Sargent and Fashion explores the dynamic relationship of painting and dress — from portraits and performance, gender expression and the New Woman, to the pull of tradition and the excitement of new ideas. "The coat is the picture," John Singer Sargent exclaimed to his fellow artist Graham Robertson in the summer of 1894, tugging a heavy overcoat ever more tightly around his sitter's slender figure. Sought-after by sitters for his ability to present to the world flattering and engaging likenesses, Sargent was simultaneously pursuing his own artistic vision. Rather than holding up a mirror to contemporary fashion, Sargent made fashion a part of his artistic repertoire. He often chose what his sitters wore, pinned their garments, or draped fabric around them, all with a view to creating confections to be recorded on canvas through his unrivalled artistic gifts. With contributions from many of the leading thinkers on Sargent and his world, and lavish reproductions of major portraits and exquisite costumes of the period, this publication offers a vital new perspective on one of the most famous and fashionable artists of all time.

A mother stitches a few lines of prayer into a bedcover for her son serving in the Union army during the Civil War. A formerly enslaved African American woman creates a quilt populated by Biblical figures alongside celestial events. A quilted Lady Liberty, George Washington, and Abraham Lincoln mark the resignation of Richard Nixon. These are just a few of the diverse and sometimes hidden stories of the American experience told by quilts and bedcovers from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Spanning more than four hundred years, the fifty-eight works of textile art in this book express the personal narratives of their makers and owners and connect to broader stories of global trade, immigration, industry, marginalisation, and territorial and cultural expansion. Made by Americans of European, African, Native, and Hispanic heritage, these engaging works of art range from family heirlooms to acts of political protest, each with its own story to tell.

Quilts and Color presents more than sixty graphically bold American quilts from the Pilgrim/Roy Collection, one of the finest and largest collections of quilts in the world. These collectors recognized that quilt makers often grappled with the same concerns as many modern artists. Influenced by twentieth-century art developments such as Abstraction, Op Art and the Colour Field movement, Paul Pilgrim and Gerald Roy were among the first to appreciate quilts as more than simply decorative bedcovers, women's fancy work, or symbols of a rustic past. Reproduced brilliantly and arranged by ideas based in colour theory - Vibrations, Mixtures, Gradation Harmonies, Contrasts, Variations, Optical Illusions and Singular Visions - each quilt in this book is celebrated as a unique work of art. The accompanying text also sheds light on the social and cultural history of the quilts as well as the practices and aspirations of their mostly anonymous makers, who created such works of enduring beauty and arresting visual impact.