At the height of the Napoleonic Wars, a new generation of painters led by the precociously talented David Wilkie took London's art world by storm. Their novel approach to the depiction of everyday life marked the beginning a trajectory that links the art of the Age of Revolution with the postmodern culture of today. What emerged from the imagery of Wilkie and other early 19th-century British genre painters-among them William Mulready, Edward Bird, and the controversial watercolorist Thomas Heaphy-was a sense that common people were increasingly bound up with the exceptional events of history, that traditional boundaries between country and city were melting away, and that a more regularized and dynamic present was everywhere encroaching upon the customary patterns of the past. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Can we really trust the things our bodies tell us about the world? This work reveals how deeply intertwined cultural practices of art and science questioned the authority of the human body in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing on Henry Fuseli, Anne-Louis Girodet and Philippe de Loutherbourg, it argues that romantic artworks participated in a widespread crisis concerning the body as a source of reliable scientific knowledge. Rarely discussed sources and new archival material illuminate how artists drew upon contemporary sciences and inverted them, undermining their founding empiricist principles. The result is an alternative history of romantic visual culture that is deeply embroiled in controversies around electricity, mesmerism, physiognomy and other popular sciences. This volume reorients conventional accounts of romanticism and some of its most important artworks, while also putting forward a new model for the kinds of questions that we can ask about them.

This collection reconsiders the life and work of Emile Jean-Horace Vernet (1789-1863), presenting him as a crucial figure for understanding the visual culture of modernity. The book includes work by senior and emerging scholars, showing that Vernet was a multifaceted artist who moved with ease across the thresholds of genre and media to cultivate an image of himself as the embodiment of modern France. In tune with his times, skilled at using modern technologies of visual reproduction to advance his reputation, Vernet appealed to patrons from across the political spectrum and made works that nineteenth-century audiences adored. Even Baudelaire, who reviled Vernet and his art and whose judgment has played a significant role in consigning Vernet to art-historical obscurity, acknowledged that the artist was the most complete representative of his age. For those with an interest in the intersection of art and modern media, politics, imperialism, and fashion, the essays in this volume offer a rich reward.

With essays on sojourning artists like Situ Qiao and local artists such as Tchang Ju Chi, Singaporean scholar and educator Yeo Mang Thong demonstrates how Singapore was an important hub for artists who travelled to and lived in Singapore. Yeo's research, originally in Chinese, lls a gap in scholarship on the pre-war visual arts scene in Singapore; this English translation aims to bring his research to a broader audience.

Photography, one of the most influential inventions of the nineteenth century, has been shaped by Canadian innovators. Among them are two Quebec men who have flown beneath the radar in studies of the history of photography: the Smeaton brothers. Out of the Studio documents the life, oeuvre, and achievement of Charles Smeaton and his younger brother, John. Launched by the opening of their "photographic gallery" in 1861, they developed a reputation in Quebec for images of contemporaneous people, places, and events taken in challenging outdoor settings. Smeaton pictures of the aftermath of the Great Fire of Quebec in 1866 helped bring an understanding of the disaster to an international audience; images featuring the gold mining industry were displayed at the Exposition universelle in Paris the following year. When Charles travelled to Europe in 1866, he accomplished a feat previously thought impossible, taking the first successful photographs in the Roman catacombs. John moved to Montreal in 1869, where he worked for newspapers and developed techniques for the direct transfer of photographs into print without the necessity of intermediary engravings. Out of the Studio is the first comprehensive biographical study detailing the innovation and imagination of the Smeaton brothers and their legacy of images across two continents.

The Living Death of Antiquity examines the idealization of an antiquity that exhibits, in the words of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 'a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur'. Fitzgerald discusses the aesthetics of this strain of neoclassicism as manifested in a range of work in different media and periods, focusing on the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the aftermath of Winckelmann's writing, John Flaxman's engraved scenes from the Iliad and the sculptors Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen reinterpreted ancient prototypes or invented new ones. Earlier and later versions of this aesthetic in the ancient Greek Anacreontea, the French Parnassian poets and Erik Satie's Socrate, manifest its character in different media and periods. Looking with a sympathetic eye on the original aspirations of the neoclassical aesthetic and its forward-looking potential, Fitzgerald describes how it can tip over into the vacancy or kitsch through which a 'remaindered' antiquity lingers in our minds and environments. This book asks how the neoclassical value of simplicity serves to conjure up an epiphanic antiquity, and how whiteness, in both its literal and its metaphorical forms, acts as the 'logo' of neoclassical antiquity, and functions aesthetically in a variety of media. In the context of the waning of a neoclassically idealized antiquity, Fitzgerald describes the new contents produced by its asymptotic approach to meaninglessness, and how the antiquity that it imagined both is and is not with us.

