One of the earliest surviving examples of 'art history', Pliny the Elder's 'chapters on art' form part of his encyclopaedic Natural History, completed shortly before its author died during the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. This important new work reassesses Pliny's discussion of art, revealing how art is used to expound the Roman imperial agenda which dominates the work as a whole.

The book examines the roles that rare and exotic animals played in the cultural self-fashioning and the political imaging of the Medici court during the family's reign, first as Dukes of Florence (1532-1569) and subsequently as Grand Dukes of Tuscany (1569-1737). The book opens with an examination of global practices in zoological collecting and cultural uses of animals. The Medici's activities as collectors of exotic species, the menageries they established and their deployment of animals in the ceremonial life of the court and in their art are examined in relation to this wider global perspective. The book seeks to nuance the myth promoted by the Medici themselves that theirs was the most successful princely serraglio in early modern Europe.

These poems reflect a journey from a past delineated by racism, trauma and violence towards a present life of peace and intense natural beauty. Permeated with nostalgia and loss; songs of an immigrant community alienated in their own land, but pierced with fierce hope, faith in redemption, and a determination that we should all belong.

'Chris Beetles' book is a joy, an inspiration and as thorough a document into understanding the life and times of Louis Wain as one could hope to read' - Benedict Cumberbatch 'Louis Wain invented a cat style, a cat society, a whole cat world'. Broadcast in 1925 by H.G. Wells, these words characteristically foretold the future of the Wain cat which has, once more, become the century's most recognisable image in cat art. During their heyday, in the time before the First World War, Louis Wain's cats, dressed as humans, portrayed that stylish Edwardian world having fun: at restaurants and tea parties, going to the Race and the Seaside, celebrating at Christmas and Birthdays, and disporting themselves with exuberant games of tennis, bowls, cricket and football. This is a titillating world of cats at play, uninhibited and slightly dangerous, with most group activities likely to turn into mishap, mayhem and catastrophe. This is Wain's world, funny, edgy and animated: a whole cat world. The first comprehensive exhibition of Wain's work was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1972 and, since then, Louis Wain has steadily become more fashionable, and collected worldwide. This biography contains 300 plates of richness and variety, all of which are reproduced faithfully from the original artwork.

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Describes the nature of birds of prey (where they live, feed, and hunt), why these species are endangered, and what can be done to protect and preserve them.

Get the perfect coffee-table book for birders and nature lovers, pairing naturalist knowledge with beautiful watercolor paintings. This is the bird book for people who love birds! Naturalist, watercolorist, and debut author Jenny deFouw Geuder combines her vast knowledge of birds, wildflowers, and nature with her artistic expertise to create a book like no other. Drawn to Birds presents more than 120 beautiful watercolor paintings, along with Jenny's fascinating insights that add unique appeal to each page. Drawn to Birds begins with an introduction to bird anatomy, as well as details about nests, eggs, and migration. From there, more than 50 different bird species are showcased, with the watercolors divided into groups like backyard birds, raptors, and wetland birds. As an added bonus, there's a section dedicated to insects and wildflowers. You'll appreciate Jenny's tips on how to welcome birds to your yard and how to become a naturalist. Being a naturalist is about more than simply stopping to smell the flowers. It's about observation and making a record. Pause and notice the shapes, colors, and patterns around you. Jenny's goal is to inspire you to try your own hand at being a naturalist! She also includes step-by-step guides for drawing, painting, and inking your own pictures. Anyone can be an artist. Be brave, try it out, and keep noticing the marvels around you. Extra pages for journaling and sketching make this book a keepsake to cherish forever. If you enjoy birding, gardening, or the great outdoors, Drawn to Birds belongs in your book collection. Get one for yourself, and give one as a gift!

In The Aesthetics of Qiyun and Genius: Spirit Consonance in Chinese Landscape Painting and Some Kantian Echoes, Xiaoyan Hu provides an interpretation of the notion of qiyun, or spirit consonance, in Chinese painting, and considers why creating a painting-especially a landscape painting-replete with qiyun is regarded as an art of genius, where genius is an innate mental talent. Through a comparison of the role of this innate mental disposition in the aesthetics of qiyun and Kant's account of artistic genius, the book addresses an important feature of the Chinese aesthetic tradition, one that evades the aesthetic universality assumed by a Kantian lens. Drawing on the views of influential sixth to fourteenth-century theorists and art historians and connoisseurs, the first part explains and discusses qiyun and its conceptual development from a notion mainly applied to figure painting to one that also plays an enduring role in the aesthetics of landscape painting. In the light of Kant's account of genius, the second part examines a range of issues regarding the role of the mind in creating a painting replete with qiyun and the impossibility of teaching qiyun. Through this comparison with Kant, Hu demystifies the uniqueness of qiyun aesthetics and also illuminates some limitations in Kant's aesthetics.

