Part of a series of handy, luxurious Flame Tree Pocket Books. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed then foil stamped. And they're delightfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use, handbags and make a dazzling gift. This example features one of Louis Comfort Tiffany's glorious peacock glass designs.

Part of a series of exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Sketch Books Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then foil stamped. The thick paper stock makes them perfect for sketching and drawing. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. This example features Van Gogh: Cafe Terrace.

The life and works of William Morris continue to excite the imaginations of fresh generations of scholars working in many traditions, from the history of art and design to literary criticism and the history of socialism and socialist thought. This book concentrates on Morris's social and political acheivements as well as his artistic talents.

During the Victorian period there developed a new anxiety about male-female relations and roles in modern society, as described by a member of the Athenaeum in 1858, 'the distinction of man and woman, their separate as well as their joint rights, begins to occupy the attention of our whole community, and with no small effect'. These essays examine Victorian painting in the light of this 'woman question' by analysing the change in representation of the family, romance, social issues such as emigration and colonialism, the use of the female nude and the traditions of portraiture, history-painting and still life. The art and artists are considered in a socio-political context, and the connections between Victorian sexism, racism and classism are examined. These essays bring to light much previously unknown work (especially by women) and reappraise many well-known paintings.

The first comprehensive assessment of Degas's legacy to be published in over two decades, Perspectives on Degas unites a team of international scholars to analyze Degas's work, artistic practice, and unique methods of pictorial problem-solving. Established scholars and curators show how recent trends in art historical thinking can stimulate innovative interpretations of Degas's paintings, prints, sculptures, and drawings and reveal new ideas about his place in the art historical narrative of the nineteenth-century avant-garde. Questions posed by contributors include: what interpretive approaches are open to a new generation of art historians in the wake of a vast body of existing scholarship on nineteenth-century art? In what ways can feminist analyses of Degas's works continue to yield new results? Which of Degas's works have received less attention in critical literature to date and what does study of them reveal? As the centenary of Degas's death approaches, this book offers a timely re-evaluation of the critical literature that has developed in response to Degas's work and identifies ways in which the further study of this artist's multi-facetted output can deepen our understanding of the wider scientific, literary, and artistic ideas that circulated in France during the latter decades of the nineteenth century.

In the century following the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, British art had an international reputation: prints spread knowledge of the work of British artists around the globe, and it was widely seen as the product of a modern, commercial society, and much admired by artists as diverse as Goya in Spain, Delacroix in France, and Bierstadt in America. In recent years, scholars working on this period have become increasingly aware of the international context of their subject, but there has been no systematic analysis of the reception of British art abroad. This collection of essays looks at the uses made of the paintings of Reynolds, Hogarth, Lawrence and their contemporaries on the continent of Europe, and in the colonies and ex-colonies of Australia and America. The authors go beyond the simple issue of 'influence' to consider how ideas and artistic conventions originating in the British Isles were adapted, appropriated or resisted in these new environments. In the process, some surprising views of British art emerge, demonstrating how a multi-faceted view from the outside can correct and enrich the narrative produced within a national school, and revealing some of the important connections that are obscured when art is studied, as it so often is, within narrow national boundaries.

First published in 1984. Signs for the Times explores imaginative and creative relationships between three major areas of mid-Victorian arts: literature, painting and architecture. Through the detailed critical analysis of particular novels, prose writings, paintings and buildings, Chris Brooks establishes a fusion of realistic and symbolic values that he sees as central to the Victorian creative imagination. He argues that the creative achievement of the mid-nineteenth century needs to be seen far more as a whole than it has previously, and that fundamental imaginative terms are common to art and architecture, to major theoretical writers such as Carlyle, Ruskin and Rugin as well as to the central literary figure of Dickens. All those interested in literature, art, or architecture will welcome this interpretation of symbolic realism within the mid-Victorian world.

The first half of this book is a detailed exploration of Turner's life and background. It begins with his early years in London, where he exhibited paintings in the window of his father's barber shop. Through his travels in Europe, copying and studying the old masters, Turner was largely self-taught until he enrolled at the Royal Academy. In 1796 one of his first oil paintings was hung there, and his success culminated in the opening of his own gallery. The second half of the book is a collection of his original works. These superb reproductions are accompanied by analysis of each painting and its significance regarding Turner's life, the period in which it was executed, his technique and his body of work as a whole. This reference book is essential for anyone who wants to learn more about one of the finest landscape painters in English history.

Title first published in 2003. In this detailed study of the landscapes and rural scenes of Britain and France made by artists like George Clausen, Philip Wilson Steer, Augustus John, Laura Knight, J. D. Fergusson and Spencer Gore, Ysanne Holt investigates the imaginary geographies behind the pictures and reconsiders the relationship between national identity, 'Englishness' and the native landscape. Combining close investigation of important works with a broader enquiry into the appeal of the Mediterranean for an age preoccupied with cultural degeneracy and bodily health, Ysanne Holt draws fascinating conclusions about the impact of modernism on the British tradition of landscape painting.

