Extensively illustrated, this is the first accessible publication on the history of tapestry in over two decades. Woven with dazzling images from history, mythology and the natural world, and breath-taking in their craftsmanship, tapestries were among the most valuable and high-status works of art available in Europe from the medieval period to the end of the eighteenth century. Over 600 historic examples hang in National Trust properties in England and Wales - the largest collection in the UK. This beautifully illustrated study by tapestry expert Helen Wyld, in association with the National Trust, offers new insights into these works, from the complex themes embedded in their imagery, to long-forgotten practices of sacred significance and ritual use. The range of historical, mythological and pastoral themes that recur across the centuries is explored, while the importance of the 'revival' of tapestry from the late nineteenth century is considered in detail for the first time. Although focussed on the National Trust's collection, this book offers a fresh perspective on the history of tapestry across Europe. Both the tapestry specialist and the keen art-history enthusiast can find a wealth of information here about woven wall hangings and furnishings, including methods of production, purchase and distribution, evolving techniques and technologies, the changing trends of subject matter across time, and how tapestries have been collected, used and displayed in British country houses across the centuries.

The working women of Victorian and Edwardian Britain were fascinating but difficult subjects for artists, photographers, and illustrators. The cultural meanings of labour sat uncomfortably with conventional ideologies of femininity, and working women unsettled the boundaries between gender and class, selfhood and otherness. From paintings of servants in middle-class households, to exhibits of flower-makers on display for a shilling, the visual culture of women's labour offered a complex web of interior fantasy and exterior reality. The picture would become more challenging still when working women themselves began to use visual spectacle. In this first in-depth exploration of the representation of British working women, Kristina Huneault explores the rich meanings of female employment during a period of labour unrest, demands for women's enfranchisement, and mounting calls for social justice. In the course of her study she questions the investments of desire and the claims to power that reside in visual artifacts, drawing significant conclusions about the relationship between art and identity.

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.

The modernist aesthetic and, later, Nazi ideology split German Romantic painting into two opposed phases, an early progressive movement, represented by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) and Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), and a later reactionary one - epitomized by Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) and Peter von Cornelius (1783-1867). In this rich and engaging book, Mitchell Frank explores the continuities between these two phases to reconstruct the historical position that existed in the nineteenth century and to look once again at the Nazarenes - and Overbeck in particular - as a fully integrated part of the Romantic movement. His innovative book is crucial to an understanding of German Romanticism and the legacy of this period in European art.

A new look at the ways van Gogh represented the seasons and the natural world throughout his career The changing seasons captivated Vincent van Gogh (1853-90), who saw in their unending cycle the majesty of nature and the existence of a higher force. Van Gogh and the Seasons is the first book to explore this central aspect of van Gogh's life and work. Van Gogh often linked the seasons to rural life and labor as men and women worked the land throughout the year. From his depictions of peasants and sowers to winter gardens, riverbanks, orchards, and harvests, he painted scenes that richly evoke the sensory pleasures and deprivations particular to each season. This stunning book brings to life the locales that defined his tumultuous career, from Arles, where he experienced his most crucial period of creativity, to Auvers-sur-Oise, where he committed suicide. It looks at van Gogh's interpretation of nature, the religious implications of the seasons in his time, and how his art was perceived against the backdrop of various symbolist factions, antimaterialist debates, and esoteric beliefs in fin de siecle Paris. The book also features revealing extracts from the artist's correspondence and artworks from his own collection that provide essential context to the themes in his work. Breathtakingly illustrated and featuring informative essays by Sjraar van Heugten, Joan Greer, and Ted Gott, Van Gogh and the Seasons shines new light on the extraordinary creative vision of one of the world's most beloved artists.

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.

The role of the visual arts in the assertion of European colonial power has been the subject of much recent investigation and redefinition. This book takes as a ground for discussion the representation of Indian scenery and architecture by British artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Miles Edmund Cotman (known to his contemporaries as Edmund) was given the role of sheet anchor to a family of outstanding artists, at the centre of which was his father, the brilliant Norwich School painter John Sell Cotman. Edmund's loyalty was to be detrimental to his own artistic career, and perhaps unfairly, posterity has often dismissed him as an inferior hack artist. While he did not show the genius of his father, he did in fact produce a variety of distinguished and well-executed work. Geoffrey Searle looks at Edmund Cotman's background, the circumstances of his work, and the work itself that survives for us today.Illustrated with a representative sample of Cotman's works (including oils,watercolours and etchings), this is an important addition to the literature about the Norwich School.