This publication celebrates for the first time the important creative collaboration between the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and his muse, the dancer Jane Avril (1868-1943). Avril was one of the stars of Moulin Rouge in the 1890s, and was nicknamed 'La Melinite' after a form of explosive. She was known for her alluring style and exotic persona, and her fame was assured by a series of dazzlingly inventive posters designed by Lautrec.

Part of a series of exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed then foil stamped. And they're powerfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. This example is based on 'Wheat Field with a Lark', 1887 by Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), and printed on silver.

One of the few women Impressionists, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) had a life of paradoxes: American born, she lived and worked in France; a classically trained artist, she preferred the company of radicals; never married, she painted exquisite and beloved portraits of mothers and children. This book provides new insight into the personal life and artistic endeavors of this extraordinary woman. "Brilliant, lively life of long lived American Impressionist."-Kirkus Reviews "Rich in historical and archeological detail, thoroughgoing in its resurrection of the contexts and conditions of Cassatt's life as an artist."-Carol Armstrong, New York Times Book Review "Mathews informatively and entertainingly documents Cassatt's tumultuous relations with various members of both the American and Parisian avant-garde. . . . An impressive biography."-Siri Huntoon, New York Newsday "A superb piece of scholarship."-Ruth Johnstone Wales, Christian Science Monitor "In this admirable biography, art historian Mathews . . . presents a compelling portrait of this contradictory woman."-Publishers Weekly "Authoritative, unsentimental, clear as a bell, this is a model of the new biography by and about talented women."-Kennedy Fraser "This will probably be the definitive biography for our generation."-John Wilmerding, Princeton University

"This stylish and erudite thematic study of the influence Romanticism exerts upon Western culture and particularly the visual arts is the companion volume to Honour's equally valuable Neo-classicism.... The text is supported by a useful selection of illustrations Excellent footnotes and a good index. Finely produced, Romanticism will stimulate the graduate and inform the undergraduate." -Choice "An interpretation that rings true for our own time.... His approach to his vast subject is essentially cool, analytic and balanced This is a book that covers an immense amount of material with a freshness of touch." -John Russell, The New York Times "A book of great interest and quality which gives form to a subject that is often treated very vaguely." -Kenneth Clark

This enthralling and comprehensive new book on Henri Matisse is an eye-opener for all students and art lovers interested in early twentieth-century art. Taking fifty of Matisse's most iconic works of art, John Cauman provides an accessible narrative about the man and his work, deciphering the themes, methods and intentions of this truly great artist. Chronologically spanning from the late nineteenth century to the mid 1950s, each painting, drawing and mural is described and analysed in beautiful detail, within the context of the period, so that the reader can really understand what the artist was hoping to achieve with each work. The paintings are prefaced by an informative introduction that presents the milieu and key characters that featured in Matisse's life. Among his most famous works, this book includes Luxe, calme et volupte (1904), Le Bonheur de vivre (The Joy of Life) (1905-6), Self-Portrait in a Striped Shirt (1906), Blue Nude (Memory of Biskra) (1907), Bathers by a River (1909-17), Harmony in Red (1908), Dance I (1909), Entrance to the Casbah (1912-13), Pianist and Checker Players (1924), Still Life with a Magnolia (1941), Memory of Oceania (1951-2) and The Snail (1953).