The evolution of an urban self-consciousness in London in the early nineteenth century played a fundamental role in the shaping of the city. In this volume Dana Arnold explores the responses to the city among the urban bourgeoisie and their influence on the experience and development of London. Each of the chapters re-presents the metropolis through a thematic consideration of the urban infrastructure and architecture including public open spaces, new roads and bridges, public monuments, and buildings for show including museums, galleries and townhouses. These discrete 'walks' around London cohere into a kaleidoscopic view of the metropolis as a continually evolving entity. The nature and perception of urban experience and social life are mapped against this changing image of London revealing at once the modernity of the metropolis and the importance of the past - especially antiquity - to the construction of this transient present. Evidence of attitudes towards the metropolis is drawn from a range of contemporary visual and written sources including commentaries, guidebooks, literature and parliamentary reports and enquiries. The study of sensory responses to the city allows the exploration of the dynamic between city and society and a broader cultural understanding of urban form. London is re-presented as a matrix of key architectural, social and cultural themes and as the emblematic expression of different kinds of identities relating to gender,class and nationhood.

This book explores how popular photography influenced the representation of travel in Britain in the period from the Kodak-led emergence of compact cameras in 1888, to 1939. The book examines the implications of people's increasing familiarity with the language and possibilities of photography on the representation of travel as educational concerns gave way to commercial imperatives. Sara Dominici takes as a touchstone the first fifty years of activity of the Polytechnic Touring Association (PTA), a London-based philanthropic-turned-commercial travel firm. As the book reveals, the relationship between popular photography and travel marketing was shaped by the different desires and expectations that consumers and institutions bestowed on photography: this was the struggle for the interpretation of the travel image.

This fully illustrated study examines the construction of masculinity in culture based on an analysis of pictorial representations of the male in a wide range of contexts: social, historical, legal, literary, institutional, anthropological, educational, marital, imperial and aesthetic. Powerful images from the work of dozens of Victorian artists - from Leighton, Waterhouse, Burne-Jones and Alma-Tadema to Dicksee, Pettie, Watts, Woodville and Tuke to name a few - are used to illustrate the 5 key paradigms of masculinity: the classical hero, the gallant knight, the challenged paterfamilias, the valiant soldier and the male nude. Aspects of 20th-century theory such as rescue compulsion, male sexuality, the male gaze and racial ideas are also considered. The author concludes that maleness was, and is, learned and 19th-century ideas still influence the construction of manhood today; that social institutions are influenced by, and themselves use, artistic representation; that artistic images strongly influence ideas of gender; and that multi-disciplinary cultural study is the best way to examine the formation of gender ideologies.

Edouard Manet (1832-83) was one of the greatest, as well as one of the most interesting, of nineteenth century French painters. Acute observation, an extraordinary skilful handling of paint and a feeling for exquisite harmonies of colour makes his work both vivid and enchanting. It is also of great significance in the story of European painting, since Manet, a pioneer in depicting modern life in a modern style, was a formative influence on the whole impressionist movement. Olympia and The Picnic are among the key works of the nineteenth century. These, and many other crucial points - among them Manet's personality, with its many contradictions - are fully discussed by John Richardson in his introductory essay, an abridged version of the brilliant text which was widely admired when it was first published in 1958 and which started a full-scale revival of Manet studies. Richardson's classic text was first revised in 1982, with notes to the forty-eight colour plates by Kathleen Adler and comparative illustrations to emphasize the quality, variety and character of Manet's work. This perfect introduction to the work of such an influential painter is now reissued in an attractive new design.

"Signifying Animals" examines what animals mean to human beings around the world, offering a fresh assessment of the workings of animal symbolism in diverse cultures. The essays in the book are based on first-hand field research with peoples as dissimilar as the Mongolian nomads of Soviet Central Asia, Aboriginal Australians, Inuit hunters of the Canadian Arctic and cultivators of Africa and Papua New Guinea.
The essays look at accounts of mythical beasts among the Amerindian peoples of Andean South America, alleged sightings of an extinct giant bird in New Zealand as well as the complex symbolism of the American rodeo. Others discuss animal symbolism in the Middle East, India and the ancient picts of Scotland. The book advances a powerful argument against some prevalent fallacies in symbolic interpretation.

The incomparable play of light and color in Paul Cezanne's work was the foundation of his reputation as a forerunner of modernism. From the start he went his own way, and his paintings initially evoked a lack of understanding in art critics of the time, as well as ridicule. Despite his romantic, baroque, impressionist, and finally classical influences, it is still difficult to ascribe Cezanne to any particular art movement. Still, which specific places left lasting impressions on the scion of a provincial banker's family? What and who were major influences supporting and advancing his innovative oeuvre? James H. Rubin traces Cezanne's life and work from A to Z in this brief volume, creating an image of a painter who wanted to transform painting itself. The author-and established connoisseur-succeeds in closely approaching the artist while at the same time maintaining the necessary distance to his inimitable paintings.

