This book discusses an important theme in art history - artistic emulation that emphasizes the exchange between Flemish and Dutch art in the seventeenth century. Since the Middle Ages, copying has been perceived as an important step in artistic training. Originality, on the other hand, has been considered an indispensable hallmark of great works of art since the Renaissance. Therefore, in the seventeenth century, ambitious painters frequently drew inspiration from other artists' works, attempting to surpass them in various aspects of aesthetic appeal. Drawing on this perspective, this book considers the problems of imitation, emulation, and artistic rivalry in seventeenth-century Netherlandish art. It primarily focuses on Rubens and Rembrandt, but also discusses other masters like van Dyck and Hals. It particularly results in expanding the extant body of knowledge in relation to Rubens's influence on Rembrandt and Hals. Moreover, it reveals certain new aspects of Rubens and Rembrandt as work-shop masters - collaboration with specialists, use of oil sketches, and teaching methods to pupils for example.

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 and two bookmarks. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. This example is based on Claude Monet's Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies. 'All of a sudden,' Monet would one day recall, 'I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette...' And the rest is art-history. Again and again - well over 200 times, and often working on an enormous scale - Claude Monet would return to water lilies as his subject.

Rose Wylie RA (b.1934) trained as an artist in the 1950s, but it was her re-engagement with painting in the early 1980s, after a period spent raising a family, that marked the beginning of a remarkable career that continues to evolve and impress. This monograph, the first of its kind, follows Wylie's fascinating artistic journey celebrating her achievements while also examining her current practice. Rose Wylie's large-scale paintings are inspired by a wide range of visual culture. Her subject matter ranges from contemporary Egyptian Hajj wall paintings and Persian miniatures to films, news stories, celebrity gossip and her observation of daily life. Often working from memory, she distills her subjects into succinct observations, using text to give additional emphasis to her recollections. In weaving together imagery from different sources with personal elements, Wylie's paintings offer a direct and wry commentary on contemporary culture. Her pictures refuse judgment but reveal a concern with the everyday that makes visible its enigmatic core. Drawing on a series of extended interviews with the artist, Clarrie Wallis unpicks the complexities of Wylie's visual language so providing an important contribution to our understanding, and appreciation of, a significant, and increasingly celebrated, figure in contemporary British art.

Anselm Kiefer, born in 1945, is one of the most important and controversial artists at work in the world today. Through such diverse mediums as painting, photography, artists books, installations, and sculpture, he has interpreted the great political and cultural issues at the heart of the modern European sensibility: the connections between memory, history, and mythology; war; the Holocaust; and ethnic and national identity. In this extensively illustrated, thoughtful survey of his work, available again in a new and compact format, author Daniel Arasse analyzes Kiefer s education, influences, philosophy, and art, while demonstrating the unity and continuity of his work. Arasse takes as his starting point the 1980 Venice Biennale, a key moment in Kiefer s career that marked the birth of both his international reputation and the controversy over the strong focus on German civilization that characterized much of his work. Equal parts eloquent tribute and respected monograph, Anselm Kiefer is organized both chronologically and to reflect the artist s recurrent motifs, including Nordic and Germanic mythologies, Jewish mysticism, the cosmos, the legends of the ancient world, and many more. Approximately 250 full-color images reproduce his art at the highest possible quality, to trace Kiefer s creative evolution and reveal as fully as possible his works scope and power."

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-69) transcends any period or social milieu: he is one of the world's great masters and though his works reflect the confidence of newly independent Holland, his vision extends far beyond these narrow confines. A deeply perceptive artist (his many self-portraits show his continued interest in the study of human nature), he sought to go beyond superficialities, to endow his biblical paintings, historical narratives, genre scenes and portraits with psychological depths hitherto unknown in Dutch painting. Impatient with conventionally stiffly posed group portraits, he produced such masterpieces as The Night Watch, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp and the Staal Meesters, while his studies of Saskia, his wife, and his mistress Hendrickje Stoffels reveal his deeply sensuous, compassionate nature. Michael Kitson has revised his highly successful book in the light of the most recent scholarship on Rembrandt, making this the ideal survey of the career of a much-loved genius.

Portraits are everywhere. One finds them not only in museums and galleries, but also in newspapers and magazines, in the homes of people and in the boardrooms of companies, on stamps and coins, on millions of cell phones and computers. Despite its huge popularity, however, portraiture hasn't received much philosophical attention. While there are countless art historical studies of portraiture, contemporary philosophy has largely remained silent on the subject. This book aims to address that lacuna. It brings together philosophers (and philosophically minded historians) with different areas of expertise to discuss this enduring and continuously fascinating genre. The chapters in this collection are ranged under five broad themes. Part I examines the general nature of portraiture and what makes it distinctive as a genre. Part II looks at some of the subgenres of portraiture, such as double portraiture, and at some special cases, such as sport card portraits and portraits of people not present. How emotions are expressed and evoked by portraits is the central focus of Part III, while Part IV explores the relation between portraiture, fiction, and depiction more generally. Finally, in Part V, some of the ethical issues surrounding portraiture are addressed. The book closes with an epilogue about portraits of philosophers. Portraits and Philosophy tangles with deep questions about the nature and effects of portraiture in ways that will substantially advance the scholarly discussion of the genre. It will be of interest to scholars and students working in philosophy of art, history of art, and the visual arts.

"There were no pictures on the walls of the rented rooms my mother and I lived in when I was a child. But there were pictures on the school walls, details of exhibitions and the lives of great painters in Everybody's Weekly, and, when we could afford it, we would treat ourselves to a trip to the nearest city and its travelling exhibitions of prints, which was how I saw most of Van Gogh that wasn't at school."For Duffy, pictures were and still are magical creations and recreations of the visible world - of history, mythologies, landscape, love and death - where the artists who make them attempt risk-taking feats analogous to a poet's with words. Pictures abound in this collection, ushering the reader from canvas to screen via x-rays and iPhone snapshots, the latter inspiring the closing sequence 'Burdsong'. Above all, Pictures from an Exhibition celebrates the mind's eye, which is its own exhibition gallery: transforming Darlington Station into an upturned ship's hull or a mauled pigeon into a still life, and glorying in the lives, loves and creations of painters from Veronese to Anselm Kiefer.