141 Products

The world of fantasy artists Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell is one of muscle-bound heroes, beautiful - and also muscle-bound - women, dragons and monsters in other-worldly and often violent landscapes. In this volume the two artists present 145 reproductions of recent, previously unpublished images, and chapters telling their own stories and discussing elements of their art. With the book, inside the back cover, there is a set of ten limited edition art prints.

St Ives, now a centre for modern British art, was one of many coastal art colonies established in small rural communities around the country in the late 19th century. Often linked by friendships made while studying, the artists offered mutual support ranging from shared studio space to marriage. With more than 100 reproductions and archive photographs, this collective study looks at eight such communities: Newlyn, Lamorna, St Ives, Walberswick, Staithes, Cullercoats, Cockburnspath and Kirkcudbright.

In 1883, Claude Monet sailed his studio boat down the Seine and came upon a farmhouse in the tiny hamlet of Giverny. It was here that he would spend the rest of his life, creating the gardens and lily ponds that inspired his best-known works. Richly illustrated with many of his paintings, this magnificent book explores his life and art, his subtle mastery of light, and the creation of the Grandes Decorations that now hang in the Orangerie in Paris.

While Paris’s work fits the category of Art Deco, it lacks the graceful elegance of his contemporaries, its distinctive style often ghoulish and grotesque, depicting clowns, jesters, devils and temptresses. In this volume, the story of artist’s life is illustrated with photographs and his own sketches. The plates that follow reveal a vast range of work, from comical porcelain dogs to a woodcut self-portrait, and bronze and ivory decorated lamps, statuettes and spinning tops.

This study of the Genoese artist Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664) is the result of a collaboration between the Denver Art Museum and the Royal Collection, with its unrivalled holdings of Castiglione’s works in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. Reproducing over 90 paintings and dry-brush drawings and illustrating a further 30 details, the catalogue offers a new appraisal of the artist’s works, his life and volatile personality, and his position within 17th-century art.

‘Thomas Gainsborough lived as if electricity shot through his sinews and crackled at his finger ends.’ A gentle, empathetic family man, he also had a volatile streak that could lead him to slash his paintings, and a loose way of talking that shocked society. This biography reveals how an easygoing Suffolk lad was propelled to the highest echelons of Georgian Bath and London by his vast natural talent, and explores the contradictions of this complex and charismatic painter.

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) earned his living and his fame through portraiture, but enjoyed and valued painting landscape above the ‘curs’d face business’. Published to accompany the first exhibition devoted solely to his landscape paintings and drawings, and illustrated with 35 finished works and 23 drawings and variations, this volume reveals the themes to which Gainsborough returned again and again, among them the ‘modesty of nature’, ‘quietness and ease’ and evening light.

Jules George travelled to Helmand as a war artist in 2010, in the wake of its bloodiest year for British troops. This book reproduces his sketches, watercolours and oil paintings, along with the work of four other artists who documented that conflict. Against the vast beauty of the Afghan landscape, they capture the experience of soldiers on patrol or caught in a firefight. Each artist’s work is accompanied by his or her first-hand account of war in Afghanistan.

From James Hardy senior (1801–1879), who painted portrait miniatures in the 1820s, the traditions and skills of painting were handed down through generations of the Hardy family, whose members included some of the leading genre and animal painters of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Drawing on a collection of unpublished letters, documents and photographs inherited from the artists’ descendants, Kimber Hardy presents the first comprehensive assessment of their work.

This book accompanied an exhibition at the Museo Nacional del Prado which aimed to present the newly cleaned and restored masterpiece by the Bolognese painter Annibale Carracci (1560–1609) and set the painting in its artistic context. Two further, richly illustrated essays describe the conservation of the work and analyse the way in which Carracci’s painting – his ‘image of beauty’ – is constructed.

During the years 1746–1755, Canaletto (1697–1768) was working in Britain, painting urban views which often celebrated the latest achievements in architecture and engineering. This book, like the exhibition that it accompanied, discusses 60 works as it sets Canaletto’s British paintings in the broad context of the country’s growing assurance and prosperity. The four essays also discuss the work of Hogarth and contemporary British artists, and another manifestation of the nation’s confidence, the cult of King Alfred.

Geordie painter John Coatsworth stumbled across his signature style in 1997 when he made a sketch of St James's Park stadium, bending the shapes and perspective to create vibrancy, rhythm and flow. His subsequent vibrantly coloured 'curvation' paintings quickly gained local commissions and an army of fans through cards and prints. This retrospective collection includes early works in different styles as well as his popular paintings of Newcastle and the North East.

