An illustrated exploration of the largely unpublished collection of eighteenth-century French drawings, albums, and sketchbooks at the Bibliotheque nationale de France Promenades on Paper explores the largely unmined collection of eighteenth-century drawings held in the Department of Prints and Photography of the Bibliotheque nationale de France. Among the 50 featured artists are some of France's most celebrated eighteenth-century practitioners, including Madeleine Basseporte (1701-1780), Francois Boucher (1703-1770), Gabriel de Saint Aubin (1724-1780), and Jean-Honore Fragonard (1732-1806), alongside architects, designers, and printmakers. Scattered across the institution's vast reserves, these drawings have until now served primarily documentary purposes. In this book, leading international scholars introduce more than 80 drawings, albums, and sketchbooks-many published here for the first time-and reveal how artists used drawing to record, critique, and try to improve the world around them. Distributed for the Clark Art Institute Exhibition Schedule: Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA (December 17, 2022-March 12, 2023) Musee des Beaux-Arts de Tours (May 12-August 28, 2023)

A revelatory and wide-ranging exploration of Renoir's extraordinary depictions of the nude and their important artistic legacy Best known as part of the influential vanguard of Impressionist artists that experimented with new painting techniques in the late 19th century, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was deeply inspired by classical traditions and returned again and again to the canonical subject of the nude. Tracing the entire arc of Renoir's career, this volume examines the different approaches the artist employed in his various depictions of the subject-from his works that respond to Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, and Paul Cezanne, to his late, and still controversial, depictions of bathers that inspired the next generation of artists. Eminent scholars not only look at the different ways that Renoir used the nude as a means of personal expression but also analyze Renoir's art in terms of a modern feminist critique of the male gaze. Offering the first-ever comprehensive investigation of Renoir's nudes, this beautifully illustrated study includes approximately 50 works, including paintings, pastels, drawings, and sculptures. The book also features an interview with the contemporary figurative painter Lisa Yuskavage that considers Renoir's continuing influence and the historical significance of the female nude in art.

Sublime Beauty: Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn focuses on one of the artist's most beguiling and enigmatic paintings and the idendity of the mysterious blonde sitter who epitomized his female portraiture during his Florentine period. Two essays by leading specialists in Renaissance art, Linda Wolk-Simon and Mary Shay-Millea, explore the stylistic relationship between this masterpiece and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and the link to Petrarch's poetry and popular notions of beauty in Renaissance art. They examine attributions and the painting's distinct iconography, and why, in place of the usual lapdog, the woman holds a unicorn.

A beautiful volume that brings to light the forgotten Le Nain brothers, a trio of 17th-century French master painters who specialized in portraiture, religious subjects, and scenes of everyday peasant life In France in the 17th century, the brothers Antoine (c. 1598-1648), Louis (c. 1600/1605-1648), and Mathieu (1607-1677) Le Nain painted images of everyday life for which they became posthumously famous. They are celebrated for their depictions of middle-class leisure activities, and particularly for their representations of peasant families, who gaze out at the viewer. The uncompromising naturalism of these compositions, along with their oddly suspended action, imparts a sense of dignity to their subjects. Featuring more than sixty paintings highlighting the artists' full range of production, including altarpieces, private devotional paintings, portraits, and the poignant images of peasants for which the brothers are best known, this generously illustrated volume presents new research concerning the authorship, dating, and meaning of the works by well-known scholars in the field. Also groundbreaking are the results of a technical study of the paintings, which constitutes a major contribution to the scholarship on the Le Nain brothers. Published in association with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Exhibition Schedule: Kimbell Art Museum (05/22/16-09/11/16) de Young Museum, San Francisco (10/08/16-01/29/17) Musee du Louvre-Lens (03/22/2017-06/26/2017)