Touch is our first sense. Through touch we make art, stake a claim to what we own and those we love, express our faith, our belief, our anger. Touch is how we leave our mark and find our place in the world; touch is how we connect. Drawing on works of art spanning four thousand years and from across the globe, this book explores the fundamental role of touch in human experience, and offers new ways of looking. In a series of lavishly illustrated essays, the authors explore anatomy and skin; the relationship between the brain, hand, and creativity; touch, desire and possession; ideological touch; reverence and iconoclasm. A final section collects a range of reflections, historic and contemporary, on touch. Objects range from anonymous ancient Egyptian limestone sculpture, to medieval manuscripts and panel paintings, to devotional and spiritual objects from across the world, to love tokens and fede rings. Drawings, paintings, prints and sculpture by Raphael, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Carracci, Hogarth, Turner, Rodin, Degas, and Kollwitz are explored, along with work by contemporary artists Judy Chicago, Frank Auerbach, Richard Long, the Chapman Brothers, and Richard Rawlins. The events of 2020 have made us newly alive to the preciousness and the dangers of touch, making this exploration of our most fundamental sense particularly timely and resonant.

This absorbing book explores the crown jewel of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum's collection of rare books and manuscripts: Jean Bourdichon's Boston Hours. As court artist to King Francois I of France, Bourdichon produced paintings, books and even parade floats for the sovereign and his entourage. This publication accompanies the museum's first ever exhibition dedicated to this spectacular illuminated manuscript. Painter to two kings, Jean Bourdichon remains today one of the most celebrated artists of the French Renaissance. By age twenty-four, he was already serving as "peintre du roy," a title which Bourdichon held for the rest of his life. His illustrious career at the French royal court led to a wide range of commissions - from portraits to wall maps to stained glass - but he is remembered principally for astonishing illuminated manuscripts. The peerless Grandes Heures for Queen Anne of Brittany remains the touchstone of this group which includes some of the most lavishly painted books of hours ever produced. One of these masterpieces - Bourdichon's Boston Hours - in the collection of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is the subject of this book. Bourdichon's only intact book of hours in the United States was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in 1890 and became the crown jewel of her collection of rare books and manuscripts. Leading scholars Nicholas Herman and Anne-Marie Eze explore its history in depth, shedding new light on the book's patronage and provenance - from the shelves of a wealthy Catholic landowner in Lincolnshire to the shop of a Venetian art and antiques dealer. This book is the latest in the Gardner's Close Up series, each installment focusing on an individual, outstanding work of art in the collection. This publication is the first dedicated to this rare treasure, and precedes an exhibition opening in summer 2022.

In the last decade of his life, Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) undertook a printmaking project that changed the conventions of portraiture. In a series later named the Iconography, he portrayed artists alongside kings, courtiers, and diplomats-a radical departure from preexisting conventions. He also depicted his subjects in novel ways, focusing on their facial features often to the exclusion of symbolic costumes or props. In addition to illustrating approximately 60 works by Van Dyck and other artists from his era-particularly Rembrandt-this catalogue traces the artist's influence over hundreds of years. Showcasing both 17th century portraits in a variety of media and portrait prints by a wide range of artists spanning the 16th through the 20th centuries-including Albrecht Durer, Hendrick Goltzius, Francisco de Goya, Edgar Degas, and Jim Dine-the book demonstrates the indelible mark that Van Dyck left on the genre. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: Art Institute of Chicago (03/05/16-08/07/16)

Over his long and successful career David Remfry MBE RA RWS has achieved a mastery of watercolour that few have matched. Unusually for the medium, he works on a large scale and often focuses on people, exploring the dance hall and the nightclub in breathtaking images that are at once beautiful and edgy. This book is the first full-length monograph devoted to the artist's watercolours. Its author, James Russell, is well known for his writing on 20th-century British artists. Russell brings his scholarship, humour and fascination for people and their lives to his study of Remfry's career, tracing the evolution of a remarkable talent, looking in depth at the most significant works and placing Remfry in the context of both the British watercolour tradition and international contemporary painting. This is at once a glorious art book and an intimate portrait of city life. Having spent 20 years living and working at the legendary Chelsea Hotel in New York, Remfry has a following on both sides of the Atlantic. New Yorkers - often in party mode - feature in many of his watercolours, and his recollections of people and places add colour to the text.