Impressionists and Politics is an accessible introduction to the current debates about Impressionism. Was the artistic movement really radical and innovative? Is the term "Impressionism" itself an adequate characterization of the movement of painters and critics that took the mid-nineteenth century Paris art world by storm?
By providing an historical background and context, the book places the Impressionists' roots in wider social and economic transformations and explains its militancy, both aesthetic and political.
Impressionists and Politics is a concise history of the movement, from its youthful inception in the 1860s, through to its final years of recognition and then crisis.

This book constitutes the first comprehensive history of the network of women who worked at the heart of the English Arts and Crafts movement from the 1870s to the 1930s. Challenging the long-standing assumption that the Arts and Crafts simply revolved around celebrated male designers like William Morris, it instead offers a new social and cultural account of the movement, which simultaneously reveals the breadth of the imprint of women art workers upon the making of modern society. Thomas provides unprecedented insight into how women navigated authoritative roles as 'art workers' by asserting expertise across a range of interconnected cultures: from the artistic to the professional, intellectual, entrepreneurial and domestic. Through examination of newly discovered institutional archives and private papers, Thomas elucidates the critical importance of the spaces around which women conceptualised alternative creative and professional lifestyles. -- .

A landmark retrospective that examines William Merritt Chase and his lasting contribution to the history of modern art The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), one of America's influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase's career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase's multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century. Published in association with The Phillips Collection Exhibition Schedule: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (06/04/16-09/11/16) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (10/09/16-01/16/17) Ca'Pesaro-Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna, Venice (02/11/17-05/28/17)

Pre-Raphaelitism was a multi-faceted movement which had a fundamental impact on the cultural, artistic, and intellectual life of Victorian Britain and the British Empire. The Pre-Raphaelites were legendary figures mythologized in their own lifetimes. This major movement has direct relevance to contemporary understanding of national heritage. The Pre-Raphaelites and their supporters produced numerous cultural statements spanning the decorative arts, literature and social politics. This four volume set demonstrates the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of Pre-Raphaelitism. It collects together original Pre-Raphaelite materials comprising fiction, prose, verse, literary criticism and illustration. A range of writings on art, design, architecture, philosophy, religion, science and politics is presented in the themed volumes: literature and literary criticism; autobiographies and diaries; philosophy; design and art criticism; social and cultural critique. Whole texts and significant extracts from the writings of key Pre-Raphaelite figures such as William Allingham, Walter Crane, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, William Morris, Walter Pater, Coventry Patmore, George du Maurie

Nineteenth-century women illustrators and cartoonists provides an in-depth analysis of fourteen women illustrators of the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Jemima Blackburn, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Marianne North, Amelia Francis Howard-Gibbon, Mary Ellen Edwards, Edith Hume, Alice Barber Stephens, Florence and Adelaide Claxton, Marie Duval, Amy Sawyer, Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, Pamela Colman Smith and Olive Allen Biller. The chapters consider these women's illustrations in the areas of natural history, periodicals and books, as well as their cartoons and caricatures. Using diverse critical approaches, the volume brings to light the works and lives of these important women illustrators and challenges the hegemony of male illustrators and cartoonists in nineteenth-century visual and print culture. -- .

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

Some of America's most influential artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries are featured in this guide, along with a concise overview of the colonies in which they worked. These colonies ranged from Carmel-Monterey in California to Gloucester-Rockport in Massachusetts to Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico. Some of the artists are famous today, such as Georgia O'Keeffe, while others were well known at the time and added to the name recognition of their particular colonies. Scholars, students, and anyone interested in American Art History will find valuable information on how the closeness of colonies can affect and influence artists. For most artists, interest in art colonies began in the mid-1800s in Europe, where they had gone to live, work, and study. On returning to America, they continued what they believed was a practice that benefited their personal maturity as professional artists-living in a major city such as New York during the winter and spending summers with other working artists in art colonies. The impact of those early artists can be seen in the paintings of many of today's artists.