A fully illustrated, comprehensive, and scholarly catalogue of the paintings in the Ashmolean Museum's collection by French artists born between 1775 and 1875 The only complete catalogue of French paintings of the period in the Ashmolean Museum, this comprehensive and scholarly study explores their rich collection of nineteenth-century French art. Continuing a convention set by earlier Ashmolean catalogues that mirrors the concept of the long nineteenth century, the book defines nineteenth-century French artists as those born between 1775 and 1875. Stretching into the twentieth century, it covers a fascinating range of paintings including works by Louis-Leopold Boilly, Camille, Lucien, and Fe lix Pissarro, Henri Fantin-Latour, Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Ce zanne, Claude Monet, and Henri Matisse. The catalogue was compiled by the late distinguished art historian Jon Whiteley. In each entry, Whiteley draws upon his encyclopaedic knowledge of French art and the Ashmolean holdings. Provenance, literature, and exhibition history are recorded as well as extensive technical notes and information on frames. The entries on each work are accompanied by new, high-quality photography and comparative images, resulting in a complete and thorough documentation of this important part of the Ashmolean collection of Western art, providing an informative contribution to existing scholarship. Distributed for Modern Art Press

'Arnold Hausers Social History of Art - a very important and under-appreciated text.' - Whitney Davis, John Evans Professor of Art History, Northwestern University

'It is no exaggeration to say that more than any other work Hauser's four volumes inspired my interest in art history.' - Alan Wallach, Ralph H Wark Professor of Art History, College of William and Mary

'This work has great value in a contemporary context. I look forward to seeing what Jonathan has done with the introduction, but I cannot think of anyone better suited to the task.' - Johanna Drucker, Professor of Art History, Yale University

Hausers extraordinary energy and subtlety wave a brilliant synthesis of the interaction between the aesthetic and societal, giving us at one and the same time a wealth of artistic detail and a consistent and fully elaborated exposition of the social process. - Albert Boime, UCLA, author of The Social History of Modern Art, 1750-1989

The reinvention of art-history during the 1980s has provided a serious challenge to the earlier formalist and connoisseurial approaches to the discipline, in ways which can only help economic and social historians in the current drive to study past societies in terms of what they consumed, produced, perceived and imagined. This group of essays focuses on three main issues: the demand for art, including the range of art objects purchased by various social groups; the conditions of artistic creativity and communication between different production centres and artistic millieux; and the emergence of art markets which served to link the first two phenomena. The work draws on new research by art historians and economic and social historians from Europe and the United States, and covers the period from the late Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century.

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.

Flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redoute (1759-1840) devoted himself exclusively to capturing the diversity of flowering plants in watercolor paintings which were then published as copper engravings, with careful botanical descriptions. The darling of wealthy Parisian patrons including Napoleon's wife Josephine, he was dubbed "the Raphael of flowers," and is regarded to this day as a master of botanical illustration. This collection brings our best-selling XL-sized edition to a smaller, more convenient format, still gathering some of the finest color engravings from Redoute's illustrations of Roses, Lilies, and Choix des plus belles fleurs et quelques branches des plus beaux fruits (Selection of the Most Beautiful Blooms and Branches with the Finest Fruits). Offering a vibrant overview of Redoute's admixture of accuracy and beauty, it is also a privileged glimpse into the magnificent gardens and greenhouses of a bygone Paris. About the series TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program-now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

This book casts light on and celebrates the life of a great Scot who was once the Laird of Benmore, now Benmore botanic garden. Whilst most are familiar with the collections of Burrel, few have heard of James Duncan. Yet had Duncan's collection remained intact it would have been internationally recognised and significant to Scottish culture today.The first Scottish collector to purchase an Impressionist painting, Duncan had an extraordinary eye as a collector at a time when Victorian sensibilities frowned upon many modern works. At his estate, Benmore in Argylleshire, Duncan amassed a collection of international import, housed in his own vast gallery and open to the public, along with his other projects a fernery and a sugar refinery.