The Artist as Animal in Nineteenth-Century French Literature traces the evolution of the relationship between artists and animals in fiction from the Second Empire to the fin de siecle. This book examines examples of visual literature, inspired by the struggles of artists such as Edouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt's Manette Salomon (1867), Emile Zola's Therese Raquin (1867), Jules Laforgue's "At the Berlin Aquarium" (1895) and "Impressionism" (1883), Octave Mirbeau's In the Sky (1892-1893) and Rachilde's L'Animale (1893) depict vanguard painters and performers as being like animals, whose unique vision revolted against stifling traditions. Juxtaposing these literary works with contemporary animal theory (McHugh, Deleuze, Guattari and Derrida), zoo studies (Berger, Rothfels and Lippit) and feminism (Donovan, Adams and Haraway), Claire Nettleton explores the extent to which the nineteenth-century dissolution of the human subject contributed to a radical, modern aesthetic. Utilizing these interdisciplinary methodologies, Nettleton argues that while inducing anxiety regarding traditional humanist structures, the "artist-animal," an embodiment of artistic liberation within an urban setting, is, at the same time, a paradigmatic trope of modernity.

A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'We have lost touch with nature, rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned?... The only real things in life are food and love, in that order, just like [for] our little dog Ruby... and the source of art is love. I love life.' DAVID HOCKNEY Praise for Spring Cannot be Cancelled: 'This book is not so much a celebration of spring as a springboard for ideas about art, space, time and light. It is scholarly, thoughtful and provoking' The Times 'Lavishly illustrated... Gayford is a thoughtfully attentive critic with a capacious frame of reference' Guardian 'Hockney and Gayford's exchanges are infused with their deep knowledge of the history of art ... This is a charming book, and ideal for lockdown because it teaches you to look harder at the things around you' Lynn Barber,The Spectator 'Designed to underscore [Hockney's] original message of hope, and to further explore how art can gladden and invigorate ... meanders amiably from Rembrandt, to the pleasure principle, andouillette sausages and, naturally, to spring' Daily Telegraph On turning eighty, David Hockney sought out rustic tranquillity for the first time: a place to watch the sunset and the change of the seasons; a place to keep the madness of the world at bay. So when Covid-19 and lockdown struck, it made little difference to life at La Grande Cour, the centuries-old Normandy farmhouse where Hockney set up a studio a year before, in time to paint the arrival of spring. In fact, he relished the enforced isolation as an opportunity for even greater devotion to his art. Spring Cannot be Cancelled is an uplifting manifesto that affirms art's capacity to divert and inspire. It is based on a wealth of new conversations and correspondence between Hockney and the art critic Martin Gayford, his long-time friend and collaborator. Their exchanges are illustrated by a selection of Hockney's new, unpublished Normandy iPad drawings and paintings alongside works by van Gogh, Monet, Bruegel, and others. We see how Hockney is propelled ever forward by his infectious enthusiasms and sense of wonder. A lifelong contrarian, he has been in the public eye for sixty years, yet remains entirely unconcerned by the view of critics or even history. He is utterly absorbed by his four acres of northern France and by the themes that have fascinated him for decades: light, colour, space, perception, water, trees. He has much to teach us, not only about how to see... but about how to live. With 142 illustrations in colour

The Bird explores the fascinating world of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ornithological illustration. This was a period of scientific, artistic and geographic discovery, when people began to fully appreciate the immense variety of form and colour within the natural world. This book celebrates this beauty through the lavish illustrations produced at that time. Each chapter focuses on a category of birds, from shorebirds to birds of prey. Feature sections on key ornithological artists such as John James Audubon, Elizabeth Gould and Edward Lear demonstrated how technology, travel and ambition shaped these amazing images, and how their work transformed our understanding of the wonderful world of birds.

Mist and fog engender fascination and mystery, enticing with their wispy veils and vapourous moods, and they are the stuff of dreams and visions. 'The mists of time' and 'in a fog' are common expressions that substantiate the long association of mist and fog with the passage of time, the vagaries of memory and feelings of uncertainty. Mist and fog obscure, conceal and when they dissipate, reveal. Vapourous atmosphere in art and life masks evil and can elicit presentiments of death. It also has been used in art to convey the splendours of the spiritual world and the terrors of the supernatural. The metaphorical meanings that have accrued to mist and fog, encouraged by their indeterminate and transitory nature, and the emotions to which they give rise, are variously evident in the work of major artists and their contemporaries. This book focusses on mist and fog from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries in the places they most proliferated. Examples of literature that employ mist and fog as metaphor and in allegory from antiquity to Joseph Conrad serve to amplify many of the paintings discussed.