Based on a rich range of primary sources and manuscripts, "A Rossetti Family Chronology" breaks exciting new ground. Focusing on Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the "Chronolgy" deomstrates the interconnectedness of their friendships and creativity, giving information about literary composition and artistic output, publication and exhibition, reviews, finances, relationships, health and detailing literary and artistic influences. Drawing on many unpublished sources, including family letters and diaries, this new volume in the" Author Chronologies" series will be of value to all students and scholars of the Rossettis.

A group of primarily Scottish artists (mainly William York Macgregor, Joseph Crawhall, George Henry, Edward Atkinson Hornel, Sir John Lavery and Arthur Melville), the Glasgow Boys were active around the turn of the 20th Century. Though they painted in a number of different styles, they are connected by their rejection of classic Victorian painting. Inspired by the luminous techniques of James McNeil Whistler, they harnessed Impressionistic brushwork and livid realism in their work, trying new methods and everyday settings to create stunning works of art. With over 100 images, and broad introduction, this is a fine addition to Flame Tree's ever-increasing series on painting and illustration, Masterpieces of Art.

Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist offers the first critical appraisal of the work of Marie Duval (Isabelle Emilie de Tessier, 1847-1890), one of the most unusual, pioneering and visionary cartoonists of the later nineteenth century. It discusses key themes and practices of Duval's vision and production, relative to the wider historic social, cultural and economic environments in which her work was made, distributed and read, identifing Duval as an exemplary radical practitioner. The book interrogates the relationships between the practices and the forms of print, story-telling, drawing and stage performance. It focuses on the creation of new types of cultural work by women and highlights the style of Duval's drawings relative to both the visual conventions of theatre production and the significance of the visualisation of amateurism and vulgarity. Marie Duval: maverick Victorian cartoonist establishes Duval as a unique but exemplary figure in a transformational period of the nineteenth century. -- .

John Ruskin first came to widespread attention for his support for the work of J. M. W. Turner and his defence of naturalism in art. Later he was the executor of Turner's will. The present volume collects Ruskin's essay on Turner's paintings of English Harbours and Ruskins commentary on numerous other works of Turner.

This text is an interdisciplinary study of Romanticism which focuses on the reception of the Biblical canon in poetry, art and theory. The Bible is acknowledged as the heart of European culture, but as its status as the sacred text of Judaism and Christianity becomes questionable, it remains at the turning point between sacred and secular art in the modern world. The insights of Romanticism are crucial for our understanding of postmodernism as a fundamentally religious movement which acknowledges both the death and rebirth of religious language.

In this new study of art in fin-de-siecle Hamburg, Carolyn Kay examines the career of the city's art gallery director, Alfred Lichtwark, one of Imperial Germany's most influential museum directors and a renowned cultural critic. A champion of modern art, Lichtwark stirred controversy among the city's bourgeoisie by commissioning contemporary German paintings for the Kunsthalle by secession artists and supporting the formation of an independent art movement in Hamburg influenced by French impressionism. Drawing on an extensive amount of archival research, and combining both historical and art historical approaches, Kay examines Lichtwark's cultural politics, their effect on the Hamburg bourgeoisie, and the subsequent changes to the cultural scene in Hamburg.

Kay focuses her study on two modern art scandals in Hamburg and shows that Lichtwark faced strong public resistance in the 1890s, winning significant support from the city's bourgeoisie only after 1900. Lichtwark's struggle to gain acceptance for impressionism highlights conflicts within the city's middle class as to what constituted acceptable styles and subjects of German art, with opposition groups demanding a traditional and 'pure' German culture. The author also considers who within the Hamburg bourgeoisie supported Lichtwark, and why. Kay's local study of the debate over cultural modernism in Imperial Germany makes a significant contribution both to the study of modernism and to the history of German culture.

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 features Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace.