This exquisite book takes you to a jewelry Magical Kingdom of theatrical beauty, showcasing dazzling Juliana crystal jewelry made by William DeLizza and Harold Elster from 1947 to the 1990s. Over 375 color photographs display the largest collection of striking Juliana jewelry ever brought together, revealing many rare, highly sought after, and coveted pieces. Lavish designs have components of great quality: amazing art glass, incredible intaglios and cameos, mesmerizing margaritas, dramatic dangles, ravishing rivoli and rhinestones, and distinctive Juliana figural brooches. Information is provided on the makers, design elements, and construction techniques, with details to assist in identification. Captions are provided with a value guide. Useful information on techniques for the repair and restoration of the jewelry, storage and care, and specific terminology are included. This is an inspiring book for seasoned collectors and novices who are beginning the fantastic voyage into the world of Juliana jewelry.

The political and social turmoil of the twentieth century took Magda Nachman from a privileged childhood in St. Petersburg at the close of the nineteenth century, artistic studies with Leon Bakst and Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin at the Zvantseva Art Academy, and participation in the dynamic symbolist/modernist artistic ferment in pre-Revolutionary Russia to a refugee existence in the Russian countryside during the Russian Civil War followed by marriage to a prominent Indian nationalist, then with her husband to the hardships of emigre Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s, and finally to Bombay, where she established herself as an important artist and a mentor to a new generation of modern Indian artists.

Many people know that Claude Monet (1840-1926) was a founder of French Impressionism, a master of landscape painting whose works include Impression, Sunrise and Water Lilies. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he created the ponds featuring those water lilies and spent 30 years painting 250 oils of them; that his water-lily work Le Bassin aux Nymphease sold in 2008 for $40 million; that his painting Cliffs Near Dieppe was stolen not once but twice; and that he was almost blind when he painted some of his most famous works. Biographic: Monet presents an instant impression of his life, work and fame, with an array of irresistible facts and figures convered into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures.

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.

At the turn of the 20th century, Glasgow was the centre for an avant-garde movement of art and design innovation in Europe, which we now refer to as The Glasgow Style. While the "Glasgow Boys" group of painters has been widely written about, their female contemporaries have received far less attention. In this work, the editor redresses this imbalance, bringing together research from 18 scholars on the work of an astonishing number of female artists from this period.

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.

Impressionism took its name from the title of a painting that Claude Monet (1840-1926) exhibited in 1874. More than any other artist, Monet was the creator of the Impressionist vision, which has so forcefully shaped the way in which he habitually see nature today. For sixty years he continuously explored ways of translating his experiences into paint, in pictures that take us from the bustling life of Paris in the 1860s to the seclusion of his own water-garden, which he painted in his last years. John House's introduction to Monet's life and work presents a sequence of dazzling illustrations that chart the artist's progress as he became increasingly preoccupied with colour and atmospheric effect, and the direct studies of nature gave way to paintings of greater richness and harmony, in which the play of varied colours replaced the conventional drawing and modelling of forms.

Gustave Klimt (1862-1918) was one of the most brilliant artists of the Austrian avant-garde. Admired for his sensual images of women and for his powerful and original vision, he produced some of the most haunting and evocative images of all time, including The Kiss, Love and The Three Ages of Woman, all of which are included in this perfect introduction to the artist's work. Klimt started out as a decorator, opening a studio with his brother Ernst. Some of his most famous commissions were for murals, including the magnificent Beethoven Frieze, painted for the exhibition of Max Klinger's statue of Beethoven, and the monumental ceiling paintings for the auditorium of Vienna University, which shocked a conservative public. A founder of Vienna Secession, the band of artists who resigned from the established art bodies to form their own group, Klimt became the principal painter of the Art Nouveau movement, painting glittering portraits of fashionable Viennese society as well as

The career of Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) as a painter was short, but his paintings revolutionized artistic practice and styles. The intensity of his vision, his wonderful sense of colour and the extraordinary boldness of his technique created masterpieces that exercised a profound influence on the art of the twentieth century. There are also enormously popular, and paintings such as The Yellow Chair, The Drawbridge and The Sower are among the most the best-loved images of our time. Wilhelm Uhde was an outstanding art critic and dealer who was born during Van Gogh's lifetime and witnessed at first hand his rise to fame at the beginning of the twentieth century. His masterly essay was first published in 1937 and remains one of the best introductions to Van Gogh's work. For this revised and expanded edition, the notes to the plates were added by Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art at the University of Leeds.

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.