This was first published in 2000: A study of John Ruskin's engagement with art and architecture as a critic, a patron and a teacher. It offers insights into both his writings and the visual economy of the Victorian world. Each essay examines Ruskin's relationship with an individual artist or a distinct aspect of art practice. J.M.W. Turner, D.G. Rossetti, W. Holman Hunt and E. Burne-Jones are among those artists discussed whose personal relationships with Ruskin affected his critical writing. Ruskin's attitude to women artists and his approach to the teaching of art are given special attention.

Drawing on recent theoretical developments in gender and men's studies, Pre-Raphaelite Masculinities shows how the ideas and models of masculinity were constructed in the work of artists and writers associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Paying particular attention to the representation of non-normative or alternative masculinities, the contributors take up the multiple versions of masculinity in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's paintings and poetry, masculine violence in William Morris's late romances, nineteenth-century masculinity and the medical narrative in Ford Madox Brown's Cromwell on His Farm, accusations of 'perversion' directed at Edward Burne-Jones's work, performative masculinity and William Bell Scott's frescoes, the representations of masculinity in Pre-Raphaelite illustration, aspects of male chastity in poetry and art, TannhAuser as a model for Victorian manhood, and masculinity and British imperialism in Holman Hunt's The Light of the World. Taken together, these essays demonstrate the far-reaching effects of the plurality of masculinities that pervade the art and literature of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

Introducing the concept of music and painting as 'rival sisters' during the nineteenth century, this interdisciplinary collection explores the productive exchange-from rivalry to inspiration to collaboration-between the two media in the age of Romanticism and Modernism. The volume traces the relationship between art and music, from the opposing claims for superiority of the early nineteenth century, to the emergence of the concept of synesthesia around 1900. This collection puts forward a more complex history of the relationship between art and music than has been described in earlier works, including an intermixing of models and distinctions between approaches to them. Individual essays from art history, musicology, and literature examine the growing influence of art upon music, and vice versa, in the works of Berlioz, Courbet, Manet, Fantin-Latour, Rodin, Debussy, and the Pre-Raphaelites, among other artists.

This title was first published in 2000. The nineteenth century saw the emergence of numerous artistic brotherhoods - groups of artists bound together in communal production, sharing spiritual and aesthetic aims. Although it is widely acknowledged that this is an unique feature of the period, there has not previously been a separate study of the phenomenon. This collection of essays provides a thorough and wide-ranging exploration of the issue. Situating artistic brotherhoods within their historical context, it offers unique insights into the social, political, economic and cultural milieu of the nineteenth century. It focuses on the most celebrated and influential brotherhoods, while also bringing to light lesser-known or forgotten artists. The essays explore the artistic fraternity from a wide variety of perspectives, probing issues of gender, identity, professional practices and artistic formation in Europe and the United States. This book investigates the Nazarenes, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Russian Abramatsova, the Primitifs, the Nabis as well as other leading groups. The book contains a substantial introduction, which establishes the key questions and issues surrounding the phenomena of the artistic brotherhood, including their relation to the larger artistic community, their association with other social and political organizations of the period, and the ways in which mythologies have been built around them in subsequent histories and recollections of the period.

The introduction of iron - and later steel - construction and decoration transformed architecture in the nineteenth century. While the structural employment of iron has been a frequent subject of study, this book re-directs scholarly scrutiny on its place in the aesthetics of architecture in the long nineteenth century. Together, its eleven unique and original chapters chart - for the first time - the global reach of iron's architectural reception, from the first debates on how iron could be incorporated into architecture's traditional aesthetics to the modernist cleaving of its structural and ornamental roles. The book is divided into three sections. Formations considers the rising tension between the desire to translate traditional architectural motifs into iron and the nascent feeling that iron buildings were themselves creating an entirely new field of aesthetic expression. Exchanges charts the commercial and cultural interactions that took place between British iron foundries and clients in far-flung locations such as Argentina, Jamaica, Nigeria and Australia. Expressing colonial control as well as local agency, iron buildings struck a balance between pre-fabricated functionalism and a desire to convey beauty, value and often exoticism through ornament. Transformations looks at the place of the aesthetics of iron architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period in which iron ornament sought to harmonize wide social ambitions while offering the tantalizing possibility that iron architecture as a whole could transform the fundamental meanings of ornament. Taken together, these chapters call for a re-evaluation of modernism's supposedly rationalist interest in nineteenth-century iron structures, one that has potentially radical implications for the recent ornamental turn in contemporary architecture.

