THE COMMONALITY OF HUMANS THROUGH ART: HOW ART CONNECTS MANKIND THROUGH THE AGES explores how art has linked different cultures over the past 30,000 years. Organized thematically rather than chronologically or geographically, it traces how all humans are connected from birth to death. Ten leading scholars offer essays on how the language of art has been used by cultures to explain human behavior. The book begins with a discussion of the brain and art, aesthetics and human cultures, and creation myths. With these important subjects as a foundation, it moves into explorations of lived experiences: motherhood and the family, the world around us, conflict and warfare, portraying ourselves and others, sickness and healing, religion and rituals, and death. Each chapter is illustrated by outstanding artworks showing the commonality between cultures as they expressed their lives to their own people and those who followed them. The essays are written to the lay reader so the book can be a beautiful showcase on a coffee-table, an important art reference book in a library, or an introductory textbook in archaeology, cultural anthropology, and art history classes.

Focusing on the British virtuoso Rex Whistler (1905–1944), who was linked to many of the most illustrious figures of the inter-war period, this book explores an exceptional case of artistic patronage in the twentieth century. In weaving together social and art history, this beautifully illustrated volume will be as much about the artist as it is about his patrons. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Salisbury Museum, which holds the Rex Whistler Archive. Whistler’s cast of patrons reads like the Who’s Who of his time: the art collector and poet Edward James, the avid diarist and socialite Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, Cecil Beaton, Duff and Diana Cooper, author and poet Lady Dorothy Wellesley and many others for whom Whistler worked on a diverse range of commissions, from murals, portraits and bookplates to architectural improvements and even book illustrations. The exchange with his patrons, the book argues, gave Whistler an opportunity to explore a rich variety of subjects, materials and techniques.The artworks discussed in the volume range from a recently re-discovered painting for Sir Malcolm Bullock, a substantial history painting unique in Whistler’s oeuvre, to the magnificent murals at Port Lympne and Trent Park designed for Sir Philip Sassoon, one of the greatest hosts of the age, to Plas Newydd, where Whistler created one of the largest private mural schemes in the inter-war period for the 6th Marquess and Marchioness of Anglesey. It culminates with Maud Russell’s mansion at Mottisfont, where in 1938–39 the artist was painting one of his fi nest works in trompe l’oeil as war loomed over Europe, the war in which Whistler gave his life for his country.Whistler’s commissioning circle were both diverse and privileged, with many embracing the sexual fluidity of the time, and the book deepens our understanding of how the elite were protected by their wealth and position from the strict societal mores of the 1920s and 30s. The artist understood the importance of creating beautiful private spaces for all his clients; but, for some, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, he was painting murals in houses that were acknowledged havens where sexual preferences could be expressed without fear of discrimination.Dr Nikki Frater, an expert on Whistler’s work, draws on extensive archival research and newly available material to present a fresh interpretation of the relationship between the artist and his milieu. Frater’s behind-the-scenes approach illuminates Whistler’s creative methods and techniques and includes many previously unseen drawings and sketches. The book speaks not only of his patrons, but also paints a nuanced portrait of his oeuvre and the artist himself, as he tried to combine his challenging career with a complicated romantic life. This is a timely re-examination, given the recent controversy surrounding his mural at the Tate Gallery Restaurant, and offers an opportunity to understand fully Whistler’s place in and contribution to the arts and culture of his time.

This catalogue sheds new light on the Paris Olympics of 1924, often considered the first international games. From their origins in ancient Greece to their modern transformation into a visually powerful event on the world stage, the Olympics have retained their unique place in sport and culture. Published to coincide with the Paris Olympics of 2024, the book accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The summer of 2024 will see the Olympics return to Paris after a century. The Olympics in 1924 were arguably the first truly international games, the first games to transmit live radio broadcasts and the first to have an Olympic village. They incorporated an art competition as well as sporting events, and yielded thirty-five medals for Britain, including for Cambridge sprinter Harold Abrahams of Chariots of Fire fame. This catalogue explores the Olympic games from a visual perspective, investigating the tensions between their classical beginnings and their representation in 1924 and across the modern era. How were the 1924 Olympics shaped by the visual culture of the period? And how, in turn, were the arts shaped by them? From plaster casts of fifth-century BCE athletic statues to Hollywood cinema, and from classic portraits of the protagonists to more abstract art, this catalogue brings together painting, sculpture, film, photography, posters, letters, medals and other memorabilia to tell a story of sporting endeavour that equally mirrored and shaped its times. Issues of gender, race and class, as well as an exploration of celebrity and spectatorship, show that the debate around sport was as complex and momentous in the past as it is today. The exhibition catalogue offers readers the opportunity to explore some of the key themes of the show in more depth. It comprises essays by specialists from the fields of Classics, art history, French history, sports history and medicine, each of whom will focus on key themes in the exhibition and key protagonists in the Olympic story. The wide range of art will appeal to fans of classicism, modernism, Cubism, Surrealism and Futurism, as well as Art Deco, while the subject matter will also chime with sports fans – and tap into the enthusiasm for all things Olympic in 2024.

