The rural idyll is a powerful force in the British national imagination. This highly original and vibrant study will examine how key moments in art history have shaped the concept of the idyll and how contemporary artists continue to access and often challenge this concept. From High Art to propaganda, garden centres to air fresheners, contemporary art to computer games – a constellation of powerful images and ideas contribute to our understandings of the rural. This publication offers new ways of thinking about the rural idyll and the countryside more broadly, through the innovative integration of a wide range of art and visual cultures. These include classic landscapes by artists such as Blake, Claude, Constable and Turner, works of modern British art, and contemporary works by artists who present new perspectives on the rural idyll. Crucially, this volume will enter these familiar and unfamiliar art works into a productive dialogue with an extensive range of visual cultures which populate everyday life now and in the past, for instance Frank Newbould’s iconic wartime recruitment posters of 1942–44 and rural-themed video games. In the contemporary art world the rural is seriously under-represented as an arena of critical inquiry and artistic production. This publication will make a significant contribution towards redressing this situation. In addition to the new scholarship on the rural idyll – by academic experts from a wide range of disciplines, encompassing the spheres of art history, contemporary art, poetry, literature, rural history, agriculture, and everyday life – it will include interviews with ten key contemporary artists who are working with the rural in innovative ways. It will also contain newly commissioned material from leading artists and writers which articulate the themes of the publication in ways that differ from the traditional catalogue essay. It will include a specially commissioned visual essay by Jeremy Deller. Deller will select a series of images from the exhibition and elsewhere and combine them with short pieces of text that develop the questions and themes discussed throughout the book in creative and open-ended visual dialogue. There will also be a new commission from the Scottish poet and writer Kathleen Jamie, whose moving observations on the relationships between nature and everyday life, articulate the embeddedness of the rural idyll into the mundane and the quotidian.

This rich collection of over twenty fully illustrated essays covers an array of medieval topics, with a particular emphasis on sculpture. The contributors, all friends and colleagues of the dedicatee, are prominent experts in their different fields, from the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. The wide range of subjects covered includes ivories, wood carvings, alabaster, architectural sculpture, caskets, reliquaries, and questions of imagery and iconography. With a full scholarly apparatus, A Reservoir of Ideals is an invaluable work of reference. The volume celebrates the museum career and scholarship of Paul Williamson, a scholar and curator whose outstanding contribution to art history continues to expand and inspire the study of sculpture in general and medieval art in particular. Williamson joined the V&Ain 1979 as one of the youngest curators ever appointed. He took over as Chief Curator in 1989, and he was Director of the Collections from 2004-07, and Acting Deputy Director in 2013. During his 36-year career at the V&Ahe wrote 17 books and over 150 articles. Williamson’s profound experience and expertise as a curator at the V&Ahave both enhanced his own well-deserved reputation as the leading expert in the study of European sculpture, and simultaneously enriched the standing and holdings of the collections themselves. The works acquired during his time at the V&A, and the gallery displays that he either oversaw or curated himself, amply demonstrate his tremendous range of knowledge and appreciation of art. Despite his wide-ranging expertise and enthusiasm for the art of all periods, it seems fitting that this volume is devoted to medieval art, and primarily to sculpture - the works of art that undoubtedly lie closest to his heart. It is a testament to his standing at the pinnacle of medieval studies that so many leading experts have eagerly contributed to this exceptional collection.