Why did Rajastani court artists make the formal choices that characterize their tradition? In this series of in-depth studies, each illustrated with numerous reproductions of rare paintings, Aitken shows how traditional formal devices served as vital components of narrative meaning, expressions of social unity and sources of intellectual play; and she explores the relevance of Rajput court painting to contemporary art.

Analysing the lives and work of four artists in 15th-century Italy – Alessandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino and Filippino Lippi – Michelle O’Malley explores the impact of economics on Renaissance art. She looks at how the growing demand for art exerted pressure on these sought-after painters who all produced high volumes of work; how they maintained quality; and how judgements made under economic pressures can be traced in specific paintings.

Created for a Picard nobleman in the 1470s, the Carpentin Hours is remarkable for its illustrations by one of the most innovative illuminators working in Bruges. The manuscript is relatively unknown, as it has always been in private hands, but this study now offers not only a detailed assessment of its contents, purpose and provenance, but also colour reproductions of its full-page miniatures, historiated initials and boldly coloured borders, which demonstrate the ingenuity and virtuosity of their artist.

Inspired by the recent identification of a third autograph version of Thomas Gainsborough’s late masterpiece The Cottage Door in the Huntington Art Collections in San Marino, California, this book examines the multiple versions of designs that the artist produced in the 1780s. It demonstrates how, without the pressure of exhibiting annually or finishing commissioned portraits, Gainsborough’s work became more personal and more thoughtful.

Designated a National Park in 2005, the New Forest contains some of the last remaining tracts of lowland heath in western Europe, as well as ancient forest and coastal land, and a host of rare flora and fauna is associated with each environment. This celebration of the area is the collected work of six local artists exploring the varied landscapes, the nature and wildlife and some of the human activity that is also part of the life of the forest.

Not only can one find the greatest variety of bird species in Norfolk as well as view spectacular mass migrations, but it is also one of the best spots to find rare birds and infrequent visitors to Britain. This celebration of the county’s avian scene offers research and statistics about the different types of habitats and the resident and visiting bird populations of each, together with almost 200 atmospheric watercolour illustrations by James McCallum.

Artist David Miller's fascination with fish led him to take up snorkelling and diving to study them in their natural environment. This collection of his paintings ranges from underwater scenes of pike and trout to mullet and bass in coastal waters.

Since ancient times, Oriental cultures have viewed lovemaking as one of the highest forms of spiritual and artistic expression. Great artists illustrated exquisite erotic manuals known as pillow-books to instruct newlyweds in the art of love. This book reproduces 65 of the finest of these paintings, with an introduction, explanatory commentary and translations from authentic Tantric writings. Sexually explicit.

When the artists Richard Chopping and Denis Wirth-Miller died, their friend Jon Lys Turner inherited a vast archive of letters and diaries. These writings reveal a remarkable tale of talent and transgression, of a group of largely gay young men who pushed boundaries in their art and their relationships against a backdrop of wild nights in Fitzrovia; of artistic fame and week-long parties at their cottage in Wivenhoe, Essex; and, towering over it all, the brilliant, disturbing figure of Francis Bacon.

After training in his father’s studio and with Perugino in Urbino, Raphaello Santi (1483–1520), known as Raphael, became spectacularly successful, with commissions from Popes and great European art patrons, and his appointment as chief architect of St Peter’s in Rome. Reproducing over 140 studies, portraits, paintings and frescos, this detailed study traces Raphael’s career, examining some of the most celebrated works of the Italian Renaissance.

Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, or Fra Angelico (c.1395–1455), was a Dominican friar who remained pious and true to his order despite his fame as a painter and the patronage of Popes. Gabrielle Bartz presents a detailed and lavishly illustrated commentary on his work as it evolved from the innovations of the early Renaissance, to late projects such as the Cappella Nicolina frescos in the Vatican.

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) was the first artist north of the Alps to engage with the ideas of the Italian Renaissance and gain acceptance for innovations such as naturalism and self-portraiture in his work. Illustrated with 138 reproductions of his paintings, drawings and prints, this is a detailed study of arguably the most important artist of the Northern Renaissance.

Eberhard König begins this study of the life and art of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) by examining the paintings, particularly the Borghese David and Goliath, that may or may not include self-portraits. The book goes on to trace the career of an artist ‘who flouts all the conventions of his age’ and presents 116 reproductions and details of his paintings.

From early drawings, such as Big Fish Eats Little Fish, to the last works, including the portrait of The Old Peasant Woman, Vöhringer presents a detailed study of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c.1525/30–1569), examining the visual language of the paintings, whose other-worldly subjects are presented within the landscape of the Flemish peasant. Illustrated with 141 reproductions.

