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 majesty of Earth's most magnificent features was the domain of Wilson Hurley (1924-2008). In paintings of natural wonders throughout the galaxy, he was committed to expressing his love of the richness of reality. His journey to become a revered twentieth-century American landscapist is brought to life in this intimate biography. Written for appreciators, collectors, and working artists, Hurley's goals and procedures - from thumbnails to plein air field studies and finished studio paintings - are elucidated in depth, including a commission that resulted in five monumental triptychs of our nation's most prized vistas installed at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum.

This collection of artwork from European comics master Sergio Toppi focuses on illustrations of beasts both real and imaginary presented in Toppi's inimitable pen-and-ink style. Sergio Toppi's work has been hailed as an influence by such artistic masters as Sean Gordon Murphy and Walter Simonson.

A beautiful book that argues artists were fascinated by still life painting considerably earlier than previously thought This eloquent and generously illustrated book asserts that artists were fascinated by and extremely skilled at still life significantly earlier than previously thought. Instead of the genre beginning in the early 17th century, noted scholar David Ekserdjian explores its origins in classical antiquity and the gradual re-emergence of still life in Renaissance painting. The author presents a visual anthology of finely executed flowers, fruit, food, household objects, and furnishings seen in the background of paintings. Paintings are reproduced in full and paired with detailed close-ups of still-life elements within the work. Ekserdjian further examines both the artistic and symbolic significance of a chosen detail, as well as information about each artist's career. Featured works include radiant paintings from Renaissance greats such as Da Vinci, Durer, Holbein, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Van Eyck, as well as the work of less-celebrated masters Barthelemy d'Eyck and Ortolano.

Featuring over 100 sketches, Drawn to the Edge gives a visual tour of the Outer Hebrides, one of the most remote parts of Scotland. Lewis and Harris are known for their harsh and stunning landscapes, and Barber has captured these simply and beautifully.

Find Your Way to the Most Beautiful Waterfalls Waterfalls create a feeling of serenity, a sense of restrained power. Their grandeur takes our breath away. Their gentle sounds complement periods of meditation. Let professional photographer and West Virginia resident Randall Sanger guide you to the top-ranked waterfalls of Virginia and West Virginia. Your bucket list should include these 174 gorgeous locales that decorate the landscape. The informative guidebook pairs professional photographs of every waterfall with all the information you need, including directions, distance, hike difficulty, and more. The waterfalls are organized geographically and ranked by beauty. Start with the ones nearby, then get away to discover those further afield. These natural wonders prove that Virginia and West Virginia are home to some of the most picturesque waterfalls in America. From Dark Hollow Falls in Shenandoah National Park to the Falls of Hills Creek in the Monongahela National Forest, experience them all with Waterfalls of Virginia & West Virginia!

From the mountains to the ocean shores, from the wetlands to the deserts, North America teems with flora and fauna in delicately balanced ecosystems found nowhere else on Earth. With this book in hand, you will understand the language of nature and see those wild places with new eyes. You'll learn to recognize the lobed leaf of an Oracle Oak, the webbed tracks of a River Otter, and the fine, cream-colored tentacles of a Frilled Anemone. This volume celebrates a tradition of knowledge established by the Nature Study Guild. For more than sixty years, the Guild's pocket guidebooks have helped hikers, campers, foragers, and explorers navigate the great outdoors. Now, the best of the guides' informative text and iconic illustrations are gathered in one handsome hardcover: the perfect reference for today's ramblers.

HorseLife defines what it is to love horses and how that appreciation influences everyday life. You may not own a horse or even live close to one, but anyone who has taken the reins before knows the transcendent calm that comes from something as simple as watching the setting sun on horseback or a nuzzling velvet nose on your palm when you return to the stable. Artful photography and heartfelt passages make this book the perfect gift for the horse lover in your herd. Ride softly, listen carefully & love completely.