**Henry Spencer Moore (1898–1986) was one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. This catalogue considers Moore’s celebrated Shelter drawings as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. It accompanies a focused exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery. **After the destruction of his London studio early in World War II, Henry Moore began drawing figures sheltering from bomb raids in the London Underground. This catalogue and exhibition consider Moore’s celebrated series as the point of departure for a new reading of the artist’s fascination with images of walls, during and immediately after World War II. In the London Underground, where Moore drew these figures, the walls of these sheltered spaces came to absorb his attention in an altogether new way, becoming scene-setters, and key components of his drawings. This fascination with the bricks and the presence of walls, their texture, mass and volume, became especially important after his project to illustrate the wartime radio play The Rescue, based on Homer’s Odyssey. Henry Moore: Shadows on the Wall, a collaboration with the Henry Moore Foundation, suggests for the first time that the walls in his drawings offer a new way to understand some of his most individual and monumental Post-War sculpture projects.

Augustus John & the First Crisis of Brilliance tells the story of a remarkable generation and its artistic achievements. Accompanying Piano Nobile’s exhibition of the same title, the publication explores the artistic networks around Augustus John before the First World War. John was closely acquainted with many of his highly talented contemporaries and this publication considers his relationship to Jacob Epstein, James Dickson Innes, Gwen John, Henry Lamb, Derwent Lees, Wyndham Lewis and William Orpen. The publication includes an introductory essay by Dr David Boyd Haycock discussing Augustus John and the notion of genius. A selection of over forty paintings, drawings and sculptures illuminates some of the key themes at play in John’s milieu, and each work is accompanied by thoroughly researched catalogue entries by Dr Haycock. Themes and subjects include friendship and family portraits, the muses Dorelia McNeill and Euphemia Lamb, and the landscapes of Wales, Provence and Ireland.

Gravestones are colonial America's earliest sculpture and they provide a unique physical link to the European people who settled here. Carved in Stone book is an elegant collection of over 80 fine duotone photographs, each a personal meditation on an old stone carving, and on New England's past, where these stones tell stories about death at sea, epidemics such as small pox, the loss of children, and a grim view of the afterlife. The essay is a graceful narrative that explores a long personal involvement with the stones and their placement in New England landscape, and attempts to trace the curious and imperfectly documented story of carvers. Brief quotes from early New England writers accompany the images, and captions provide basic information about each stone. These meditative portraits present an intimate view of figures from New England graveyards and will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in early Americana and fine art photography.

This book is a beautiful and engaging presentation of drawings and letters by John Douglas Woodward, (1846–1924), a prominent American artist/illustrator during the 1870s and 1880s. He was on assignment for New York publisher D. Appleton and Co. to make on-the-spot drawings for illustrations for Picturesque Palestine, Sinai and Egypt (1881–1883), which has been called the most important book of illustrations of the region of its time. Some 200 of his compositions appeared in the book as wood engravings, the least expensive mass media of the time, while he contributed the art for 13 steel engravings. Woodward traveled with the somewhat older and better-known artist, Harry Fenn, who was the lead artist for the very successful Picturesque America, published by D. Appleton in parts from 1872–1874. Woodward was the second most prolific contributor to Picturesque America and, like Fenn, also travelled and drew for Picturesque Europe (1878–1879).Woodward’s travels for Picturesque Palestine yielded a treasure trove of unique historical art and correspondence. Most drawings for book and magazine illustrations during this period were discarded by the artist after the printing plates were made. But Woodward saved his, providing a visual record, often in full color, of the region, in addition to the black-and-white illustrations in the book. In presenting them alongside his lively, engaging letters, this book will appeal to those interested in the history and art of the Middle East as well as in the appearance of places of importance mentioned in the Holy Bible and the specifics of travel to the region during the 1870s, when there was almost no tourist infrastructure and limited knowledge of other cultures.Although Picturesque Palestine is well-known to scholars and connoisseurs and available in some libraries and on-line, Woodward’s drawings and letters recording his trip to Palestine are not. The exquisite drawings, rendered in pencil, watercolor, and gouache, belong to the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and have been stored since 1941 at Shrine Mont, a conference center in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley (founded by the artist’s nephew). The letters to his wife and mother are in the collection of the Valentine History Museum in Richmond.

