Inspired by the recent identification of a third autograph version of Gainsborough’s masterpiece The Cottage Door, this book examines the significance of the multiple versions of designs that the artist produced during the 1780s. It demonstrates that without the pressure of exhibiting his work annually at the Academy and without a string of sitters waiting for their finished portraits, Gainsborough’s work became more personal, more thoughtful. This study of the last phase of the artist’s work is a totally fresh interpretation of not only The Cottage Door but other key works such as Mrs Sheridan and Diana and Acteon. Gainsborough’s creative energies changed around 1780. He became restless and wanted to promote his landscape painting more effectively. He started to paint coastal scenes using an innovative painting technique to depict the water and he embarked on a series of ‘fancy’ pictures that he would position him as a descendant of an Old Master tradition. He was never happy with the constraints of the Royal Academy and he was at odds with the dictatorial opinions promoted by its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Removing himself from the Academy enabled him finally to do what he wanted.He began to turn to portrait compositions that he had developed and refined over a number of years. With subtle alterations they could be made suitable for a variety of sitters. The subtlety of his skilled observation was less easy to accommodate in standard-sized full-length canvases and in these portraits he sometimes resorted to rhetoric gesture that fought against the closely observed likenesses in his best portraits. The margin between ‘fancy’ pictures and portraits became blurred and the categorization of some of these paintings changed while they were on the easel. Always finding composition difficult, rather than begin something new he often revisited earlier designs that had pleased him. He would paint them again and make slight changes of tone and emphasis that would radically change the concept and intention of the design. The subject matter in some of his late paintings veers towards the autobiographical and shows a certain rift between him and his family.

This work contains illustrations of the thirteenth century Byzantine New Testament at the Rockefeller-McCormack collection in Chicago with a full description of its text, provenance, and the artistic and theological significance of the miniatures.

People love dogs, and dogs love people. Walking a dog is one of the most visible and mutually beneficial manifestations of that bond. It is a ritual steeped in affection and obligation. It doesn’t have a day off. It doesn’t pay the bills or clean the dishes or do the laundry. Still, people and dogs alike gain the benefits of exercise, socialization, shared experiences and observations. Another benefit, often overlooked, is the pleasure of mutually indulging a trait that ordinary dogs share with extraordinary people: curiosity. This book is, in many ways, an ode to curiosity. Walking Magpie is about a dog and what a dog sees. It is also a work of serious photography by a well-known and pioneering landscape artist: Chuck Forsman, who, for more than forty years, has been a keen observer of the interface between landscape and culture as expressed through his paintings and photographic art. As a result, Forsman often goes to places that might not be on everyone’s radar screen. In this book, Forsman took a camera with him during his walks with Magpie, the family dog. Often, these walks are in the neighborhood and surrounding hills where Forsman lives: near the Flatirons in Boulder. But Magpie joins Forsman on other adventures, from Alaska and the Northwest Territories of Canada to Florida, Ohio, and New York City. The intent is to turn these experiences into art. With each picture we sense mystery rather than clarity, questions about place rather than answers. We hardly can know what a dog knows, but with this book we can appreciate better what a dog sees and senses and experiences, helping the human and canine imagination to meld, at least a little. Walking Magpie is published in conjunction with a retrospective of Chuck Forsman’s photographs at the Denver Art Museum in October 2013. Published in association with the Denver Museum of Art.

This beautifully illustrated memoir by Pete Hogan is the follow-up instalment to his highly acclaimed The Log of the Molly B. After the adventures of building his own boat and sailing it from Canada down the west coast of the US, through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic to Ireland, Pete decided to settle down and dedicate his life to his art in the remote surroundings of Achillbeg island, just south of Achill, County Mayo. As he describes it: "I was not in the mood for compromise. I wanted to live on an island and make art. If Paul Gauguin could quit his job as a stock broker and paint pictures on an island, so could I, but in the west of Ireland. If James Joyce could be an exile in Trieste and 'forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race', then so could I, but on an island in the west of Ireland and. If Andy Warhol could rule the art world and become famous from some night club in New York, then so could I - from an island in the west of Ireland. I would be famous, aloof, celebrated and revered - from an island in the West of Ireland. Or so I thought. I parked my engineless, gaff-rigged ketch. I unloaded my dreams. I kicked open the door of my house and I settled in. I kept a journal that winter. What follows is based on what I wrote." Lavishly illustrated with dozens of full colour plates, The Artist on the Island is a remarkable record of one man's attempt to forego modern-day conveniences and social conventions in order to focus on what is truly important.

