Rembrandt's revealing self-portraits in an appealing, affordable format Celebrated as the supreme painter of the human condition, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) famously turned the intense spotlight of his empathetic vision on himself. In the course of 60 years, he produced more than 50 self-portraits, in mediums ranging from paintings to drawings to engravings. Rembrandt stood at the beginning of a long tradition of self-portraiture-one that has given us both Cindy Sherman in the high arts, and selfies as the primary form of visual self-expression in everyday life-and he explored its potential in a thoroughly modern way. He portrayed the face he turned to the world, from youth to old age: a dandy, a husband, an artist, a solitary genius, among many other characters. He captured inner states that are universal to existence. Rembrandt by Rembrandt reproduces Rembrandt's self-portraits, with commentary about each one, in an appealing portable format that makes a perfect gift for any art lover.

Moving with the Magdalen is the first art-historical book dedicated to the cult of Mary Magdalen in the late medieval Alps. Its seven case study chapters focus on the artworks commissioned for key churches that belonged to both parish and pilgrimage networks in order to explore the role of artistic workshops, commissioning patrons and diverse devotees in the development and transfer of the saint's iconography across the mountain range. Together they underscore how the Magdalen's cult and contingent imagery interacted with the environmental conditions and landscape of the Alps along late medieval routes.

Major General Sir Isaac Brock is remembered as the Hero of Upper Canada for his defence of what is now Ontario during the War of 1812, and also for his noble death at the Battle of Queenston Heights. In the more than two centuries since then, Brock's likeness has been lost in a confusing array of portraits-most of which are misidentified or conceptual. The 1824 monument constructed to honour Brock's sacrifice was destroyed in 1840 by Benjamin Lett, a disgruntled disciple of William Lyon Mackenzie and critic of the Upper Canadian elite. The replacement and subsequent commemorations emphasized a patriotic desire to visualize the hero's appearance. But despite uncovering an authentic portrait painted only a few years before Brock's death, a series of false faces were promoted to serve competing claims and agendas. St-Denis situates Brock's portraits within an emerging English Canadian imperial nationalism that sought a heroic past which reflected their own aspirations and ambitions. A work of detailed scholarship and a fascinating detective story, The True Face of Sir Isaac Brock details the sometimes petty world of self-proclaimed guardians of the past, the complex process of identification and misidentification that often occurs even at esteemed Canadian institutions, and St-Denis' own meticulous work as he separates fact from fiction to finally reveal Brock's true face.

As we approach the bicentennial, in 2017, of the birth of Henry David Thoreau, there is considerable debate and confusion as to what he may, or may not have, contributed to American life and culture. Almost every American has heard of Thoreau, but only a few are aware that he was deeply engaged with most of the important issues of his day, from slavery to "Manifest Destiny" and the rights of the individual in a democratic society. Many of these issues are still affecting us today, as we move toward the second quarter of the twenty-first century. By studying how various American artists have chosen to portray Thoreau over the years since the publication of Walden in 1854, we can gain a clear understanding of how he has been interpreted (or misinterpreted) throughout the years since his death in 1862. But along the way, we might also find something useful, for our times, in the insights that Thoreau gained as he wrestled with the most urgent problems being experienced by American society in his day.

Awarded the Washington DC Book Publishers' design and effectiveness competition Honorable Mention in the category of Illustrated Text from a Small- to Medium-Size Nonprofit Publisher and Third Prize in the category of Illustrated Jacket or Cover from a Small- to Medium-Size Nonprofit Publisher Ballyhoo looks at the poster as a form of popular portraiture. These celebrity likenesses are dramatic--and often enormous--but in fact, what a poster communicates about an individual is usually secondary to its principal message: Barnum and Bailey announcing the arrival of their circus, the Woodbury Soap company using Veronica Lake to promote its Omatched make-up, O Greta Garbo advertising the Swedish version of Queen Christina, or Bette Midler publicizing her 1973 concert at the Palace Theater. By interweaving the three themes of poster art, celebrity promotion, and advertising, Ballyhoo suggests how a famous face can enhance the message of the poster and, conversely, how posters have defined and disseminated images of prominent Americans. Furthermore, posters provide an instructive glimpse of an era's prevailing ideals, prejudices, and presumptions. These images remind us of the ubiquitous presence of portrait images outside the world of fine art. Widely disseminated forms of popular portraiture, like the poster, remain a profound influence in our culture."