This substantial catalogue explores a remarkable collection of medieval European sculpture. Richly detailed with plentiful illustrations and original research, it is a notable contribution to medieval scholarship.The McCarthy collection comprises more than 150 specimens of medieval European sculpture, produced over a period of nearly 600 years. A testimony to the comprehensiveness of Robert McCarthy’s interest in the art and culture of the Middle Ages, its geographical, chronological and typological breadth place it among the most important of its kind in private hands.Including a few early examples from Merovingian France, Anglo-Saxon England and Visigothic Spain, its holdings have a strong focus on Romanesque art, with over fifty capitals and other architectural carvings from Iberia, France and the Italian Peninsula. Some of these pieces are associable with such notable workshops as those of Gislebertus, the Master of Agüero and Compostela’s Master Mateo, while a great number can be closely compared to anonymous works in major and provincial sites. Notable monuments like the monastic powerhouse of Cluny or the abbatial churches of Autun and Savigny are represented through important sculptural fragments — most published here for the first time.The transition to the Gothic style and the period of its splendour, particularly in France, are witnessed by an ample selection of statuary and architectural fragments — some traceable to such important buildings as Noyon cathedral and Paris’ Notre Dame, and others, more loosely, to the artistic circles that gravitated around the great projects of the age. Freestanding sculpture in stone or wood, including a small but precious nucleus of Virgin and Child statuary and some Spanish polychrome figures, constitutes an interesting subset of the collection’s late medieval holdings, as do some especially fine examples of Italian trecento sculpture.Enriched with outstanding photography by Barney Hindle and Mark French, entries aim to provide detailed stylistic, iconographic and contextual analyses, with special attention paid to comparanda in public and other private collections. This approach, complemented in some cases by petrographic analysis, has allowed the authors to connect much of the material presented in these pages with specific buildings, workshops or regional schools, contributing to a better understanding of the pieces themselves, their original settings and their cultural and artistic milieux.This catalogue follows the publication of three volumes dedicated to Robert McCarthy’s vast collection of Western miniatures and manuscript leaves (2018-2021), and is part of an ambitious project to document the entirety of his holdings — which also include notable selections of medieval ivories, stained glass and East Christian Art.

This elegant publication presents for the first time the Eveillard Gift of drawings to the Morgan Library& Museum. It accompanies an exhibition at the Morgan and includes a catalogue of the works with entries by drawings experts.The Morgan celebrates the 100th year of its founding with a series of exhibitions devoted to promised gifts to the museum, including 28 drawings from the holdings of New Yorkbased collectors Jean-Marie and Elizabeth Eveillard, which will be on view during the summer of 2024. The selection comprises drawings from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, and includes a rare compositional study for Rembrandt’s first painting, Greuze’s virtuoso depiction of a young cook made for his friend Georges Wille, Delacroix’s intimate portrait of his confidante and caretaker Jenny Le Guillou, and a spectacular nude by Bonnard. Also in the gift are significant sheets—many rarely seen—by major artists including Rubens, Guercino, Watteau, Constable, Seurat, Cezanne, and Vuillard, among others. In fully illustrated entries, drawing specialists explore the creation and context for each sheet, considering the artist’s choices and the ways in which drawing liberated the imagination in these exploratory studies.