Published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of G.F. Watts, this book provides a lively and engaging introduction to one of the most charismatic figures in the history of British art. Covering all aspects of Watts’s career, it places him back at the centre of the visual culture of the 19th century. George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was one of the great artists of the 19th century. As a young man Watts exhibited alongside Turner, and by the end of his long career he was influential upon Picasso. Sculptor, portraitist and creator of classic Symbolist imagery, Watts was seen also as more than an artist – a philanthropic visionary whose art charted the progress of humanity in the modern world. After four years in Italy in the 1840s, Watts was recognized as a Renaissance master reborn in the Victorian age. Nicknamed ‘Signor’, and working in isolation from the mainstream commercial art-world, he became a cult figure, obsessively returning to a series of subjects describing the fundamental themes of existence – love, life, death, hope. Engaging in turn with Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Aesthetic Movement and Symbolism, Watts remained true to his own personal vision of the evolution of humanity. As a portraitist, Watts set out to capture the essence of the great characters of 19th-century Britain, donating his finest portraits to the National Portrait Gallery in London. Watts’s portraits of figures such as William Morris, John Stuart Mill and the poets Tennyson and Swinburne have become the classic images of these cultural celebrities, while more intimate portraits such as Choosing, showing the artist’s first wife, the actress Ellen Terry, are among the most popular of all British portraits. During the 1880s Watts emerged from his cult status to be embraced by the public. Feted as the great modern master, even as “England’s Michelangelo”, he was given large retrospective exhibitions in London and at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His reputation grew also in Europe, where the Symbolists revered him as one of their great exemplars. Watts’s most celebrated works, such as Love and Life, Hope, and the epic sculpture Physical Energy, were reproduced globally and their fame was unsurpassed within contemporary art in the years around 1900. By this time, Watts had acquired a country home in Surrey – Limnerslease – around which he and his second wife, the designer Mary Watts, built a type of utopian settlement, which has recently been restored and opened to the public as Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village. By the end of his life Watts was a national figure, an inspirational artist who had found a meaningful role for art as a catalyst for social change and community integration.

This richly illustrated and scholarly catalogue accompanies an exhibition at Carlton Hobbs in New York, January 2017. Among the 25 beautiful works, dating from the early Renaissance to the Neoclassical period, are important statuettes by masters such as Gianfrancesco Susini, Willem Danielsz van Tetrode, Masimiliano Soldani-Benzi, Pietro Tacca and Joseph Nollekens.

In his joint capacities of Premier peintre du roi, director of the Gobelins manufactory and rector of the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, Le Brun exercised a previously unprecedented influence on the production of the visual arts – so much so that some scholars have repeatedly described him as ‘dictator’ of the arts in France. The Sovereign Artist explores how Le Brun operated in his diverse fields of activities, linking and juxtaposing his portraiture, history painting and pictorial theory with his designs for architecture, tapestries, carpets and furniture. It argues that Le Brun sought to create a repeatable and easily recognizable visual language associated with Louis XIV, in order to translate the king’s political claims for absolute power into a visual form. How he did this is discussed through a series of individual case studies ranging from Le Brun’s lost equestrian portrait of Louis XIV, and his involvement in the Querelle du coloris at the Académie, to his scheme for 93 Savonnerie carpets for the Grande Galerie at the Louvre, his Histoire du roy tapestry series, his decoration of the now destroyed Escalier des Ambassadeurs at Versailles and the dramatic destruction of the Sun King’s silver furniture. One key theme is the relation between the unity of the visual arts, to which Le Brun aspired, and the strong hierarchical distinctions he made between the liberal arts and the mechanical crafts: while his lectures at the Académie advocated a visual and conceptual unity in painting and architecture, they were also a means by which he attempted to secure the newly gained status of painting as a liberal art, and therefore to distinguish it from the mechanical crafts which he oversaw the production of at the Gobelins. His artistic and architectural aspirations were comparable to those of his Roman contemporary Gianlorenzo Bernini, summoned to Paris in 1665 to design the Louvre’s East façade and to create a portrait bust of Louis XIV. Bernini’s failure to convince the king and Colbert of his architectural scheme offered new opportunities for Le Brun and his French contemporaries to prove themselves capable of solving the architectural problems of the Louvre and to transform it into a palace appropriate “to the grandeur and the magnificence of the prince who [was] to inhabit it” (Jean-Baptiste Colbert to Nicolas Poussin in 1664). The comparison between Le Brun and Bernini not only illustrates how France sought artistic supremacy over Italy during the second half of the 17th century, but further helps to demonstrate how Le Brun himself wanted to be perceived: beyond acting as a translator of the king’s artistic ambition, the artist appears to have sought his own sovereign authority over the visual arts.