This study examines how an artist construed himself as cultural heritage by the turn of the 19th century, how this heritage was further construed after his death, and how the artworks can be made to further new approaches and insights through a digital archive (aroseniusarchive.se). The study employs the concept of 'staging' to capture the means used by the artist, as well as by reception, in this construal. The question of 'staging' involves not only how the artist has been called forth from the archives, but also how the artist can be called forth in new ways today through digitization. The study first elaborates on the theoretical framework through the aspects of mediation and agency, then explores how the artist was staged after his death. Finally, the artist's own means of staging himself are explored. Swedish painter Ivar Arosenius (1878-1909) is the case studied.

Collectors played an essential yet misunderstood role in the success of Impressionism. Even though they were not immune to economic and social woes, they were often engaged in defending this artistic movement that they had helped come to life, establish itself or make known, each according to their times. It is this group of committed collectors that the present work seeks to examine. From assembling a collection to donating it to a museum, from supporting artists within the borders of France to publicising the movement internationally, from the first intimate private showings to the questions raised by the presentation of these works in museums, collectors were present at every stage of the development of Impressionism, from the dawn of the movement to the middle of the 20th century. This volume aims to re-examine and reassess the importance of these collectors in the political, social and economic contexts of their times through the contributions of 16 international specialists. Depeaux, De Nittis, the Palmers, O'Hara, Buhrle, Caillebotte, Fayet: whether they are the subjects of dedicated case studies or part of a broader discourse, the multiplicity of profiles of these collectors and the paths they followed will allow readers to gain a better understanding of their importance in the history of the Impressionist movement.

This book examines a range of visual images of military recruitment to explore changing notions of glory, or of gloire, during the French Revolution. It raises questions about how this event re-orientated notions of 'citizenship' and of service to 'la Patrie'. The opening lines of the Marseillaise are grandly declamatory: Allons enfants de la Patrie/le jour de gloire est arrive! or, in English: Arise, children of the Homeland/The day of glory has arrived! What do these words mean in their later eighteenth-century French context? What was gloire and how was it changed by the revolutionary process? This military song, later adopted as the national anthem, represents a deceptively unifying moment of collective engagement in the making of the modern French nation. Valerie Mainz questions this through a close study of visual imagery dealing with the issue of military recruitment. From neoclassical painting to popular prints, such images typically dealt with the shift from civilian to soldier, focusing on how men, and not women, were called to serve the Homeland.

The artistic accomplishments of James Northcote (1746-1831) have tended to be overshadowed by his role as a biographer of Joshua Reynolds, first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, with whom Northcote apprenticed for five years. Here, Mark Ledbury constructs a very different image of Northcote: that of a prolific member of the Royal Academy and an active participant in the cultural and political circles of the Romantic era, as well as a portrait and history painter in his own right. This book pays particular attention to Northcote's One Hundred Fables (1828), a masterpiece of wood engraving, and the unconventional, collaged manuscripts for the volume, now at the Yale Center for British Art. Along with another series of collages now at The Morgan Library & Museum and a second volume of fables published posthumously in 1833, these collages and printed works constitute the most ambitious project of the artist's later years. An underappreciated and courageously eccentric masterpiece, the Fables were an early experiment in what is now a familiar multimedia practice and are extensively published here for the first time. Idiosyncratic, personal, and visionary, the Fables serve as a lens through which to examine Northcote's long, complex, and fruitful artistic career. Distributed for the Yale Center for British Art Exhibition Schedule: Yale Center for British Art (10/02/14-12/14/14)

This lively and erudite cultural history of Scotland, from the Jacobite defeat of 1745 to the death of an icon, Sir Walter Scott, in 1832, examines how Scottish identity was experienced and represented in novel ways. Weaving together previously unpublished archival materials, visual and material culture, dress and textile history, Viccy Coltman re-evaluates the standard cliches and essentialist interpretations which still inhibit Scottish cultural history during this period of British and imperial expansion. The book incorporates familiar landmarks in Scottish history, such as the visit of George IV to Edinburgh in August 1822, with microhistories of individuals, including George Steuart, a London-based architect, and the East India Company servant, Claud Alexander. It thus highlights recurrent themes within a range of historical disciplines, and by confronting the broader questions of Scotland's relations with the rest of the British state it makes a necessary contribution to contemporary concerns.