Inspired by the works of French Post-Impressionist and Fauvist artists, the Scottish Colourists (Samuel Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, Leslie Hunter and F.C.B. Cadell) introduced 1920s Britain to a whole new style of painting. While they did not regard themselves as a collective, they are known for their bold use of colour, vigorous brushwork and affinity for painting en plein air. Though each had a distinct style and focus, they were united by pioneering efforts to buck the prevailing artistic conventions of their time, creating works of art that burst with life and beauty. With over 80 images and a broad introduction, this is a fine addition to Flame Tree's ever-increasing series on painting and illustration, Masterpieces of Art.

This book reveals a great untold story of enterprise and innovation based on the relationship between the Victoria and Albert Museum, and Elkington & Co., the renowned industrial art and design manufacturer of the 19th-century. The Birmingham-based company pioneered and patented the industrial art of electro-metallurgy to create original artworks, perfect replicas, and mass-reproduced luxury consumer goods that used electricity to 'grow' metal into shape at a molecular level. This technological revolution created a profound legacy, which continues to influence the way modern material culture looks and operates today. Elkington's syntheses of science and art into industrial manufacturing processes revolutionized the design and production, replication and reproduction of precious metalwork, metal sculpture, and ornamental art metalwork. Elkington & Co. gained huge public acclaim at the Great Exhibition of 1851. They subsequently produced artworks and luxury goods, including world-renowned sports trophies like the Wimbledon Singles Trophies, as well as luxury dining services for great steamships and railways, including tableware that sank with the Titanic. Elkington played a crucial role in shaping and building the V&A's permanent collection from its foundation in 1852 (following the Great Exhibition) until the First World War. The V&A's collections in turn had a profound influence on Elkington's output. The great success of their relationship cemented both the museum's status as a leading cultural institution, and the E&Co 'makers-mark' as one of the world's first truly multinational designer brands. Elkington's electrical alchemy helped spark the electrical revolution that founded the modern world.

Anyone studying a Van Gogh painting with its heavily articulated brushstrokes, dazzling color, and hypnotic perspective will wonder about the artist who created such masterpieces. Although some details of the Dutch artist's brief and tragic life have been mythologized into popular culture, this book takes a deeper look at Van Gogh's personal history and oeuvre. Drawing on Van Gogh's personal correspondence, this book allows readers to experience the artist's life and work simultaneously, with brilliant reproductions of his most famous and lesser-known works. In addition, it provides valuable information about where readers can view Van Gogh's work in museums throughout the world. Art lovers will find much to discover in this appealing and accessible overview of one of the world's most compelling figures.

Vilified by leading architectural modernists and Victorian critics alike, mass-produced architectural ornament in iron has received little sustained study since the 1960s; yet it proliferated in Britain in the half century after the building of the Crystal Palace in 1851 - a time when some architects, engineers, manufacturers, and theorists believed that the fusion of iron and ornament would reconcile art and technology and create a new, modern architectural language. Comprehensively illustrated and richly researched, Iron, Ornament and Architecture in Victorian Britain presents the most sustained study to date of the development of mechanised architectural ornament in iron in nineteenth-century architecture, its reception and theorisation by architects, critics and engineers, and the contexts in which it flourished, including industrial buildings, retail and seaside architecture, railway stations, buildings for export and exhibition, and street furniture. Appealing to architects, conservationists, historians and students of nineteenth-century visual culture and the built environment, this book offers new ways of understanding the notion of modernity in Victorian architecture by questioning and re-evaluating both Victorian and modernist understandings of the ideological split between historicism and functionalism, and ornament and structure.

The Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, holds stunning examples of jewellery and metalwork from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exceptional period of design covers the neo-Gothic and historicist designs of the mid- to late nineteenth century, the groundbreaking work of British Arts & Crafts designers, sinuous curves influenced by the European Art Nouveau movement and the structural modernity of the 1930s. The collection contains jewellery by some of the finest historicist designers, including the Castellani and Giuliano families and John Brogden, as well as a spectacular decanter by William Burges. There are important pieces of jewellery and silver by the most famous of Arts & Crafts designers, including C.R. Ashbee, Henry Wilson, Gilbert Marks and John Paul Cooper. Unique pieces designed by the artist Charles Ricketts hold a special place in the history of queer art in Britain, having been designed for his friends Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper, a couple known collectively as Michael Field. Modernist silver is represented by leaders of the field Omar Ramsden and H.G. Murphy. This beautifully illustrated volume reproduces 70 of the Museum's most important pieces from this period, many previously unpublished, with comparative illustrations of some of the original designs. Importantly, the book is arranged chronologically by designer and includes biographies, a description of their work and how it changed over time, as well as commentary about the specific works in the Museum's collection. The resulting book therefore brings together for the first time the Fitzwilliam's exceptionally fine holdings of jewellery and metalwork from this highly popular and fruitful period of design.