The prowess of Chinese creative abilities in the decorative arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries was well known globally, but, while much has been written about Chinese textiles and on the influence of the East on European styles of the time, the story of the influence of Western formats and tastes on the manufacture of Chinese jewellery in the period has, amazingly, never been told. In examining 50 objects of exatraordinary quality from an important private North American collection, this book seeks to redress the situation and reveal the splendour of silver and silver-gilt jewellery of the late Qing dynasty. An ancient and sophisticated culture, the Chinese – who have since records begun made up about a quarter of world’s population – had almost everything they could need or want within their own borders … except for silver. The metal had long cultural, commercial and governmental associations but had to be imported largely from South America, after both national and Japanese reserves were quickly exhausted by huge Chinese demand. Beginning in the mid 19th century – where the story told here begins – after two successive defeats in the Opium Wars, sixteen treaty ports were established on coastal and inland cities, enabling Western merchants freer movement and trade with the Chinese. The 50 pieces of jewellery and ornament presented here have been beautifully photographed and carefully documented. In superb unrestored condition, the objects incorporate exotic materials like tiger-shark teeth, teak wood, amber, precious and semi-precious stones from India and Sri Lanka, enamel, as well as finely carved and pierced nephrite, jadeite and lapis lazuli. Daoist imagery and motifs dominate but with the inclusion of some surprising Buddhist imagery as well. Though not from the imperial collection of the Qing, these exquisite pieces were seemingly commissioned and worn by prosperous members of the society from all over the vast country. The differences in manufacture, even in this varied sample of 50 items, is striking. Their appeal is more than just aesthetic, and their design and decoration speak of the social, religious, economic and political climate of their time. Questions regarding the sale and consumption of these object are discussed, and changing local and foreign tastes in the wake of the fall of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of the Republican period are also addressed.

The rich variety of languages, religious traditions and schools of art of the Indian subcontinent are brought together in this exceptional library of Indian manuscripts. Religious and philosophical texts from Buddhist, Hindu, Islamic, Jain, Sikh and Zoroastrian schools of thought are all represented in illustrated manuscripts. This library shows how these various faiths borrowed, interacted and influenced one another in the subcontinent. From palm leaf manuscripts of the South to pothi format manuals from the Himalayas in Nepal, to the sophisticated and highly illustrated manuscripts of the Imperial Moghul court, this catalogue takes the reader on a visual journey through great epics, charged romances and colourful cautionary tales. Highlights include an important and lavishly illustrated palm-leaf manuscript by ‘The Emperor of Poets’, Upendra Bhanja (c. 1640–1740 ce), and a rare Bihar-I Danesh (The Springtime of Knowledge) by Shaikh ‘Inayatallah Kamboh of Delhi, from late 17th/early 18th century – the finest known copy of the manuscript. An exceptional album of 18th-century Indian paintings from the Liechtenstein Princely Collections offers insight into the fascination for Indian courtly life among the nobility of Europe. A number of exceptional painted scrolls are also presented here. Scroll painting has a long history in India. Story tellers would travel from village to village giving performances of well-known epics and regional stories often accompanied by musicians and with the visual aid of a painted scroll. One particularly vibrant scroll, over 15 metres in length, of the Madel Puranamu, was probably commissioned by a wealthy member of the dhobi caste to celebrate his community’s origins and favour with Shiva. Among the many intruiging maps and manuals – on art, astrology, omens, divination and auspicious symbols – is an 18th-century Nepalese sorcer’s manual, which contains instructions for protective and exorcistic Shaiva rituals, mantras and sacrificial blood-offerings. Its binding includes feathers and traces of blood and skin, which by tradition are fragments of the ‘five beasts’ – buffalo, chicken, dog, goat and cow.