William De Morgan was the principal ceramic designer and maker in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Heavily influenced by the art of the Middle East, he was active for nearly thirty years from the 1870s onwards and was never content with an existing technical process if he thought it could be improved. He is famous for his vases and decorative chargers, but it is arguably his tiles - still to be found in homes and museums around Britain and the world - that have made the greatest impact. His tiles portray iconic images of animals, ships and floral designs, blending style influences to produce designs that featured new, stylized interpretations and a whimsical character. He combined a strong design style with rich glaze colours, making blue and green, and a deep orangey red into visual trademarks. There were important commissions from royalty and industry, and his ceramics were marketed to the growing middle classes by William Morris, the founder and leading light of the Arts and Crafts Movement. The tiles of the Arts and Crafts Movement are now highly collectible, and none more so than those made at William De Morgan's Chelsea, Merton Abbey and Fulham potteries. This highly illustrated book, by acknowledged experts on De Morgan, presents the first study of the tiles to be published in over thirty-five years and features an examination of De Morgan's lustre glazes using high sensitivity X-ray analysis.

A fresh approach to nineteenth-century European painting; lusciously illustrated, it offers a comprehensive overview of the century's artistic innovation This extensive survey also includes biographies for each of the artists Nineteenth-Century European Painting: From Barbizon to Belle Epoque represents a comprehensive guide to the range of stylistically diverse genres of nineteenth-century European painting. Accessible and insightful, this exquisitely illustrated volume presents the historical context behind the century's essential artistic movements including Romantic Painting, The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Realist Painting, Academic Painting, and Impressionist Painting. Influenced by an overwhelming wave of political, military and social change, nineteenth-century Europe represented an era more diverse in painterly subjects and styles than any before it. Indeed, it was a period that saw many European painters moving away from the strictures of the academy system, choosing instead to use their training to develop new techniques and traditions. A collection of independent stories, this book also outlines the unique progression between the different movements, exciting and enlightening the reader about the most magnificent period of art the world has ever known. Contents: Foreword; Dr. Vern G. Swanson; Introduction; Author's Note; STYLES: The Barbizon School; Romantic Painting; Orientalist Painting; The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; Realist Painting; Academic Painting; Impressionist Painting; The Newlyn School; Post-Impressionist Painting; SUBJECTS: Landscape Painting; Venetian View Painting; Maritime Painting; Sporting Painting; Animal Painting; Genre Painting; Cardinal Painting; Costume Painting; British Neoclassical Revival Painting; Belle Epoque Painting; Conclusion; Endnotes; Bibliography. Considered one of the world's foremost experts on 18th- and 19th-century European and American antiques, fine art and jewelry, Bill Rau has worked in his family-owned gallery, M.S Rau Antiques, for over 30 years. An avid collector and authority in his field, Bill has helped place several items in museums around the world. In addition to being a prominent member of many local business organizations, he was the youngest senior member ever accepted to the American Society of Appraisers. In addition to writing numerous articles published in a wide variety of national magazines and antique journals.

<div>Steven Z. Levine provides a new understanding of the life and work of Claude Monet and the myth of the modern artist. Levine analyzes the extensive critical reception of Monet and the artist's own prolific writings in the context of the story of Narcissus, popular in late nineteenth-century France. Through a careful blending of psychoanalytical theory and historical study, Levine identifies narcissism and obsession as driving forces in Monet's art and demonstrates how we derive meaning from the accumulated verbal responses to an artist's work.</div>

Romantic Cartographies is the first collection to explore the reach and significance of cartographic practice in Romantic-period culture. Revealing the diverse ways in which the period sought to map and spatialise itself, the volume also considers the engagement of our own digital cultures with Romanticism's 'map-mindedness'. Original, exploratory essays engage with a wide range of cartographic projects, objects and experiences in Britain, and globally. Subjects range from Wordsworth, Clare and Walter Scott, to Romantic board games and geographical primers, to reveal the pervasiveness of the cartographic imagination in private and public spheres. Bringing together literary analysis, creative practice, geography, cartography, history, politics and contemporary technologies - just as the cartographic enterprise did in the Romantic period itself - Romantic Cartographies enriches our understanding of what it means to 'map' literature and culture.