Simon Schama brings Britain to life through its portraits, as seen in the five-part BBC series The Face of Britain and the major National Portrait Gallery exhibition Churchill and his painter locked in a struggle of stares and glares; Gainsborough watching his daughters run after a butterfly; a black Othello in the nineteenth century; the poet-artist Rossetti trying to capture on canvas what he couldn't possess in life; a surgeon-artist making studies of wounded faces brought in from the Battle of the Somme; a naked John Lennon five hours before his death. In the age of the hasty glance and the selfie, Simon Schama has written a tour de force about the long exchange of looks from which British portraits have been made over the centuries: images of the modest and the mighty; of friends and lovers; heroes and working people. Each of them - the image-maker, the subject, and the rest of us who get to look at them - are brought unforgettably to life. Together they build into a collective picture of Britain, our past and our present, a look into the mirror of our identity at a moment when we are wondering just who we are. Combining his two great passions, British history and art history, for the first time, Schama's extraordinary storytelling reveals the truth behind the nation's most famous portrayals of power, love, fame, the self, and the people. Mesmerising in its breadth and its panache, and beautifully illustrated, with more than 150 images from the National Portrait Gallery, The Face of Britain will change the way we see our past - and ourselves.

The Body in Time looks at two different genres in relation to the construction of femininity in late nineteenth-century France: Degas's representation of ballet dancers and the transforming tradition of female portraiture. Class, gender, power, and agency are at stake in both arenas, but they play themselves out in different ways via different pictorial languages. Degas's depictions of anonymous young female ballerinas at the Paris Opera reflect his fascination with the physical exertions and prosaic setting of the dancer's sexualized body. Unlike the standard Romantic depictions of the ballerina, Degas's dancers are anonymous spread-legged workers on public display. Female portraiture and self-portraiture, in contrast, depicted the unique and the distinctive: privileged women, self-assured individuals transgressing gender conventions. Focusing on Degas's representation of the dancer, Tamar Garb examines the development of Degas's oeuvre from its early Realist documentary ambitions to the abstracted Symbolist renderings of the feminine as cypher in his later works. She argues that despite the apparent depletion of social significance and specificity, Degas's later works remain deeply enmeshed in contemporary gendered ways of viewing and experiencing art and life. Garb also looks at the transformation in the genre of portraiture heralded by the "new woman," examining the historical expectations of female portraiture and demonstrating how these expectations are challenged by new notions of female autonomy and interiority. Women artists such as Anna Klumpke, Rosa Bonheur, and Anna Bilinska deployed the language of Realism in their own self-representation. The figure of femininity remained central to the personal, political, and pictorial imperatives of artists across the spectrum of modern aesthetics. Gender and genre intersect throughout this book to show how these categories mutually impact one another.

Faces of Impressionism explores the development of the portrait in French painting and sculpture between 1860 and 1910 as showcased in one of the world's greatest collections of Impressionist art-the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Splendidly illustrated, this book assesses the portrait collection through the expert eyes of George T. M. Shackelford and Guy Cogeval, as well as from the perspective of a new generation of distinguished scholars, Isolde Pludermacher and Xavier Rey. Featuring some of the best-loved portraits in the history of art-Cezanne's Woman with a Coffee Pot, Degas's L'Absinthe-this handsome volume includes masters such as Denis, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Seurat, Signac, and Toulouse-Lautrec, and a detailed discussion on Manet and his followers as depicted in Fantin-Latour's renowned group portrait A Studio in the Batignolles. Distributed for the Kimbell Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Kimbell Art Museum (10/19/14-01/25/15)

Examines the styles and contexts of portrait statues produced during one of the most dynamic eras of Western art, the early Hellenistic age. Often seen as the beginning of the Western tradition in portraiture, this historical period is here subjected to a rigorous interdisciplinary analysis. Using a variety of methodologies from a wide range of fields - anthropology, numismatics, epigraphy, archaeology, history, and literary criticism - an international team of experts investigates the problems of origins, patronage, setting, and meanings that have consistently marked this fascinating body of ancient material culture.