Focusing on the prolific trade, transport and consumption of Chinese silk and porcelain, and Japanese lacquer abroad between 1500 and 1644, this groundbreaking book will show how the material cultures of late Ming China and Momoyama/Early Edo Japan on one side of the globe, and Western Europe and the New World on the other, became linked for the first time, through an exchange of luxury Asian manufactured goods for currency. It offers new insight into these multi-layered long-distance commercial networks, which resulted in an unprecedented creation of material culture that reflected influences of both East and West. New research reveals evidence of the trade of these three Asian manufactured goods, first by Portugal and Spain, and later by the trading companies formed by the Northern Netherlands/Dutch Republic and England. Important documentary information is brought to light concerning, for example, the use of Chinese porcelain in Western Europe, and the objects made to order in European shapes for the Dutch and English trading companies in Japan and China. The study also sheds light on both the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific commercial trading networks through which these Asian goods circulated, as well as the way in which these goods were acquired, used and appreciated by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English societies in Western Europe and the multi-ethnic societies of the European colonies in the New World and Asia. 400 illustrations of extant examples of Chinese silks and porcelains, along with Japanese lacquers of the period, complement the information gleaned from archival and textual material. In the case of Chinese porcelain, a large number of the examples illustrated are provided by archaeological finds from European shipwrecks, survival campsites, colonial settlements in Asia, the New World and the Caribbean, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe. Breaking new ground in its comparative study of the impact these European trading empires or companies had on the material cultures of China and Japan, this book shows the influence that the European merchants and missionaries exerted on the goods made specifically to order for them in both China and Japan. It also traces the worldwide circulation of these luxury objects, which were intended for secular and religious use in European settlements in Asia, and their respective mother countries in Western Europe and colonies in the New World. More importantly, this book shows that these specific orders led to the creation of a wide variety of hybrid manufactured goods in both China and Japan, which combined elements from very different and distant cultures, reflecting the fascinating and complex East-West cultural exchanges that occurred in the early modern period.

Rodin & Dance: The Essence of Movement is the first serious study of Rodin’s late sculptural series known as the Dance Movements. Exploring the artist’s fascination with dance and bodies in extreme acrobatic poses, the exhibition and accompanying catalogue give an account of Rodin’s passion for new forms of dance – from south-asian dances to the music hall and the avant garde – which began appearing on the French stage around 1900. Rodin made hundreds of drawings and watercolours of dancers. From about 1911 he also gave sculptural expression to this fascination with dancers’ bodies and movements in creating the Dance Movements, a series of small clay figure studies (each approx. 30 cm in height) that stretch and twist in unsettling ways. These leaping, turning figures in terracotta and plaster were found in the artist’s studio after his death and were not exhibited during Rodin’s lifetime or known beyond his close circle. Presented alongside the associated drawings and photographs of some of the dancers, they show a new side to Rodin’s art, in which he pushed the boundaries of sculpture, expressing themes of flight and gravity. This exhibition catalogue aims to become the authoritative reference for Rodin’s Dance Movements, comprising essays from leading scholars in the field of sculpture. It includes an introductory essay on the history of the bronze casting of the Dance Movements and the critical fortune of the series, an essay on the dancers Rodin admired, and an extensive technical essay. The Catalogue will comprise detailed entries on the works in the exhibition and new technical information on the drawings. Contributors include Alexandra Gerstein, Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Antoinette Le Normand-Romain, Director, Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris; Juliet Bellow, Associate Professor of Art History, American University in Washington, DC and currently Resident Fellow, the Center for Ballet and the Arts, New York University; FrançoisBlanchetière, Curator of Sculpture at the Musée Rodin; Agnès Cascio and Juliette Lévy, distinguished sculpture conservators; Sophie Biass-Fabiani, Curator of Works on Paper at the Musée Rodin; and Kate Edmonson, Conservator of Works on Paper at The Courtauld Gallery.