At one time, sardines were an inexpensive staple for many Americans. The 212 photographs in this elegant volume offer a striking document of this now vanished industry. Generations of workers in Maine have snipped, sliced, and packed the small, silvery fish into billions of cans on their way to Americans' lunch buckets and kitchen cabinets. On April 15, 2010, Stinson's Seafood, once the home of Beach Cliff Sardines, shut down the packing line that had made the name world famous. Begun in 1927, Stinson's empire eventually included sardine canneries spread along the Maine coast and a fleet of ships to supply them. With this closing, however, the end of the entire sardine industry in Maine had finally arrived. Photographer Markham Starr was privileged to spend several days at the Stinson factory in Prospect Harbor, one month before it was dismantled, emerging with a collection of remarkable images that transform the parts of the cannery into works of art and capture the resilience of the workers faced with the loss of jobs many had held for decades. This book includes a short essay, and shows the heartland of Maine at its finest.

Film stocks are vanishing, but the iconic images of the silver screen remain -- albeit in new, sleeker formats. Today, viewers can instantly stream movies on televisions, computers, and smartphones. Gone are the days when films could only be seen in theaters or rented at video stores: movies are now accessible at the click of a button, and there are no reels, tapes, or discs to store. Any film or show worth keeping may be collected in the virtual cloud and accessed at will through services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Instant.The movies have changed, and we are changing with them. The ways we communicate, receive information, travel, and socialize have all been revolutionized. In Streaming, Wheeler Winston Dixon reveals the positive and negative consequences of the transition to digital formatting and distribution, exploring the ways in which digital cinema has altered contemporary filmmaking and our culture. Many industry professionals and audience members feel that the new format fundamentally alters the art, while others laud the liberation of the moving image from the "imperfect" medium of film, asserting that it is both inevitable and desirable. Dixon argues that the change is neither good nor bad; it's simply a fact.Hollywood has embraced digital production and distribution because it is easier, faster, and cheaper, but the displacement of older technology will not come without controversy. This groundbreaking book illuminates the challenges of preserving media in the digital age and explores what stands to be lost, from the rich hues of traditional film stocks to the classic movies that are not profitable enough to offer in streaming formats. Dixon also investigates the financial challenges of the new distribution model, the incorporation of new content such as webisodes, and the issue of ownership in an age when companies have the power to pull purchased items from consumer devices at their own discretion. Streaming touches on every aspect of the shift to digital production and distribution. It explains not only how the new technology is affecting movies, music, books, and games, but also how instant access is permanently changing the habits of viewers and influencing our culture.

A Choice Outstanding Academic TitleFlourishing in the United States during the 1940s and 50s, the bleak, violent genre of filmmaking known as film noir reflected the attitudes of writers and auteur directors influenced by the events of the turbulent mid-twentieth century. Films such as Force of Evil, Night and the City, Double Indemnity, Laura, The Big Heat, The Killers, Kiss Me Deadly and, more recently, Chinatown and The Grifters are indelibly American. Yet the sources of this genre were found in Germany and France and imported to Hollywood by emigré filmmakers, who developed them and allowed a vibrant genre to flourish. Andrew Dickos's Street with No Name traces the film noir genre back to its roots in German Expressionist cinema and the French cinema of the interwar years. Dickos describes the development of the film noir in America from 1941 through the 1970s and examines how this development expresses a modern cinema. Dickos examines notable directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, John Huston, Nicholas Ray, Robert Aldrich, Samuel Fuller, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak, Abraham Polonsky, Jules Dassin, Anthony Mann and others. He also charts the genre's influence on such celebrated postwar French filmmakers as Jean-Pierre Melville, François Truffaut, and Jean-Luc Godard. Addressing the aesthetic, cultural, political, and social concerns depicted in the genre, Street with No Name demonstrates how the film noir generates a highly expressive, raw, and violent mood as it exposes the ambiguities of modern postwar society.

For Brigitte Le Dilly, what is most important in art is freedom. Freedom to choose model, technique and materials. "We paint as we like," she said. She allows herself the freedom to change her work according to her moods. This fourth volume in the series offers three basic lessons for beginners with step by step instructions, then eleven projects classified into three main themes: still life, landscapes and characters. The sketches for the development of these works are included in the last pages of the book.THIS BOOK IS IN FRENCH.

