In 1959, Bridget Riley's copy of Georges Seurat's Bridge at Courbevoie (1886-87) offered the artist a new understanding of colour and tone, which led her to produce her first major works of pure abstraction during the early 1960s. In 2015-16, an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, presented seven of Riley's paintings and this key Pointillist work by Seurat from the museum's collection. Brought together for the first time, the exhibition demonstrated the two artists' shared preoccupation with perception by looking at pivotal points throughout Riley's career. Alongside full-colour illustrations, this publication features two essays written by Riley that offer the artist's insights on Seurat's importance to her own practice. An interview with the artist by Eric de Chassey, complemented by an introductory text by Karen Serres and Barnaby Wright, make this an important resource for art historians and general readers alike.

This stunning catalogue presents for the first time an outstanding group of modern drawings by European and American masters, assembled by the late Howard Karshan and his wife, Linda, who recently presented the works to The Courtauld. Accompanying their exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, the catalogue features drawings by renowned artists including Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz. The Karshan gift is a significant addition to The Courtauld's collection. The works demonstrate Howard and Linda Karshan's sensibility for the expressive power and rich variety of drawing as an art form. The drawings are characterised by innovative mark-making and distinctive use of line. Examples range from radical watercolours by Cezanne and highly expressive finger drawings in ink by Louis Soutter, to abstract compositions made by Henri Michaux whilst experimenting with Mescalin to explore the subconscious, and on to works by Twombly that further broadened the possibilities of draughtsmanship. The 25 drawings of the Karshan gift will be shown at The Courtauld Gallery when it reopens in late 2021, following a major transformation project. This catalogue will include an interview with Linda Karshan, two essays and a fully illustrated catalogue with detailed entries on each work.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "La Loge" (The Theatre Box), 1874, is one of the masterpieces of Impressionism and a major highlight of The Courtauld Gallery's collection. Its depiction of an elegant couple on display in a loge, or box at the theatre, epitomises the Impressionists' interest in the spectacle of modern life. At the heart of the painting is the complex play of gazes enacted by these two figures seated in a theatre box. In turning away from the performance, Renoir focused instead upon the theatre as a social stage where status and relationships were on public display.This book accompanies an exhibition in celebration of The Courtauld Institute of Art's 75th anniversary which unites "La Loge" for the first time with Renoir's other treatments of the subject and with loge paintings by contemporaries, including Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas. Concentrating on the early years of Impressionism during the 1870s, the book explores how these artists used the loge to capture the excitement and changing nature of fashionable Parisian society. Lavishly produced contemporary journals such as "La Mode Illustree" included fine hand-coloured engravings showing the latest fashions modelled by elegant ladies in theatre boxes. A rich selection of this little-known graphic material from contemporary Parisian journals, as well as caricatures from the popular press, will also be examined.