A Dutch Italianate, Adriaen Van de Velde represents a point of artistic crosscommunication across borders, fusing agricultural landscapes in Holland with mythological Arcadian scenes in Italian settings. He died at the early age of 35, and yet he produced a great number of masterpieces that earned him tremendous posthumous fame in the 18th and 19th centuries, when he was one of the most sought-after names among collectors in Germany, France and England. Compared to Mozart’s chamber music by the renowned art historian Wolfgang Stechow (1896–1974), Van de Velde’s works are delicate and carefully composed and demonstrate his mastery of lighting effects as well as the human figure. His father Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of the Younger wereboth marine painters, who in the winter of 1672–73 moved from Leiden to England to work in the service of King Charles II. Adriaen, by contrast, almost certainly never travelled outside his native country and chose to paint landscapes rather than seascapes. His meadows, Italianate views, beaches, dunes, forests, winter scenes and portraits in landscape settings and are among the very best that the Dutch Golden Age has produced. Moreover, the artist’s drawings are widely considered to be a high point in 17th-century Dutch draughtsmanship. Yet despite his fame in previous centuries and the exquisite quality of his work, there has never been an exhibition devoted to the artist. As well as bringing together 60 of his finest works, the publication will reunite the paintings with their preparatory studies in seductive red chalk or pen and ink for the first time, making it possible to follow very precisely the various phases in the artist’s creative process – perhaps more so than is possible for any other Dutch artist of the period. The publication will therefore offer not only a survey of the artist’s oeuvre but also a rare glimpse of a seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter at work, from conception to completion.

This lively, lavishly illustrated volume presents rare decorative arts from Asia – all of exceptional quality – from ornate handled daggers and exquisite silver fi ligree boxes to diamond-studded jewels, magnifi cent embroidered silk and divination bowls bymaster craftsmen. The decorative arts of South and Southeast Asia, and especially those of the 18th and 19th centuries, and trade items produced during the same period, constitute a much neglected area. Such items, which in a Europeanized context tend to be labelled objets de vertu, are under-represented in public and private collections. While the decorative arts of later Western Europe and North America might be strongly represented, when it comes to South and Southeast Asia, there is a bias towards the ancient, thereligious and the sculptural. And yet the decorative arts of Asia of recent centuries is a more accessible and tangible fi eld for many. The relative attractiveness of more recent Asian decorative arts, for which provenance issues need not be so acute, grows as the movement of archaeological and other early material across international borders becomes evermore complex and problematic, be it for commercial or for exhibition purposes. Seeking to redress the balance, this volume presents objects of exceptional quality that are often incredibly rare – ranging from ornate handled daggers and exquisite silver fi ligree boxes to diamond-studded jewels and magnifi cent embroidered silk. Only some of these objects were made for religious reasons, and, though old, few are ancient. Instead, they are the product of cultural infl uences that have crossed borders, produced in the quest for beauty. The catalogue also includes a selection of items usually designated as ‘tribal’ art. Many of these have a decorative as much as a ritualistic component. Among the objects from Nigeria are a stunning 19th-century processional staff , topped with the figure of a queen, two museum-quality divination bowls carved by master craftsmen, and a striking and possibly unique fi ve-headed dance costume. Most have been sourced from old UK and European collections, and most are likely to have been collected during the colonial era. This is important. Overwhelmingly, most ‘tribal’ art items available commercially today are reproduction pieces and have no place inserious collections. Michael Backman is widely published on Asian culture, art and politics. He is the author of six books that cover all aspects of Asia. His Asian Eclipse was named by The Economist among its ‘Books of the Year’ and appeared on several bestseller lists. His gallery in central London specializes in works of art from India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Himalayas, the Islamic World, and Colonial and Tribal art. The gallery sells to museums and important private collections across the world.

There was a time when museums might have been regarded as rather forbidding and austere centres of learning, but today they are more likely to position themselves firmly within the tourism and leisure industry with all manner of food, fun and familyentertainment on offer. A high-profile museum brand often relies on a fast-changing menu of temporary exhibitions with an attractive programme of activities, cleverly marketed to ever-growing numbers of visitors. Many of these changes have been positive and beneficial but they have not been without risk to the central purpose of museums as repositories for collections that are looked after, researched anddisplayed with knowledge and sensitivity. The permanent collection should be the heart and soul of any museum. Nurtured and developed with intelligence, a collection can be an endless source of surprise and delight as well as a focus of local and national pride. The museum in this view is a setting for sustained encounters with objects and works of art, somewhere to be visited and revisited over the courseof a lifetime, a place that helps to bind communities, with collections that are cared for and shared as a reminder of the past and a source of inspiration for the present. The process of acquiring works for public collections is rarely easy in any setting. In the face of escalating prices on the art market and diminishing public funds it is all too easy for complacency and apathy to settle upon the museum community. But the task of building collections of national or local importance is never finished. It should not be about casual ‘shopping’ or satisfying the whims of museum directors or sponsors. It is about building a heritage that is richer, more complete and more relevant for future generations; with every successful acquisition, a museum’s collection gains in strength and character. The volume is dedicated to Peter Hecht, the great champion of public art collections, who throughout his career has worked to show us why museums matter and how their collections, large or small, national or local, can make a profound difference to the lives of those who use them. We hope that it will bring people the world over to realise the importance of collecting for the public, locally, nationally and internationally, and to acknowledge and encourage the role of private individuals, associations and institutions, as well as public bodies, in this vital endeavour.