The murals that were produced in this country in the twentieth century remain as one of the great inventive achievements in modern British art. Highly original in their approach to design, balancing varying degrees of modernity or tradition, they demonstrate the creative drive of their makers and contain singular expressions of the aesthetic, personal and social concerns that typify the ages from which they come. Some are celebrations of simple human pleasures, perhaps to decorate a refreshment room, an ocean liner or a dining room. Others are intended to be the highest expressions of their art, ambitious allegorical or decorative compositions that like the frescoes of theRenaissance would speak through the ages to later generations. The individuals and committees who commissioned them similarly believed they would both represent the best that Britain had to offer and mark the high accomplishment of contemporary society, elevating the public and private spaces they occupied and inspiring moral purpose.This catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘British Murals & Decorative Painting 1910-1970’ which took place at the Fine Art Society - London (13 February - 9 March 2013) in association with Liss Llewellyn Fine Art. It coincided with the Sansom & Co publication British Murals & Decorative Painting 1920-1960.

British Murals & Decorative Painting 1920-1960 is illustrated with a series of specially commissioned photographs that record some of the least-known but most remarkable murals in Great Britain. The majority of these have never been reproduced in colour before.The book is divided into two sections. Part one seeks to define mural and decorative painting within its historic context. Alan Powers’ survey of the major events and significant dates describes the background out of which the mural revival of the early twentieth century emerged and the role played by its main patrons, artists, art schools, and institutions. It offers important re-interpretations of some of the best-known schemes and draws attention to some of those which deserve to be better known, arguing for a more inclusive view of twentieth-century British art and with it a more developed understanding of the role of murals in the lives of the artists who produced them.Part two of the book consists of 15 essays – written by experts in the field – which provide in-depth case studies of selected works, as well as considering the careers of specific artists as muralists. This section gives a special emphasis to murals which are less well-known and in many cases have only recently been rediscovered.As a consequence of remaining out of the public domain murals often end up being written out of the accounts of the lives of the artists who created them – not withstanding the fact that for sheer size and scale it might be assumed that they counted amongst the most ambitious projects they ever undertook. The book seeks to highlight the importance of murals and decorative painting as part of the untold story of twentieth-century British Art. So long as these works are poorly documented and largely unprotected they will remain a part of Britain’s artistic heritage which is undervalued and at risk.

The film industry and mainstream popular culture are notorious for promoting stereotypical images of Native Americans: the noble and ignoble savage, the pronoun-challenged sidekick, the ruthless warrior, the female drudge, the princess, the sexualized maiden, the drunk, and others. Over the years, Indigenous filmmakers have both challenged these representations and moved past them, offering their own distinct forms of cinematic expression.Native Americans on Film draws inspiration from the Indigenous film movement, bringing filmmakers into an intertextual conversation with academics from a variety of disciplines. The resulting dialogue opens a myriad of possibilities for engaging students with ongoing debates: What is Indigenous film? Who is an Indigenous filmmaker? What are Native filmmakers saying about Indigenous film and their own work? This thought-provoking text offers theoretical approaches to understanding Native cinema, includes pedagogical strategies for teaching particular films, and validates the different voices, approaches, and worldviews that emerge across the movement.

In the seventies, a group of American photographers challenged the established, modernist mode of photographic expression. Instead of viewing the camera as an objective, optical device and photographs as mechanically reproducible artistic products, the proponents of the new staged photography' seized the possibilities of conveying holistic life experiences by employing a full range of sensory impressions. In Impure Vision, photography theorist Moa Goysdotter analyses the work of four of the leading names in this new genre -- Les Krims, Duane Michals, Arthur Tress, and Lucas Samaras. Applying new perspectives to Seventies' art photography, she sheds fresh light on the four artists' critiques of purist ideals, and looks closely at their efforts to transcend the limitations of the purely visual effect of photography. Impure vision not only tells the history of American staged photography in a broad perspective, drawing on theories and methods new to the field, but also puts forward new approaches to photography history and theory in general.