Exploring the relationship between visual art and literature in the Romantic period, this book makes a claim for a sister-arts 'moment' when the relationship between painting, sculpture, pottery and poetry held special potential for visual artists, engravers and artisans. Elaborating these cultural tensions and associations through a number of case studies, Thora Brylowe sheds light on often untold narratives of English labouring craftsmen and artists as they translated the literary into the visual. Brylowe investigates examples from across the visual spectrum including artefacts, such as Wedgwood's Portland Vase, antiquarianism through the work of William Blake, the career of engraver John Landseer, and the growing influence of libraries and galleries in the period, particularly Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Brylowe artfully traces the shifting cultural connections between the imaginative word and the image in a period that saw new print technologies deluge Britain with its first mass media.

This beautifully illustrated book, with over 300 colour reproductions, showcases many of the greatest masterpieces of 19th century Orientalist art. During this period, colonization, and a revolution in means of transportation allowed artists to visit countries from North Africa to the Middle East that had previously been relatively inaccessible. The patterns, colours, and light of this region influenced artists such as Delacroix, Decamps, Berche re, Bridgman, Ziem, Ge ro me, Corrodi, Dinet, Matisse, Majorelle and many others. Upon returning to Europe, these artists captured the atmosphere of these distant and exotic lands in painted scenes of daily life and wrote memoirs of their travels. Some returned to settle there, including painters like Dinet, who spent a large part of his life in Algeria, and Majorelle, known as the "painter of Marrakech." This book offers insight into the Orientalist aesthetic that inspired the movement, and lays the groundwork for a deeper understanding of these vibrant works of art. Text in English and French.

Assembling the Architect explores the origins and history of architectural practice. It unravels the competing interests that historically have structured the field and cultivates a deeper understanding of the contemporary profession. Focusing on the period 1870 to 1920 when the foundations were being laid for the U.S. architectural profession that we recognize today, this study traces the formation and standardization of the fundamental relationships among architects, owners, and builders, as codified in the American Institute of Architects' very first Handbook of Architectural Practice. It reveals how these archetypal roles have always been fluid, each successfully redefining their own agency with respect to the others in the constantly-shifting political economy of building. Far from being a purely historical study, the book also sheds light on today's digitally-enabled profession. Contemporary architectural tools and disciplinary ideals continue to be shaped by the same fundamental tensions, and emergent modes of practice such as BIM (Building Information Modelling) and IPD (Integrated Project Delivery) represent the realization of programs and agendas that have been over a century in play. Essential reading for professional practice courses as a contextual and historical companion to the Handbook, Assembling the Architect provides a critical perspective of the profession that is fundamental to understanding current architectural practice.

Philadelphia on Stone is the first work in over fifty years to examine the history of nineteenth-century commercial lithography in Philadelphia. The capstone to the Library Company of Philadelphia's multifaceted Philadelphia on Stone project, this heavily illustrated volume of thematic essays provides an analysis of the social, economic, and technological changes in the local trade from 1828 to 1878; biographies of premier lithographers P. S. Duval and James Queen; and new insights about genres of lithographs pertaining to book illustration, advertising, sensational news, and landscape imagery.

Illustrated with more than 130 full-color images, the text will appeal to local historians, scholars of printing history, and those studying visual and popular culture, advertising, and economic history. The depicted advertisements, cityscape and bird's-eye views, disaster prints, and zoological illustrations document Philadelphia while showcasing the skilled work of the city's lithographers. Philadelphia on Stone highlights the finesse and allure of the lithographic process, which radically altered the visual landscape of Philadelphia and the country.

The late nineteenth century saw a re-examination of artistic creativity in response to questions surrounding the relation between human beings and automata. These questions arose from findings in the 'new psychology', physiological research that diminished the primacy of mind and viewed human action as neurological and systemic. Concentrating on British and continental culture from 1870 to 1911, this unique study explores ways in which the idea of automatism helped shape ballet, art photography, literature, and professional writing. Drawing on documents including novels and travel essays, Linda M. Austin finds a link between efforts to establish standards of artistic practice and challenges to the idea of human exceptionalism. Austin presents each artistic discipline as an example of the same process: creation that should be intended, but involving actions that evade mental control. This study considers how late nineteenth-century literature and arts tackled the scientific question, 'Are we automata?'