"[A] fascinating and indispensable book."-Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times Best Books of 2018-The Guardian Gold Medal for Contribution to Publishing, 2019 California Book Awards Carleton Watkins (1829-1916) is widely considered the greatest American photographer of the nineteenth century and arguably the most influential artist of his era. He is best known for his pictures of Yosemite Valley and the nearby Mariposa Grove of giant sequoias. Watkins made his first trip to Yosemite Valley and Mariposa Grove in 1861 just as the Civil War was beginning. His photographs of Yosemite were exhibited in New York for the first time in 1862, as news of the Union's disastrous defeat at Fredericksburg was landing in newspapers and while the Matthew Brady Studio's horrific photographs of Antietam were on view. Watkins's work tied the West to Northern cultural traditions and played a key role in pledging the once-wavering West to Union. Motivated by Watkins's pictures, Congress would pass legislation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, that preserved Yosemite as the prototypical "national park," the first such act of landscape preservation in the world. Carleton Watkins: Making the West American includes the first history of the birth of the national park concept since pioneering environmental historian Hans Huth's landmark 1948 "Yosemite: The Story of an Idea." Watkins's photographs helped shape America's idea of the West, and helped make the West a full participant in the nation. His pictures of California, Oregon, and Nevada, as well as modern-day Washington, Utah, and Arizona, not only introduced entire landscapes to America but were important to the development of American business, finance, agriculture, government policy, and science. Watkins's clients, customers, and friends were a veritable "who's who" of America's Gilded Age, and his connections with notable figures such as Collis P. Huntington, John and Jessie Benton Fremont, Eadweard Muybridge, Frederick Billings, John Muir, Albert Bierstadt, and Asa Gray reveal how the Gilded Age helped make today's America. Drawing on recent scholarship and fresh archival discoveries, Tyler Green reveals how an artist didn't just reflect his time, but acted as an agent of influence. This telling of Watkins's story will fascinate anyone interested in American history; the West; and how art and artists impacted the development of American ideas, industry, landscape, conservation, and politics.

The Camelopard, The Monstrous Pig, The Famous Porcupine, Durer's Rhinoceros: these are but a few of the beautiful and bizarre creatures that feature in this delightful book. In the visual arts of the fifteenth to the early nineteenth centuries in Europe, animals were understood in relation to the human world, whether as animals of the farm, estate or household, beasts of burden or as diversions in menageries and travelling shows. At the same time, rapidly increasing investigation of the natural world engaged artists in the problems of accurate representation: prints were particularly important in distributing natural historical information (or misinformation) across a wide, international audience. This beautifully illustrated book explores perceptions of the natural world as seen through the eyes of imaginative artists: works by Goya, Stubbs and Bewick stand alongside prints by lesser-known artists, each selected for its graphic strength, charm and narrative interest. Featured are natural history studies, masterpieces from the British Museum's exceptional collection of classical old master prints, book illustrations, satires and popular prints to beautifully capture the diversity and appeal of early modern print culture. Visually stunning, entertaining and intriguing, this book explores humankind's enduring curiosity about the animal world.

Stitched Textiles: Nature is the fourth title in this successful theme-based series. It contains an extensive section on techniques, featuring step-by-step guides to machine- and hand-stitching, attaching embellishments and found objects to your work; painting and printing on fabrics including cotton, silk and Khadi paper; and using objects found in nature, such as leaves, to make unique and iconic prints. The book includes three beautiful, inspirational projects based on different facets of the natural world: Ocean, Rainforest, Botany, Birds and Animals. Stitched Textiles: Nature also features examples of the author, Stephanie Redfern's own intricate and detailed works based on nature, exploring the means by which the pieces have been created, and the wonderful stories behind Stephanie's journey as an artist. The wealth of information and visual stimuli in Stitched Textiles: Nature is intended to inspire the reader to create their own works inspired by nature. Stephanie begins by exploring the use of sketchbooks and study pages; progressing to picking out iconic elements from sketches and photographs; and eventually assembling a stunning, personal piece of stitched textile work on fabric or on cotton-blend Khadi paper; applying handstitch in metallic threads; machine stitch in whimsical and beautiful patterns; embellishing with natural beads or found objects.

The Book of the Tree is a celebration of trees in art featuring works by some of the world's leading artists, photographers and illustrators.

"The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way." William Blake

From stately old oaks to beautiful forests and woods, trees have provided a source of inspiration for artists throughout history.

This charming gift book presents a selection of some of the most beautiful artworks inspired by trees. Interspersed throughout the illustrations are short texts about the artists and their interest in particular trees, from Egon Shiele's delicate watercolours of chestnut trees, to Rousseau's exotic forests, Claire Cansick's vivid woodlands and Hockney's tree-lined groves.

The Book of the Tree presents a wonderful collection of arboreal art that revels in the enduring beauty of our trees, woodlands and forests. It is the perfect gift for art-lovers, tree-lovers and nature-lovers.

The first book by wildlife photographer and writer Larry Laverty, Power and Majesty features extraordinary images and informative text that capture the life of African elephants. The book focuses on these majestic animals and features stunning photographs from the most remote corners of Africa, from the savannahs and deserts to the rivers and jungles. The text introduces various elephant habitats, explores the magical qualities of elephants, and underscores the immense challenges they face for survival in a world dominated by humans. The photographs and information showcased in this book will help increase our appreciation and understanding of the African elephant's significant place in the animal kingdom, and Larry Laverty will be donating all of his profits to this worthy cause. Their abilities to love, to remember, to function as families, and to survive under some of the harshest conditions will change the way we think about elephants, with the hope that this knowledge will encourage more people to help save those who remain in the wild.