Steven Heffer is a distinctively British artist, and though many of his boldly geometrical compositions hover on the brink of abstraction, they are suffused by the landscapes he loves: the Thames Estuary, and the cliffs and downs of Sussex. This first monograph on his work spans more than 20 years, and reproduces more than 100 paintings, including landscapes, architecture, abstracts, nudes and still lifes, while the art historian Edward Lucie-Smith assesses Heffer’s place in the continuing story of British painting.

Although Sarah Raphael was only 40 when she died in 2001, she had, in the words of William Packer, ‘reached long ago that mature confidence of herself as an artist to trust the work itself to take her wherever it wished to go’. This volume surveys her life and work, from early portraits to the abstract Strip series of the late 1990s and the Childhood Cube, commissioned for the Millennium Dome. With a foreword by the artist’s father, Frederic Raphael.

This is the first biography of Sir Robin Darwin (great-grandson of Charles), a painter best remembered for his time at the Royal College of Art, where he was rector for 30 years. Includes 100 archive photographs and 80 colour reproductions.

As a figurative artist, Graham Dean (b.1951) regards the body as ‘a holding pen for the emotions’ and aims to communicate his subjects’ inner life through his large-scale and very distinctive watercolours. James Attlee draws on conversations with the artist to provide a full, yet succinct introduction to Dean’s life and work, accompanying over 150 reproductions that follow his artistic career from realist, post-Pop acrylic paintings to the life-size watercolour depictions of the human body.

Michael Kerrigan’s concise, illustrated biography introduces the life of Paul Nash (1889–1946) and traces his artistic development through the earlier artists who inspired him and the landscapes and experiences that informed his art, particularly the devastation of the Western Front, which he witnessed as both soldier and war artist during the First World War. The essay accompanies around 90 full-page reproductions of Nash’s paintings, lithographs and engravings, in sections on war, landscape and abstracts and still life.

From the 1880s to around 1914, a group of young painters based in Glasgow challenged the traditional art of the Scottish Academy, favouring instead the naturalistic ideas of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, and en plein-air painting. The realism and freedom of their portraits, informal scenes and landscapes was to revolutionize Scottish art. This book introduces the Glasgow Boys – among them James Guthrie, John Lavery, Arthur Melville, George Henry and David Gauld – and presents over 85 reproductions of their work.

The popular ideal of the 'inspired' artist - beautiful, brooding and damned - owes its origins to the poets, writers and artists of the Romantic period. In this volume from the National Portrait Gallery's Insight series, Richard Holmes explores the portraits and the lives of the Romantics in a series of more than 28 subtly interwoven biographies, ranging from William Blake to JMW Turner, and including Byron, Shelley, Keats and the circle that formed around Coleridge and Wordsworth.

Rembrandt is renowned as a painter, but also excelled as a printmaker. This volume demonstrates how he used the medium not only to reproduce his paintings for a wider audience, but to create original works of art that pushed engraving to its limits. Drawing on the superb collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, it groups some 130 works by Rembrandt, his predecessors and followers in chapters focusing on portraiture, daily life, landscape, mythology and religion.

Best known for his atmospheric railway scenes, Malcolm Root has earned a reputation for meticulous attention to period and engineering detail in his nostalgic paintings. This collection of his work encompasses all forms of British transport in realistic historic settings from an Edwardian tram and an Empire flying boat in the 1930s to a Dodge fire engine going out on call in the 1950s and a Massey Ferguson tractor working the fields in the 1960s.

In this third collection of his meticulously detailed paintings, Malcolm Root presents a chronological pageant of transport, tracing the development of travel by land, sea and air over the last century or so. Each painting sets the vehicles within an evocative, often nostalgic scene – such as the AEC lorry and Royal Navy airship at an airfield in 1919, or steam traction engines towing a locomotive through Glasgow in the 1950s – all accompanied by Tom Tyler’s informative narrative.

Creating beautiful portraits requires a variety of skills, from planning the composition to perfecting the details of hair and facial features. This handbook offers valuable and reliable advice, including how to choose a background, how to work out a pose, and methods of ensuring a good likeness.

Misunderstood by his peers but hailed by later generations as the father of modern art, Cézanne has long fascinated artists and art lovers, writers, poets and philosophers. This new annotated translation of his letters provides fresh insight into his views on art, politics, literature and friendship. Illustrated with more than 70 images, this book enriches our knowledge of the artist and the man, who emerges as wittier, wiser, more irascible, more philosophical, and above all, more fully human.

Beryl Bainbridge is celebrated as one of the finest novelists of recent years, but few know of her lifelong passion for drawing and painting. Psiche Hughes, a close friend from 1963 until the writer’s death in 1990, charts her Liverpool childhood, struggles to become a writer, family life and literary success. Generously illustrated with photographs, book jackets and Beryl’s own art, this biography explores her exuberant and sometimes macabre creativity both on canvas and on the page.