Piranesi. The 19th century in France saw avant-garde artists embracing printmaking, with Edouard Manet's homage to Old Masters, Paul Gauguin's revival of the woodcut and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's brilliant adoption of the newer technique of lithography for his evocative depictions of Parisian entertainment such as his highly dynamic Jockey from Samuel courtauld's collection.In the 20th century Pablo Picasso's and Henri Matisse's tireless experimentation with print techniques helped ensure the vitality of printmaking in the art of their time. The catalogue concludes with prints by Lucian Freud, now widely acknowledged as a modern master of the medium, and by more recent work by Chris Ofili, whose prints, both figurative and abstract, continued to reinvent printmaking in the 21st century.