Woodland Imagery in Northern Art reconnects us with the woodland scenery that abounds in Western painting, from Albrecht Durer's intense studies of verdant trees, to the works of many other Northern European artists who captured 'the truth of vegetation' in their work. These incidents of remarkable scenery in the visual arts have received little attention in the history of art, until now. Prosperetti brings together a set of essays which are devoted to the poetics of the woodlands in the work of the great masters, including Claude Lorrain, Jan van Eyck, Jacob van Ruisdael, Peter Paul Rubens, Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci, amongst others. Through an examination of aesthetics and eco-poetics, this book draws attention to the idea of lyrical naturalism as a conceptual bridge that unites the power of poetry with the allurement of the natural world. Engagingly written and beautifully illustrated throughout, Woodland Imagery in Northern Art strives to stimulate the return of the woodlands to the places where they belong - in people's minds and close to home.

This book, published to coincide with a major exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, explores and celebrates Turner's lifelong fascination with the sea. It also sets his work within the context of marine painting in the 19th century. Each chapter has an introductory text followed by discussion of specific paintings. Four of the chapters conclude with a feature essay on a specific topic.

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 Nel Whatmore's 'Up Up and Away'. Nel Whatmore is a fine artist, well known for her floral paintings and abstracts. A contemporary colourist, her paintings are both expressionist and evocative. She seeks to constantly explore mediums and their ability to convey emotion. Her work is varied and encapsulates her interest in expressionist painting.

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.

5 simple step-by-step instructions teach you how to draw all kinds of animals Perfect for beginner artists of all ages-both kids and adults! Practices pages included alongside each drawing If you're aspiring to be an artist, this book will help you learn fast! Do you want to learn the secrets of becoming a great artist? All it takes is following the five simple steps within the pages of this book! Connect shapes, follow the lines, and before you know it, you'll be developing your artistic talent. Each of the sixty images included has step-by-step, easy-to-follow directions to help you learn to create each of these cool illustrations. Whether it is a dog, cat, lion, tiger, bear, giraffe, lizard, or owl you'll quickly become a pro at drawing them all with ease. You can either trace the images using the original image or hone in on your freehand skills by using the facing practice page included after each sheet of instructions. There is even a colored sample to give you an idea how to put the finishing fluorescent touches on your illustrations! How to Draw Animals also has the added bonus of more than 30 scenic background pages that leave room for you to doodle images and practice your newly acquired skills. Each coloring image provides space for you to sketch an image from the dozens of animals that you've learned from this book. Sharpen your pencils and get ready to spring your illustrations to life. This book will teach you how embrace your inner Picasso and have fun doing it!

Beginning with the very origins of life on Earth, Woolfson considers pre-historic human-animal interaction and traces the millennia-long evolution of conceptions of the soul and conscience in relation to the animal kingdom, and the consequences of our belief in human superiority. She explores our representation of animals in art, our consumption of them for food, our experiments on them for science, and our willingness to slaughter them for sport and fashion, as well as examining concepts of love and ownership. Drawing on philosophy and theology, art and history, as well as her own experience of living with animals and coming to know, love and respect them as individuals, Woolfson examines some of the most complex ethical issues surrounding our treatment of animals and argues passionately and persuasively for a more humble, more humane, relationship with the creatures who share our world.

Originally published in 1971, Animals in Art and Thought discusses the ways in which animals have been used by man in art and literature. The book looks at how they have been used to symbolise religious, social and political beliefs, as well as their pragmatic use by hunters, sportsmen, and farmers. The book discusses these various attitudes in a survey which ranges from prehistoric cave art to the later Middle Ages. The book is especially concerned with uncovering the latent, as well as the manifest meanings of animal art, and presents a detailed examination of the literary and archaeological monuments of the periods covered in the book. The book discusses the themes of Creation myths of the pagan and Christian religion, the contribution of the animal art of the ancient contribution of the animal art of the ancient Orient to the development of the Romanesque and gothic styles in Europe, the use of beast fables in social or political satire, and the heroic associations of animals in medieval chivalry.

Humans have long believed themselves to be the superior species: we consume other animals for food, experiment on them and slaughter them for sport. But as well as the ethical issues surrounding our treatment of other animals, our attitudes are responsible for massive species loss and extinctions, the extensive destruction of habitats and a growing threat of zoonotic pandemics. Drawing on philosophy and theology, art and history, Between Light and Storm is a penetrating account of our fraught relationship with animals. It is also a timely and necessary plea for a more humane approach to those with whom we share a planet.