Born in a Salvation Army Home for unmarried mothers, James Reeve was sent to the misery of Rugby School, won a scholarship to Oxford, quicky moved to Florence and then Madrid where he studied art and the dissection of corpses, joined an enclosed religious order, but after a diet of water and lentils he rejoined the world to begin in earnest to paint. From a slum house in London he set forth to work in 'then' remote places - Uganda, Jordan, the Australian Outback, Haiti, Madagascar, Rajasthan, the Yemen and at last he found his proper home in Mexico - first in a house he built in a cloud forest, and then when tourists discovered the place, a tenement in the old centre of Mexico City. Encoraged by authors Rachel Billington, Selina Hastings, Alexander Waugh, Antonia Fraser and Tom Roberts, James Reeve has at last put his talents together in a series of chapters recalling travels, anecdotes and encounters which he has illustrated with his vividly colourful vignettes. Always travelling with the purpose of work, in Italy he meets Harold Acton, in the Outback he draws among other things dumps and decrepit dwellings, and here too is Madam Tongere catching a Wichetty grub. He meets Princess Elizabeth of Toro in Uganda and is captured by pygmies in the Congo forest. He paints the fearsome Mrs Gilbert Miller's portrait in Palm Beach and travels in Rajasthan with Diana Wordsworth, a last relic of the Raj. Living in Mexico for 35 years, among his friends are Doña Olive, the retired prostitute, and the Dominican nuns of an enclosed order who let him in to teach them how to make marmalade. Approximately 100 colour illustrations throughout these 314 beautifully designed large pages.

Sexy, sensual and otherworldly, Fantasy art is that colourful blend of myth, muscle and sexy maidens. It took off in 1923 with the launch of Weird Tales magazine, was reinvigorated in the 1960s with The Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian paperbacks with Frank Frazetta covers, and the late ?60s emergence of fantasy psychedelia, went big in the ?70s with the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the brilliant French magazine Métal Hurlant, and the first Star Wars film. Frank Frazetta?s oil paintings, when they infrequently come to market, have sold for more than $ 5 million in recent years. Fans line up at Comic-Cons to meet Boris Vallejo, Rodney Matthews, Greg Hildebrandt, Michael Whelan, and Philippe Druillet, and memorialize dead icons HR Giger, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, and Frazetta. Vallejo describes his fantasy life; Julie Bell The Visionary; space architect Druillet; the biomechanic Giger; the Brothers Hildebrandt, masters of light; Mcebius the psychedelic surrealist; Rowena Morrill the pioneer; Sanjulian the classicist; and Michael Whelan the realist. This heavyweight colour book features original paintings, contextualized by preparatory sketches, sculptures, calendars, magazines, and paperback books, insightful bios give an accurate and eye-opening look into the life and motivation and inspiration of each artist in this fanciful and dynamic genre. 15.6 x 21.7 cm, 512 pages. You can smell the colour!

Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies, our review copy is an early number 2313. This magnificent set presents a valuable piece of botanical literature. In line with Dr Besler's original intentions, this facsimile unfurls the garden to a wider audience and captures it for posterity. The large beautifully decorated Latin text has unusual typesetting of the period and a clear layout. Antique-look paper stock has been use, and colour plates gleam at the highest quality. The entire plant from flower tip of a crocus to bulb and roots are depicted by an artist in page after pages of thousands of examples. When Prince-Bishop Johann Konrad von Gemmingen (1593/95-1612) undertook a radical renovation of the Willibaldsburg Castle, overlooking the Altmühl River in Eichstätt, Bavaria, he also created a surrounding palatial pleasure garden of magnificence and grandeur. To preserve the garden for future generations and provide an 'evergreen' record of its contents, compiling plants from all four seasons and presenting them in that order, he commissioned the garden's director, Nuremberg apothecary Basilius Besler (1561-1629), and a team of engravers to immortalise its treasures in print. The resulting Hortus Eystettensis, published in Nuremberg in 1613 and containing 367 hand-coloured plates and detailed descriptions, was a work of meticulous execution and spectacular diversity, and remarkably expensive for its time. As the garden contained a variety of plants imported from exotic locales, the three volumes exhibited a remarkable range, covering a total of 90 families and 340 genera. The book is seen as a milestone in the art of botanical illustration and described by Carl Linnaeus as an "incomparable work". Besler's catalogue long outlived the gardens, which were destroyed in 1634 by invading Swedish troops during the Thirty Years' War. However, a lengthy redevelopment project at the historic site has culminated in the opening of the modern Bastion Garden in 1998, containing many of the plants shown in the Hortus Eystettensis. Offering high-quality reproductions of these arresting illustrations, based on the copy of the Hortus Eystettensis at the University Library of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, this facsimile edition is accompanied by detailed plate descriptions of each plant's botanical, pharmaceutical, and symbolic significance and an appendix of further essays which place the garden and the book in their historical contexts. Famous First Edition: First printing of 7,500 numbered copies. Hardbacks in golden cloth binding, UK delivery only, three volumes in matching golden slipcase with colour front cover illus of glorious tulips, satin pagemarkers. 24.3 x 30.4cm, 6.54 kg, 1096 pages, text in English, French and German. Brand new from Taschen.

