Despite the challenges of ill health and asylum life, Van Gogh continued to produce a series of masterpieces – cypresses, wheatfields, olive groves and sunsets during his time there. This fascinating and insightful work from Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey examines his time there, from the struggles that sent him to the asylum, to the brilliant creative inspiration that he found during his time here. He wrote very little about the asylum in letters to his brother Theo, so this book sets out to give an impression of daily life behind the walls of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes, with newly discovered material. An essential insight into the mind of a flawed genius , Starry Night is indispensable for those who wish to understand the life of one of the most talented and brilliant artists to have put paintbrush to canvas.

    In this new biography, Webster is seen as a major player in American politics in the era between the War of 1812 and the beginning of the Civil War, involved with every significant issue confronting the new nation. Webster had no equal as an orator, then or since. Whether in the Senate, before the Supreme Court, or on the political stump, he was a golden-tongued spellbinder, often holding audiences in thrall for hours. In his lifelong defense of the Constitution, and as a constant upholder of the Union, Webster won love and respect. He was often referred to as "the Godlike Daniel". But he was also referred to as "Black Dan" because of his questionable dealings with men of wealth and power, his political conniving, his habitual nonpayment of debts, and perhaps even his somewhat roving eye.

    From the moment of its discovery a battle for possession ensued and was won, eventually, by the French. Touted by her keepers in the Louvre as the great classical find of the era, the sculpture gained instant celebrity–and yet its origins had yet to be documented or verified.From the flurry of excitement surrounding her discovery, to the raging disputes over her authenticity, to the politics and personalities that have given rise to her mystique, Gregory Curtis has given us a riveting look at the embattled legacy of a beloved icon and a remarkable tribute to one of the world’s great works of art.

    The angels on our Christmas cards, the stained glass in our churches, the great paintings in our galleries - Edward Burne-Jones's work is all around us. The most admired British artist of his generation, he was a leading figure with Oscar Wilde in the aesthetic movement of the 1880s, inventing what became a widespread 'Burne-Jones look'. The bridge between Victorian and modern art, he influenced not just his immediate circle but artists such as Klimt and Picasso. In this gripping book Fiona MacCarthy explores and re-evaluates his art and life - his battle against vicious public hostility, the romantic susceptibility to female beauty that would inspire his art and ruin his marriage, his ill health and depressive sensibility, the devastating rift with his great friend and collaborator William Morris as their views on art and politics diverged. With new research and fresh historical perspective, The Last Pre-Raphaelite tells the extraordinary, dramatic story of Burne-Jones as an artist, a key figure in Victorian society and a peculiarly captivating man.

     Think that a day in the life of a London museum director is cold, quiet, and austere? Think again. Giles Waterfield brings a combination of intellectual comedy and knockabout farce to the subject in this story of one long day in a museum full of scandals, screw-upsŠand more than a few scalawags. At the beginning of The Hound in the Left-hand Corner, Auberon, the brilliant but troubled director of the Museum of British History, is preparing one midsummer's day for the opening of the most spectacular exhibition his museum has ever staged. The centerpiece is a painting of the intriguing Lady St. John strikingly attired as Puck, which hasn't been shown in London in a hundred years. As the day passes, the portrait arouses disquieting questions, jealousies, rivalries -- and more than a few strange affections -- in the minds of the museum staff. As guests and employees pour in, the tension rises -- and Auberon himself has the hilariously ridiculous task of keeping the peace, without losing his own sense of reality as well. For everyone who loves the farce of David Lodge and Michael Frayn, or even the Antiques Roadshow, the fast-paced, hilarious satire of The Hound in the Left-hand Corner is sure to delight and entertain.

    Thirty years after leaving Florence with a broken heart, Suzanne Cunningham is back, determined to solve the mystery of what happened to a priceless painting from her past-and to the man who forever changed the course of her life.

    The book contains pictures of their pyramids and palaces, jades and brightly coloured paintings. The author of this work provides fresh readings of Mesoamerican works of art while offering archaeological interpretations. Also included in the book are hieroglyphic decipherments which give insights into ancient works, confirming the connections between the Maya and their neighbours.

    He has left his greatest mark on Rome where Papal patronage provided him with enormous architectural commissions.TABLE OF CONTENTSBerniniList of PlatesList of Text FiguresForewordIntroduction1. The Prodigy2. Bernini in Command3. Disaster and Triumph4. Two Churches and St. Peter’s5. Le Cavalier en France6. The Late WorksBibliographical NoteNotes to the TextIndex

    17th century to the present. Book was reprinted in 2006

    Among his renowned portraits, "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" stands alongside "Madame X" and "Lady Agnew of Lochnaw" as one of Sargent's immortal images. This painting depicts four young sisters in the spacious foyer of the family's Paris apartment, strangely dispersed across the murky tones and depths of the square canvas, as though unrelated to one another, unsettled and unsettling to the eye. "The Daughters" both affirms and defies convention, flouting the boundaries between portrait and genre scene, formal composition and quick sketch or snapshot. Unveiled at the Paris Salon of 1883, it predated by just two years the scandal of "Madame X" and was itself characterized by one critic as "four corners and a void"; but Henry James came closer to the mark when he described the painter as a "knock-down insolence of talent," for few of Sargent's works embody the epithet as well as "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit." Drawing on numerous unpublished archival documents, scholar Erica E. Hirshler excavates all facets of this iconic canvas, discussing not only its significance as a work of art but also the figures and events involved in its making, its importance for Sargent's career, its place in the tradition of artistic patronage and the myriad factors that have contributed to its lasting popularity and relevance. The result is an aesthetic, philosophical and personal tour de force that will change the way you look at Sargent's work, and that both illuminates an iconic painting and reaffirms its pungent magnetism.

    A talented violinist as well as a painter, Klee drew much of the inspiration for his abstract art from musical rhythms and structure. Like a composer, he developed and harmonized pictorial themes, weaving a complex series of signs and symbols into his painting. Art historian Hajo Duchting focuses his study primarily on Klee's decade-long tenure at the Bauhaus, where the artist's theories and practice first merged, and where he was to develop his Color Spectrum, Square and Polyphone painting series. Illustrated throughout with full-color reproductions of Klee's paintings and etchings, as well as entries from his diaries, this unique study sheds light on an important aspect of Klee's work while providing insights into his development as an abstract artist.

    Married at 19 to John Ruskin, she found herself trapped in an unconsummated union. She would fall in love with her husband’s protégé, John Everett Millais, and inspire some of his most memorable art, but controversy and tragedy continued to stalk her.Suzanne Fagence Cooper has gained exclusive access to Effie’s family letters and diaries to show the rise and fall of the Pre-Raphaelite circle from a new perspective, through the eyes of a woman whose charm and ambition helped to shape the careers of both her husbands. Effie Gray is a compelling portrait of the extraordinary woman behind some of the greatest paintings of the Victorian era.

    Art

    The grandness of that history no longer fit into the framework of the present, and artists felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of past heroic accomplishment. This was soon reflected in artistic representation, from Fuseli on. The partial image, the "crop," fragmentation, ruin, and mutilationall expressed grief and nostalgia for the loss of a vanished totality, a utopian wholeness. Often such feelings were expressed in deliberate destructiveness, which became the new way of seeing: the notion of the modern. In The Body in Pieces, the noted critic and art historian Linda Nochlin traces these developments by looking at work produced by artists from Neoclassicism and Romanticism to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Surrealism, and beyond. 59 illustrations.

    Two photo inserts.