Throughout the world, the American West has defined the character of the United States of America as no other region in America ever could. The combination of awe-inspiring topography and landscapes, from the 100th meridian to the Pacific Coast, along with the integration of Indian and Hispanic cultures into the American fabric of life have long inspired citizens of the world to travel to and explore the vast lands that define the American West, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the present time. Photography helped to open up the West after the American Civil War by sharing views of nature unparalleled in any other place on Earth. And photography helped to create the beginning of a national park system that may well go down in history as America's greatest democratic ideal. It is no wonder that public lands have come to dominate the American West, from national parks to national grasslands and wildlife refuges, from national forests to national monuments and historical sites, from wild and scenic rivers to other sanctuaries of wilderness. Willy Sutton has spent much of the past thirty years getting out of his truck and into the landscape, taking his camera to places of natural wonder both well known and obscure. He has assembled one of the great photographic bodies of work dealing with the public lands of the American West, providing a glimpse of what these landscapes looked like before they were designated as national treasures. But, of course, because of their preservation, they are available to all citizens of the world today. Whether one has lived in or visited the West for an entire lifetime, or whether one is coming to the West for the very first time, all readers of this book will find in Sutton's photographs a magisterial guide to what makes the West so unique, so special. As essayists Toby Jurovics and Susan B. Moldenhauer make plain, Willy Sutton's photographs, as represented in this book, will long be held in esteem for the pioneering work they embody, even in this contemporary age dominated by urban development, social and economic inequality, and climate change. At Home in the West:The Lure of Public Land is a book for the ages.

"I am not sure there is any other pair of monosyllabic words in the English language that evokes as powerful a sense of place as Wall Street, except, of course, New York itself." So writes famed architectural critic Paul Goldberger in his introduction to one of the most important photographic books on New York City to appear since 9/11: David Anderson's On Wall Street. During the 1970s, a lot of glass-and-steel, boxlike buildings were going up in New York City. David Anderson realized that the architecturally elaborate and stylistic buildings of the late nineteenth century through the 1930s that defined Wall Street would never be made again. He thus embarked on a remarkable twenty-year project (from 1980 to 2000) to document Wall Street's classic architecture before further changes were made in the area, including the demolition and destructive renovation of too many historic structures.

The Harold Samuel Collection Art Collection of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century pictures is one of the finest groups of Old Master paintings assembled in Britain over the past hundred years, but one of the least known. Sir Harold Samuel, 1st and last Lord Samuel of Wych Cross (1912–1987) bequeathed the collection to the City of London to hang at Mansion House. Now in the care of the Guildhall Museum and Art Gallery, the collection of 84 paintings can be viewed at Mansion House on organized tours or by appointment. Built between 1732 and 1754, the House is the home, office and center of entertaining for the Lord Mayor of the City of London and the Corporation. This guide will enable visitors to take a tour through Mansion House and discover the artists and their subjects – landscapes, still lifes and genre scenes – the development of styles, forms, materials and techniques, and the history of the collection. Highlights include works by Frans Hals, Aelbert Cuyp, Jan van Goyen, Jacob van Ruisdael and Pieter de Hooch. Lively and insightful entries accompany beautiful reproductions of every painting and are introduced by an essay about the creation of the collection and the history of artistic taste in relation to Dutch art. Michael Hall gained his PhD, on collecting Old Master paintings in the nineteenth century, from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2005. For the past twenty-five years he has been curator of the Rothschild family collections at Exbury in Hampshire. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angekes and was J. Clawson Mills Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has catalogued the collection of gold boxes at the Huntington Art Gallery in San Marino, California, and writes on French decorative arts and on collecting Old Master paintings. Clare Gifford is a doctor of science and medicine. She has over recent years become greatly interested in the history and culture of 'the City that made the world'. Her husband Roger was elected Lord Mayor of London for 2012–13. The Harold Samuel Collection is a unique collection of 17th-century paintings from Holland's Golden Age. Bequeathed to the City of London in 1987 by Sir Harold Samuel of Wych Cross (1912–1987), a wealthy property developer and philanthropist, this remarkable collection of 84 works – the finest collection of Dutch and Flemish art assembled privately in the UK in the last hundred years – enriches the splendour of the interior of the Mansion House, residence of the Lord Mayor of London. This book marks the 25th anniversary of the bequest. Proceeds from the sale of the book will go towards the Lord Mayor's Appeal which primarily supports the City Music Foundation, and the Harold Samuel Collection Fund, recently set up for the conservation and maintenance of the paintings. This publication, introduced by an essay of the Collection and the history of artistic taste in relation to Dutch art, has lively and insightful entries accompanying beautiful reproductions of each painting. The Merry Lute Player by Frans Hals (1582/3–1666) is perhaps the best known picture in the Collection, the first painting to be bought via a transatlantic telephone bid, but Samuel also gathered outstanding examples of genre painting, indeed several of the finest workds in existence by Nicolaes Maes, Jacob Ochtervelt, Adriaen van Ostade and Jan Steen.