A large children's Flat with artist Ruth Brown's own brilliantly imagined masterpieces in this playful exploration of the artistic styles of famous painters through the years. Tom wandered into a side room while visiting an art gallery with his granny and discovered a cat emerging from a Jackson, an exotic Persian cross sleek black cat with bejewelled collar slipping into a Gustav Klimt painting, a cat emerging from the brightly coloured squares of a Mondrian, a Frida Spanish wildcat cross, a René Chartreux gently dreaming, a ginger feral cat with one ear chewed away sitting on Van Gogh's famous yellow chair, a Japanese bobtail riding Hokusai's waves, Henri Munchkin in a Parisian alley with a windmill in the background, and Edvard the Norwegian Forest cat in The Scream is quite hilarious. Persian kittens, an English tabby, the gallery by the end will be full of cat characters you will not want to leave. Amazing illustrations, one for every cat lover of any age. 32 pages, 24.7 x 27.7cm.

A William O'Connor painting of a mountain city with steep staircase, a Vincent Prace artwork of a city scene with dinosaurs being ridden by humans in Arab style costume, a cloudy cityscape with a chained monster head, a seaside village scene with fruit seller, shops and a knight on a horse which could be from a children's book, a huge dragon monster being slayed, a futuristic stylised castle on a rocky cliffside, a Zoltan Boros fantasy image of a street fight with medieval weapons, warriors riding griffin-like birds over a city scene, a shaded smoky forest, a tumbling city being attacked, a futuristic seaport - here are 12 rather random Dungeons & Dragons smoky subtle images and different city scenes from across the Forgotten Realms. 8" x 10" removable from the book on sturdy card.

The Kisokaido route through Japan was ordained in the early 1600s by the country's then-ruler Tokugawa Ieyasu, who decreed that staging posts be installed along the length of the arduous passage between Edo (present-day Tokyo) and Kyoto. Inns, shops, and restaurants were established to provide sustenance and lodging to weary travellers. In 1835, renowned woodblock print artist Keisai Eisen was commissioned to create a series of works to chart the Kisokaido journey. After producing 24 prints, Eisen was replaced by Utagawa Hiroshige, who completed the series of 70 prints in 1838. Both Eisen and Hiroshige were master print practitioners. In The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaido, we find the artists' distinct styles as much as their shared expertise. From the busy starting post of Nihonbashi to the castle town of Iwamurata, Eisen opts for a more muted palette but excels in figures, particularly of glamorous women, and relishes snapshots of activity along the route, from shoeing a horse to winnowing rice. Hiroshige demonstrates his mastery of landscape with grandiose and evocative scenes, whether it's the peaceful banks of the Ota River, the forbidding Wada Pass, or a moonlit ascent between Yawata and Mochizuki. Taken as a whole, The Sixty-Nine Stations collection represents not only a masterpiece of woodblock practice, including bold compositions and an experimental use of colour, but also a charming tapestry of 19th century Japan, long before the spectre of industrialization. This volume is sourced from one of the finest surviving first editions and revives the series in our compact anniversary edition. Text in English, French and German. Colour, 15.6 x 21.7cm, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

Publishers Taschen have chosen to combine reproductions of Redouté's masterpieces of botanical painting with a text by two devoted experts. French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté is often viewed as one of the last and the best of these painters and engravers. Commissioned by among others, Napoleon's Josephine, Redouté studied with the finest flower painters in France and Amsterdam. His illustrations of the botanical alphabets of D. M. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting for their accuracy and beauty. He was also an innovator in the techniques of printing, introducing "stipple-engraving" to France. The revered tradition of botanical illustration dates back to the Renaissance. It emerged from the desire to catalogue nature in its unpredictable splendour, and the process demanded the most precise and talented of artists. Working from live plants rather than from the herbarium specimens gave Redoute's watercolours unusual subtlety and freshness. His impressive collection comprises over 2,000 paintings of plants rendered with great accuracy and strict adherence to nature. In this exquisite edition of Les Roses, Redouté turns his attention to the most romantic, desirable, and evocative flower. Originally published in three volumes between 1817 and 1824, it remains his most famous and celebrated work. 14 x 19.5 cm, 192 pages. Colour, new from Taschen.

