This magnificent book is a collaboration between The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The National Gallery London. It gives a detailed chronology of Cole's life, retracing his travels as documented in his journals, letters and sketchbooks and discussions of over 70 works demonstrating his major contribution to the history of Western art. You may not have heard of him and we certainly hadn't at Bibliophile, but on a recent buying trip with US suppliers we fell in love with the gentle colours and scenes of this talented landscape artist. This book is a major re-examination of the father of the Hudson River School in relation to his European roots and travels. Thomas Cole (1801-1848) is celebrated as the greatest American landscape artist of his generation. Previous scholarship has emphasised the American aspects of his identity, and never before has the British-born artist been presented as an international figure. This special large monograph emphasises his travels in England and Italy 1829 to 1832 and his crucial interactions with such painters as Turner and Constable. The tome explores his renowned paintings The Oxbow (1836) and The Course of Empire cycle (1834-36) together with magnificent oils on canvas like Titan's Goblet of 1833, View of Florence from San Miniato 1837, his chalk drawings from the Acropolis in Athens and closer to his home a distant view of Niagara Falls with a moody sky and tranquil waters and two figures on a ravine which appear to be Native American Indians. Another mountain landscape is his scene from The Last of the Mohicans novel which the artist painted. As a teenager in Chorley, Lancashire, Cole worked as an engraver on the woodblocks used to apply patterns to calico, which explains his appreciation of colour. Technical comparisons are made throughout with paint samples mounted in cross sections from the Oxbow and the Consummation of Empire magnified, a look at paint techniques and materials, the influence of industrial England where Cole was born (near Manchester), and the influence of Turner is made in comparison throughout the book, complete with gorgeous colour images. Combining Cole's passion for the American wilderness and his horror of the industrial revolution in Britain, this led him to create works that offer a distinctive even dissident response to the economic and political rise of the United States, and the ecological changes then underway. 254 colour illustrations. 288 huge pages, 24.9 x 28.2cm.

Vincent Van Gogh was a revolutionary artist who changed the nature of draughtsmanship so thoroughly, brightened the palette for serious painting and infused his art with so much personal character, it was hard for his contemporaries to see the merits of his work. When he died at the age of 37 in 1890 he was not completely unrecognised, but it wasn't until the end of 1888 when his younger brother Theo entered three of his paintings in an Avant-Garde exhibition that a few major artists and writers began to give Van Gogh's work a serious look. In all the major cities he lived - The Hague, Amsterdam, Brussels, Antwerp, London and Paris - Van Gogh applied his keen eye and devilish intellect to all the art he could find. He frequented museums and declared 'It is good to love as much as one can' as he embraced life, especially art and literature, with passion. He studied Gustave Doré's work intensely, and tenderly called Millet 'Father Millet', and was devoted to the Old Masters and their influence on his work would always be profound. The works selected for this magnificent volume provide an opportunity to see the artists who were the predominant painters of the era, some famous some still not, and why they gave the world Van Gogh inhabited so much pleasure. There are several works by Jean-Francois Raffaëlli who shared Van Gogh's sensibility for the subject of the downtrodden and influenced for example Van Gogh's portrait 'Woman Rocking a Cradle', an image so important to him that he made five versions of it, focussing our attention on the working-class woman's rough hands just as Raffaëlli did. A painting by Jozef Israëls of a peasant family at a dinner table inspired Van Gogh's most famous early work 'The Potato Eaters'. Just as Rembrandt painted himself almost a hundred times, Van Gogh made more than 30 self portraits over a much shorter span of time. We watch Van Gogh experimenting with loose brushwork and bright colours as used by Manet, studying the pointillist dots used by Seurat and appreciating the work of Monet, Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec, all positioned here side by side with images and for detailed comparison in the text by this bestselling author. With chapters arranged from Religion, Romanticism, The Barbizon School, English Art and The Graphic, Japanese Prints, The Female Sitter, Still Life, Impressionism, The Sea and more. An afterword on his legacy by Ann Dumas. Glossy white pages, hundreds of full page colour images. Tiny remainder mark. A magnificent tome of 409pp, 22.33 x 26cm.
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The Starry Night, Vincent's Bedroom with the yellow coverlet, 14 Sunflowers in a Vase, The Church at Auvers-sur-Oise, Garden with Flowers in that unmistakeable pointillism style with greenish sky and yellowed grasses and flowers are the five designs. There are four of each totalling 20 blank quality notecards for all occasions and 20 white envelopes. Colourful box.