Most known for her bold and darkly painted portraits, Brooks was revolutionary in her feminist renderings of women in resistance. Openly queer, she challenged conceptions of gender and sexuality in her art, which also served as her refuge. While many of her male counterparts were disfiguring and cubing their subjects-often women-Brooks gave personhood and power to the figures she painted. Her frank approach to her complicated relationship with her mother, faith, wealth, sexuality, and gender is complemented by a keen wit that echoes the gray tones of her work. Though her paintings are held in major collections, Brooks's influence in modernist circles of the early twentieth century is largely underexplored. This new publication, guided by Brooks's own impressionistic musings, bridges an important gap between the art and the artist. An introduction by Lauren O'Neill-Butler explores Brooks's role as an artist in the early twentieth century through the lens of gender and sexuality.

Depicts the experiences of the French artist while living on a Polynesian island and discusses the culture of the natives of the island.

It is so good, after so many years of public indifference, even hostility towards Vincent and his work, to feel towards the end of my life that the battle is won.' JO VAN GOGH-BONGER TO GUSTAVE COQUIOT, 1922 'It is a sacrifice for the sake of Vincent's glory.' JO VAN GOGH-BONGER ON THE SALE OF 'THE SUNFLOWERS' TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY, UK, 1924 Little known but no less influential, Jo van Gogh-Bonger was sister-in-law of Vincent van Gogh, wife of his brother, Theo. When the brothers died soon after each other, she took charge of Van Gogh's artistic legacy and devoted the rest of her life to disseminating his work. Despite being widowed with a young son, Jo successfully navigated the male-dominated world of the art market-publishing Van Gogh's letters, organizing exhibitions in the Netherlands and throughout the world, and making strategic sales to private individuals and influential dealers-ultimately establishing Van Gogh's reputation as one of the finest artists of his generation. In doing so, she fundamentally changed how we view the relationship between the artist and his work. She also lived a rich and fascinating life-not only was she friends with eminent writers and artists, but she also was active within the Social Democratic Labour Party and closely involved in emerging women's movements. Using rich source material, including unseen diaries, documents and letters, Hans Luijten charts the multi-faceted life of this visionary woman with the drive to shake the art world to its core.

The Drowned Muse is a study of the extraordinary destiny, in the history of European culture, of an object which could seem, at first glance, quite ordinary in the history of European culture. It tells the story of a mask, the cast of a young girl's face entitled "L'Inconnue de la Seine," the Unknown Woman of the Seine, and its subsequent metamorphoses as a cultural figure. Legend has it that the "Inconnue" drowned herself in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. The forensic scientist tending to her unidentified corpse at the Paris Morgue was supposedly so struck by her allure that he captured in plaster the contours of her face. This unknown girl, also referred to as "The Mona Lisa of Suicide", has since become the object of an obsessive interest that started in the late 1890s, reached its peak in the 1930s, and continues to reverberate today. Aby Warburg defines art history as "a ghost story for grown-ups." This study is similarly "a ghost story for grown-ups", narrating the aura of a cultural object that crosses temporal, geographical, and linguistic frontiers. It views the "Inconnue" as a symptomatic expression of a modern world haunted by the earlier modernity of the nineteenth century. It investigates how the mask's metamorphoses reflect major shifts in the cultural history of the last two centuries, approaching the "Inconnue" as an entry point to understand a phenomenon characteristic of 20th- and 21st-century modernity: the translatability of media. Doing so, this study mobilizes discourses surrounding the "Inconnue", casting them as points of negotiation through which we may consider the modern age.

The wood engravers' self-portrait tells the story of the image-making firm Dalziel Brothers, investigating and interpreting a unique archive from the British Museum. The study takes a creative-critical approach to illustration, alongside detailed investigation of print techniques and history. Five siblings ran the wood engraving firm Dalziel Brothers: George, Edward, Margaret, John and Thomas Dalziel. Prospering through five decades of work, Dalziel became the major capitalist image makers of Victorian Britain. This book, based on AHRC-funded research, outlines the achievements of these remarkable siblings and uncovers the histories of some of the 36 unknown artisan employees that worked alongside them. Dalziel Brothers made works of global importance: illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice books, novels by Charles Dickens, and landmark Pre-Raphaelite prints, as well as other, brilliant works that are published here for the first time since their initial creation. -- .