A distinctly Indigenous form of landscape representation is emerging among contemporary Indigenous artists from North America. For centuries, landscape painting in European art typically used representational strategies such as single-point perspective to lure viewers-and settlers-into the territories of the old and new worlds. In the twentieth century, abstract expressionism transformed painting to encompass something beyond the visual world, and, later, minimalism and the Land Art movement broadened the genre of landscape art to include sculptural forms and site-specific installations. In Shifting Grounds, art historian Kate Morris argues that Indigenous artists are expanding and reconceptualizing the forms of the genre, expressing Indigenous attitudes toward land and belonging even as they draw upon mainstream art practices. The resulting works evoke all five senses: from the overt sensuality of Kay WalkingStick's tactile paintings to the eerie soundscapes of Alan Michelson's videos to the immersive environments of Kent Monkman's dioramas, this art resonates with a fully embodied and embedded subjectivity. Shifting Grounds explores themes of presence and absence, survival and vulnerability, memory and commemoration, and power and resistance, illuminating the artists' engagement not only with land and landscape but also with the history of representation itself.

In 1975, David Shepherd wrote The Man Who Loves Giants - an autobiography. Even though he was only forty-four, he had already achieved more than most could have in three lifetimes. In the intervening years, until his death in 2017, he painted a huge variety of subjects; founded the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation; renovated and restored everything from steam engines to dolls' houses; and appeared on both radio and television. 'Being the extrovert I am,' he once said, 'I like things large and exciting ... especially elephants ...' However, this enthusiasm wasn't restricted to animals; it extended to his love and ownership of several full-sized steam engines, including locomotive number 92203, otherwise known as Black Prince. David's friends ranged from showbiz celebrities to well-known sportsmen and women; and British and European royalty to internationally influential politicians and presidents. He was awarded the Order of the Golden Ark by Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands for his services to conservation in Zambia, and the Order of Distinguished Service, First Class, by President Kaunda. Her Majesty The Queen presented David with the OBE and CBE. David's first gallery successes were not of the African wildlife for which he is now best known. London scenes, planes, boats and trains have long featured in his portfolio - as do English landscapes and bygone rural life. Since David's autobiography, no book has dealt so comprehensively with his life, painting, and conservation work as this biography by J. C. Jeremy Hobson, professional author and David's youngest son-in-law. With access to family archives and photographs, private diaries and reminiscences, this is a unique portrait of a remarkable man.

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.

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.

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Untersuchung steht die umfassende Analyse der Seebilder Jacob van Ruisdaels. Dabei wird die kunstlerische Leistung Ruisdaels unter dem Einfluss sowohl der Natur- und Kunstauffassung als auch der gesellschaftspolitischen Entwicklungen des Goldenen Jahrhunderts (der Niederlande des 17. Jh.) berucksichtigt. Gleichzeitig bietet diese Betrachtung einen Loesungsansatz fur die Interpretation bestimmter Bildmotive auf feste Sinnbilder, die in den Meereslandschaften anzutreffen sind. Die Gemalde enthalten emblematische Motive, ahnlich einem Gleichnis, so dass die Bildinhalte und ihre Bedeutung auf vielfaltige Weise interpretiert werden koennen. Daruber hinaus werden weitere spezifische Charakteristika der ruisdaelschen Marinen an den Gemalden selbst exemplarisch herausgearbeitet.

First published in the middle of the nineteenth century, following years of research and field study, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (its original title) became the outstanding illustrated work on American mammals of its time and is still considered by many to include the finest animal prints published in North America. The book included many frontier animals never depicted before and helped to increase appreciation of American nature around the world. This edition of Audubon's classic work has been directly reproduced from an original copy held by the Library of the Natural History Museum, London. All the mammals' current scientific names have been included in the reference section at the back of the book.

The island of Ireland is home to one of the world's great literary and artistic traditions. This book reads Irish literature and art in context of the island's coastal and maritime cultures, beginning with the late imperial experiences of Jack and William Butler Yeats and ending with the contemporary work of Anne Enright and Sinead Morrissey. It includes chapters on key historical texts such as Erskine Childers's The Riddle of the Sands, and on contemporary writers including Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and Kevin Barry. It sets a diverse range of writing and visual art in a fluid panorama of liquid associations that connect Irish literature to an archipelago of other times and places. Situated within contemporary conversations about the blue and the environmental humanities, this book builds on the upsurge of interest in seas and coasts in literary studies, presenting James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, John Banville, and many others in new coastal and maritime contexts. In doing so, it creates a literary and visual narrative of Irish coastal cultures across a seaboard that extends to a planetary configuration of imagined islands.