One of Jane Austen's most charming youthful 'novels' in miniature, presented in a deluxe illustrated edition with Leon Steinmetz's gorgeous black and dark red illustrations. Most people think Jane Austen wrote only six novels, though very short ones, while still a young girl. She was only 12 or 13 when she wrote The Beautifull Cassandra, an irreverent and humorous little masterpiece. Weighing in at 465 occasionally misspelled words, it is a complete and perfect novel-in-miniature, made up of a dedication to her older sister Cassandra and 12 chapters, each consisting of a sentence or two. Narrating the slightly criminal adventures of the 16 year old title character, the novel gives us Austen's most irrepressible heroine, who, after stealing a hat, leaves her mother's shop to flounce around London, eating ice cream (without paying), taking coach rides (without paying), and encountering handsome young ladies and gentlemen (without speaking) - all to return home hours later with whispered joy: 'This is a day well spent.' Austen fans will love the strong-willed Cassandra who can eat six ice creams and then refuse to pay for them! Special import from Princeton University Press, 72 page landscape softback, illus.
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Great Britain and Ireland are particularly well endowed with cathedrals and abbeys and it is estimated that there were almost 1,000 built during the Middle Ages. When Cromwell closed the majority of them during the dissolution of the monasteries, many were left in ruins, plundered or survived because their local communities adopted them as parish churches. The outstanding example is St Albans which begins this beautifully illustrated collection. We go to Bath Abbey, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Chester, Chichester, Coventry, St Davids, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glastonbury, Gloucester, Hereford, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Oxford, St Patrick's Dublin, St Paul's, Peterborough, Rochester, Salisbury, Southwark, Southwell Minster, Tewkesbury Abbey, Truro, Wells, Westminster Abbey, Winchester, Worcester to York Minster with a bolt of lightning and walls of glass and it rebellious Yorkshireman. Discover tales of an English pope, a martyred archbishop, secrets and troublesome spies, stained glass wonders and castle-cathedrals, famous memorials and spectacular architectural feats in a rich heritage and fascinating collection. 144 well illustrated pages.

Satin fabric floral textured luxury slipcase befitting this magnificent gallery of fabric design and its history in interiors and fashion. Explore centuries of timeless textiles from the Musée de l?Impression sur Étoffes. In the far east of France, close to the German and Swiss borders, lies the historic city of Mulhouse. During the early 19th century, it became one of the leading centres of textile manufacture in the country. Today it is home to the Musée de l?Impression sur Étoffes, a museum dedicated entirely to the history of fabric printing from the 17th century right up to the present day. Few are the serious fashion designers who have not come to visit this astonishing temple to textiles. This book, however, gives you the key to those vaults, presenting on its broad pages perfectly captured images of its collections that span four different continents - recounting a fascinating artistic and technological adventure across the world, from its origins in India to the most contemporary creations. Across two volumes, you?ll discover nine luxuriantly illustrated chapters that being to glorious life a chronological and thematic overview of the Musée?s unprecedented retrospective of the art of printed fabrics. And that journey begins in India, with the first volume devoted to the far east origins of the designs that made these prints famous, and how they came over to the factories of Europe. You?ll also find here stories and images detailing artistic innovations such as toile de Jouy and the development of new colour ranges. In the second volume, the reader can look back at the incredible inventiveness of manufacturers and their designers throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Explore eye-catching cashmere motifs and the intense passion for nature and flowers that emerged under the Second Empire, before the artistic avant-gardes and modernity profoundly evolved the artistic creation of textile prints. With nearly 900 pieces reproduced here to the highest possible standard, you will journey through the extraordinary tapestry of motifs and colours, that make this book such a peerless source of inspiration for textile enthusiasts of all kinds. Hardcover, two vols. in slipcase, 24.3 x 30.4 cm, 6.20 kg, 888 pages.