When English naturalist Joseph Banks (1743–1820) accompanied Captain James Cook (1728–1779) on his historic mission into the Pacific, the Endeavour voyage of 1768–71, he took with him a team of collectors and illustrators. Banks and his team returned from the voyage with unprecedented collections of artefacts and specimens of stunning birds, fish and other animals as well as thousands of plants, most seen for the first time in Europe. They produced, too, remarkable landscape and figure drawings of the peoples encountered on the voyage along with detailed journals and descriptions of the places visited, which, with the first detailed maps of these lands (Tahiti, New Zealand and the East Coast of Australia), were afterwards used to create lavishly illustrated accounts of the mission. These caused a storm of interest in Europe where plays, poems and satirical caricatures were also produced to celebrate and examine the voyage, its personnel and many ‘new’ discoveries.Along with contemporary portraits of key personalities aboard the ship, scale models and plans of the ship itself, scientific instruments taken on the voyage, commemorative medals and sketches, the objects (over 140) featured in this new book will tell the story of the Endeavour voyage and its impact ahead of the 250th anniversary in 2018 of the launch of this seminal mission. Artwork made both during and after the voyage will be seen alongside actual specimens. And by comparing the voyage originals with the often stylized engravings later produced in London for the official account, the book will investigate how knowledge gained on the mission was gathered, revised and later received in Europe. Items separated in some cases for more than two centuries will be brought together to reveal their fascinating history not only during but since that mission. Original voyage specimens will feature together with illustrations and descriptions of them, showing a rich diversity of newly discovered species and how Banks organized this material, planning but ultimately failing to publish it. In fact, many of the objects in the book have never been published before.The book will focus on the contribution of Banks’s often neglected artists Sydney Parkinson, Herman Diedrich Spöring, Alexander Buchan as well as the priest and Pacific voyager Tupaia, who joined Endeavour in the Society Islands, none of whom survived the mission. These men illustrated island scenes of bays, dwellings, canoes as well as the dress, faces and possessions of Pacific peoples. Burial ceremonies, important religious sites and historic encounters were all depicted. Of particular interest, and only recently recognised as by him, are the original artworks of Tupaia, who produced as part of this mission the first charts and illustrations on paper by any Polynesian. The surviving Endeavour voyage illustrations are the most important body of images produced since Europeans entered this region, matching the truly historic value of the plant specimens and artefacts that will be seen alongside them.