The cobalt blue pendant-vaulted ceiling with golden lettering and decoration at Hampton Court Palace has been restored and is exactly what Henry VIII would have seen. Angels Costumes has eight miles of hanging rails and is an 'unparalleled dressing up box' housing more than a million costumes and accessories, military uniforms, medals, insignia and outfits for actors. The Daily Express building in Fleet Street has a stunning Art Deco lobby. Television Centre White City has a statue of the sun god Helios outside its curved exterior. The Royal Hospital Chelsea, Old Royal Naval College, the Honourable Artillery Company, Old Bailey, 10 Downing Street, Big Ben, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the disused Aldwych Underground Station, BT Tower, the Thames Barrier, Battersea Power Station, Mansion House, the Bank of England, Repton Boxing Club, Lord's Cricket Ground, St Sophia's Greek Orthodox Cathedral, New West End Synagogue, King Henry VIII's Wine Cellar to Tower Bridge, we embark on a thrilling tour of the hidden interiors of some of London's most iconic buildings. Celebrated photographer Peter Dazeley takes us deep into the boiler room of the city's infrastructure, into the changing rooms of our greatest temples of sport, into the heart of the Establishment, and behind the scenes at the most opulent buildings, livery companies and halls in the Square Mile. Some buildings are derelict, many still working and all of these extraordinary buildings are accompanied by the story of how each of these places was created, how they are used, and what they reveal about the currents of power flowing through the city. These are doors which may be otherwise closed to us in a magnificent volume, revised and updated in 2017 to include the royal palaces of Hampton Court, the Tower of London and Inigo Jones's Banqueting Hall at the Palace of Whitehall, the Royal Courts of Justice Supreme Court and Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Blazing in colour, a superb heavyweight 272 page publication, 24.8 x 31cm.
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Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is something of an American success story, if only his success had come swifter. At the age of 40, he was a failing artist who struggled to sell a single painting. As he approached 80, Time magazine featured him on its cover. Today, Hopper is considered a giant of modern expression, with an uncanny, unforgettable, and utterly distinct sense for mood and place. Much of Hopper's work excavates modern city experience. In canvas after canvas, he depicts diners, cafes, shopfronts, street lights, gas stations, rail stations, and hotel rooms. Compartment Car sees a lone woman reading, lonely guest houses and barns, House by the Railroad, a circus clown dining, and the famous Night Windows with a stooping semi naked women in the lit interior of a room begging the question of what she has been up to. Naked A Woman in the Sun smokes and stares out of a window and the famous Nighthawks is given a huge double colour page spread. The scenes are marked by vivid colour juxtapositions and stark, theatrical lighting, as well as by harshly contoured figures, who appear at once part of, and alien to, their surroundings. The ambiance throughout his repertoire is of an eerie disquiet, alienation, loneliness and psychological tension, although his rural or coastal scenes can offer a counterpoint of tranquillity or optimism. This book presents major works from Hopper's oeuvre to introduce a key player in American art history and the American psyche. 21 x 26cm, 96 pages new from Taschen.

A beautiful woman in bra, jodhpurs and riding boots kneels on a luxurious bed wearing a saddle on her back; a naked Gianni Versace on a leopard skin chaise longue; Raquel Welch in a revealing white swimsuit with a black dog; Rene Russo dancing with a woman on a mountain top - Helmut Newton's unforgettable images, at once sophisticated and provocative, constitute a rich and ever-relevant artistic legacy. This book presents a compact but wide-ranging and impactful portfolio of his work, supported by an insightful introduction and a detailed biographical chronology and a unique perspective is effectively showcased, reflecting the complex undercurrents that give his images their distinct character across the breadth of his editorial work in the fields of fashion and portraiture. At once voyeur and satirist, his lens framed contentious yet pivotal aspects of high fashion and high society in the latter decades of the 20th century. He worked as a "gun for hire" while imposing his own perspectives and obsessions, defining most notably his idea of a powerful, self-assured woman. This figure became his most insistent theme, developed in erotically charged scenarios, most typically set in the seductive environment of opulent apartments or grand hotels, most notably in Paris, Monte Carlo, and Los Angeles. From the mid-60s, Newton's dynamic images established his reputation in leading magazines, among them Vogue Paris, Elle, Marie Claire, Nova, Queen, and British Vogue. From the mid-70s his notoriety was extended through his first books and exhibitions. His images immortalise such luminaries of society, film, and fashion as Princess Caroline of Monaco, Charlotte Rampling, Paloma Picasso and Karl Lagerfeld. 14 x 19.5cm, 192 pages. New from Taschen.