Ambitious engineering, brilliant colour from new forms of stained glass, murals and sculpture, the architects whose work is included here range from Basil Spence and Edward Maufe, designers of major cathedrals, to the radical Gillespie, Kidd and Coia whose brutalist seminary lies abandoned near Dumbarton. This superbly well produced Batsford publication has one or more colour photographs on every page together with architect, location, year completed, denomination and whether grade 1, 2 or A listed. Each church or chapel has been built in the UK since 1914, in a period in which concrete and steel gave a new freedom to construction while new ideas about congregations changed assumptions about traditional layouts, bringing celebrants and people closer together. The book provides biographies of major designers, articles on glass, fittings, and on the synagogues, mosques and temples that play an intrinsic part in worship in Britain today. Leading architectural historians give a fine brief description for each such as the 'massive brick piers supporting the ring beam, light spilling down a flared concrete funnel from a lantern into a regular space...as a result of divine laws of geometry, mechanics and proportion, timeless laws' about Abbey Church of Our Lady Help of Christians in Worth, Sussex. Clifton Cathedral in Bristol is a hexagonal space, superbly lit by roof lights and rising to the three-part thrusting spire, presumably symbolic of the Trinity. It was built in 1973 to a remarkably low budget of £600,000. Organised by date 1914-29, 1930-45, 1946-59, 1960-69 and 1970 and after and with special chapters on stained glass, art and artefacts. With useful glossary, 208pp, 19.6 x 25.5cm, packed with colour photos.
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SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR it is an enthralling journey around the Britain we have created since 1980. Wimpey homes, Millennium monuments, riverside flats, wind farms, spectacular skyscrapers, city centre apartments, out-of-town malls. Here are the horrors and delights, triumphs and failures from space age tower blocks to suburban business parks, and from postmodernist exuberance to Passivhaus eco-efficiency. Iconicon is at once a revelatory architectural grand tour, and an endlessly witty and engaging piece of social history. Encyclopaedic, funny and often cutting, Grindrod has written a love letter to contemporary buildings in his punchy polemic about our accidental urban landscape. Thrown together entirely for financial or political gain without any thought for aesthetic or social value, here are the visions of a few top architects, and a larger generation of young architects who wish to improve life for whole communities, not just the rich and powerful. It really makes us look at those big shiny funny shaped public buildings with a new eye and Grindrod's chirpy prose style is full of pop references as he chronicles the accelerating decline of the UK since 1980, the sprawl and the disaster of the Grenfell fire. The book is perfectly aimed at those in power. 486 big chunky pages, some illus. Signed by the Author and stickered.

A magnificent Thames & Hudson heavyweight quality 496 page softback packed with 273 colour illustrations, a personal selection of paintings admired from public collections during the course of Christopher Lloyd's career in art, here are highlights and unexpected treasures. If you find yourself in Hull, Cork or Dundee, what paintings should you go and look at? Many masterpieces are waiting for you, sometimes neglected, in our galleries and museums and here the distinguished broadcaster and critic Lloyd identifies over 265 masterpieces from the National Gallery to The Burrell Collection in Glasgow around England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Admire The Dice Players from 1650 at Preston Hall Museum Stockton-on-Tees, children using pebbles to play Knucklebones on the beach in Philip Wilson Steer's canvas found in Ipswich, masterpieces by Sir Alfred Munnings depicting his wife and horse and himself from 1935 in Dedham, Vuillard, Augustus John, Alma-Tadema, Titian all found at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the strikingly graphic The Butcher's Shop of 1583 by Carracci and a Virgin and Child and Three Angels from 1475, a Lady with Book and a Pissarro landscape, Holman Hunt all found at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Mother and Child by the Sea is a particularly atmospheric, dark and brooding image of a calm and peaceful night with the moon half hidden by clouds over the sea, the child pointing expectantly suggesting his father is onboard the sailing ship in the near distance. This is on page 267 and immediately before the colourful Jockeys Before the Race by Degas, both of which together with Gainsborough and the Travelling Companions by Egg, the Music Lesson and The Rest on the Flight to Egypt by Orazio Gentileschi all to be seen at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Page after page of well and lesser known masterpieces, beautifully curated with an unobtrusively erudite detailed text, a model of art-historical writing and a sustained pleasure to read. 496pp, 273 colour illus. 21 x 16cm, softback.

At the turn of the 20th century, the American photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis (1868-1952) started on his 30 year project to produce a monumental study of North American Indians. Using an approach that was both artistically and scientifically ambitious, he recorded, in words and pictures, the traces of the traditional Indian way of life that was already beginning to die out. With tireless personal commitment Curtis visited 80 American Indian tribes from the Mexican border to the Bering Strait in America and Canada, gaining their confidence through his patience and sensitivity. Tribes include the Apache, Navajo, Mohave, Atsina, Cheyenne, Klickitat, Nez Percés, Haida, Hopi, Yuki, Zuni, Sarsi and Comanche. Totem poles, squaws, cacti, teepees and famous chiefs like Spotted Bull and Little Sioux, Curtis photographed Indian faces, homes, agriculture, dress, warriors, cooking, hunting, clay making, fishing - every aspect of their nature, habitat and lifestyle. His work was printed in 20 volumes between 1907 and 1930 as The North American Indian, but with only 272 copies, originals became extremely rare. This book gathers Curtis' entire American Indian portfolio into one publication, offering renewed access to and appreciation of his extraordinary achievement, which is as much a precious historical document as a triumph of the photographic form. All in quality, atmospheric sepia. New from Taschen. 14 x 4.5 x 20.5 cm, 768 pages, pagemarker.