Published to accompany an exhibition at Salisbury Museum and Art Gallery,this volume explores the most significant works of art engaged with prehistoricmoments across Britain from the 18th century to the 21st. While some of theworks in the earlier period may be familiar to readers – especially Turner andConstable’s famous watercolours of Stonehenge – the varied responses to BritishAntiquity since 1900 are much less well known and have never been groupedtogether.The author aims to show the significance of antiquity for 20th-century artists,demonstrating how they responded to the observable features of prehistoricBritain and exploited their potential for imaginative re-interpretation. Theclassic phase of modernist interest in these sites and monuments was the1930s, but a number of artists working after WWII developed this legacy orwere stimulated to explore that landscape in new ways. Indeed, it continues tostimulate responses and the book concludes with an examination of works madewithin the last few years.An introductory essay looks at the changing artistic approach to Britishprehistoric remains over the last 250 years, emphasizing the artistic significanceof this body of work and examining the very different contexts that broughtit into being. The cultural intersections between the prehistoric landscape, itsrepresentation by fine artists and the emergence of its most famous sites asfamiliar locations in public consciousness will also be examined. For example,engraved topographical illustrations from the 18th and 19th centuries and Shelladvertising posters from the 20th century will be considered.Artists represented include: JMW Turner, John Constable, Thomas Hearne,William Blake, Samuel Prout, William Geller, Richard Tongue, Thomas Guest,John William Inchbold, George Shepherd, William Andrews Nesfield, CopleyFielding, Yoshijiro (Mokuchu) Urushibara, Alan Sorrell, Edward McKnightKauffer, Frank Dobson, Paul Nash, Eric Ravilious, John Piper, Henry Moore,Barbara Hepworth, Ithell Colquhoun, Gertrude Hermes, Norman Stevens,Norman Ackroyd, Bill Brandt, Derek Jarman, Richard Long, Joe Tilson, DavidInshaw and Jeremy Deller.

One of the most distinctive features of Islamic design is the evolution of an increasingly abstract and repetitive repertoire of motifs, which are shared among all media – metalwork, woodwork, ceramics, tilework and textiles. In textiles the main themes are based on angular and geometric shapes – vertical and horizontal striped bands; hexagons and octagons, which can be linked and infinitely extended; stylized and rhythmic scrolls of foliage and flowers; and Arabic calligraphy, of which the letters can be formed into continuous borders, panels and medallions. These motifs can be used separately or combined into complex patterns, of which the repetitive and two-dimensional features are ideal for textile production, especially where varying lengths are required – for hangings, curtains, robes and shawls. Valued for their role in the subtleties of court ceremonial and fashion, these textiles were also much admired beyond the Islamic lands.The exceptional collection published here ranges widely in region, material and technique. There are textiles and garments from North Africa, Syria, Arabia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian subcontinent linked by a shared vocabulary of ornament – evidence of the international nature of Islamic design. Materials represented are silk – the most prestigious of fibres, requiring highly respected weavers – wool, cotton and linen. Decoration is based on variations of weave and colour and embellishment through embroidery, printing and appliqué and illustrates the work of both professional and domestic workers.The strengths of the collection are concentrated in the textile production of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which, thanks to the basically conservative nature of textile technique and design, preserve and continue the traditions established in the medieval Islamic world. They are important in an assessment of Islamic textiles both for their quality and as illustrations of survival and adaptation in a major industry. Their heritage reaches back well over a thousand years, even though their very high perishability means that for the earlier part of the tradition our knowledge is reliant very largely on written sources. These, however, attest to the superb quality and quantity of textiles at the courts of the period.

The exceptional bronzes presented here have been carefully selected, over the course of many years, to represent the Tomasso Bothers’ passion for this most fascinating material, and they range from the dawn of Italian humanism in the early 15th century to the high point of the Italian late Baroque. Highlights include a remarkable and rare relief depicting the Triumph of Caesar over King Juba by Italian artist Filarete (c. 1433), an exceptional and commanding Mars by Giambologna, Florence’s most prominent sculptor of the late Renaissance, and an exquisite and newly published autograph version of the Abduction of Proserpina by François Girardon, King Louis XIV’s court sculptor. These are accompanied by further testimonies of the extraordinary development of European sculpture in bronze, such as a unique pair of allegorical statuettes by Francesco da Sangallo, a student and contemporary of Michelangelo, a rare Cristo Benedicente by Northern Italian master Giulio del Moro, and sacred and secular subjects by the most gifted heirs to Giambologna’s tradition, Antonio and Gianfrancesco Susini in Florence and, further North, Hans Reichle in Germany. The catalogue accompanies the exhibition Important European Bronzes, which was on display at Carlton Hobbs LLC in New York, 21–30 January 2016. Following on from the Tomassos’ three successful Scultura exhibitions in the United States, this is the company’s first major retrospective dedicated exclusively to sculpture in bronze.