The Wider Goldsmiths’ Trade in Elizabethan and Stuart London is the first book to study all aspects of the Goldsmiths’ trade. It challenges the assumption that the manufacture of silver plate and gold jewellery was the trade's only activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It considers associated activities such as refining, wiredrawing, and the making of small-swords and watches, as well as the development of the modern banking system. On Elizabeth I’s accession, England was essentially a ‘third world economy’, with exports mainly of wool, unfinished woolen cloth and some minerals, whilst imports consisted of a great range of goods including luxuries such as silks, fine linens, and even scissors. By the end of the seventeenth century, the situation was transformed: a burgeoning maritime trade with many parts of the world enabled the import of raw materials as well as some luxury goods and a wide range of exports which included certain goods produced in London with an international reputation for quality, such as beaver hats and mathematical instruments. Throughout the period, religious refugees and economic migrants brought their skills and knowledge to England. At the Restoration, Royalists returning to London from the Continent introduced French and Low Country fashions in dress, manners, cuisine and dining practice.Refining, wiredrawing, and the making of plate, smallwares and jewellery were at the heart of the trade and of concern to the Goldsmiths’ Company that had responsibility for ensuring that the correct alloys were used for silver and gold wares. This was not always the case for clocks, watches and swords. Nevertheless, they are included in this study as several members of the Company were instrumental in the development of clock and watch making in the city. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the great increase in the sale of watches with gold and silver cases forced the Company to become involved in the control of this trade. Similarly, after the Civil Wars, the wearing of the small-sword by all those with aspirations to gentility gave rise to a demarcation dispute between the Goldsmiths’ and Cutlers’ Companies. Further, during the Commonwealth, goldsmith-bankers developed the clearing system which led to modern retail banking.This book considers the wider Goldsmiths’ trade against dynamic changes: the organization and control of its branches and the design, manufacture and sale of its wares. The twelve chapters cover a range of topics – from history and context, to the various branches of the trade.

This gem of a catalogue accompanies an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, on one of the great painters of 17th-century Italy, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (1591-1666). It brings together for the fi rst time Waddesdon’s King David with three paintings of sibyls (female prophets from classical antiquity) on loan from the National Gallery and the Royal Collection. Readers and viewers alike will be immersed in the poetry, colour and majesty of these four works, which were all painted in the year 1651 by the great Italian artist Guercino (‘The Squinter’). They have never before been seen together. The catalogue will investigate the relationship between David, Jewish patriarch, psalmist and prophet, whom Christians believed prefi gured Christ, and the four turbaned, pagan seers, who supposedly foretold Christ’s birth. Guercino’s brilliant depiction of fabrics and materials –silk, fl esh and ermine, paper, wood and stone – evokes ideas about inspiration and contemplation, sight and foresight, poetry and prophecy.

A vital moment in Kentucky's queer history captured in sumptuous visuals—half a century in the making.The conceptual lovechild of photographer John Denny Ashley and artist Robert Morgan, Pagan Babies has at long last emerged as a vibrant witness to a particular moment in American history, a time when sexual revolution and gay liberation manifested even in small Southern towns like Lexington, Kentucky.Pagan Babies, the name adopted by Morgan and his band of guerrilla-style street artists, was a natural moniker for this collection, which draws inspiration from art-house movies, Greek mythology, Ovid, Shakespeare, the decadence of Weimar Berlin, punk rock, the Pre-Raphaelites, David Bowie, and—above all—the expressive and ingenious realm of queer Kentucky. In Robert Morgan, John Denny Ashley found his archetypal sexual outlaw, and in Ashley, Morgan discovered an artistic collaborator worthy of documenting the emerging free-spirited, sexually adventurous rebels of the American South. Together, they brought forth a collective work that serves as a bracing testament to Morgan's baroque imagination and Ashley's talent for breathing life into his vision.The result is this book. At last.

This book aims to investigate Surrealism’s precedents in visual tradition and to explore its influence on contemporary art. Taking the ideational power of vision as their starting point, these thirteen essays apply different perspectives to themes essential to the Surrealist avant-garde — dreams, magic, madness — but also mystic visions, hybridity and the ongoing relevance of syncretic figures as protean germinations of the irrational. The collection opens with a reconsideration of André Breton’s late book, L’Art magique (1957). The other essays cover a wide array of themes, ranging from witches’ iconography in the early modern period to immersive contemporary video installations, while devoting particular attention to specific Surrealism-related topics. Following the fil rouge traced by Breton, the possibility of an alternative art-historical narrative clearly emerges.

The distinguished private collection, known as the Griffin Collection, comprises in its entirety examples of every category of ring – signet, devotional, memorial, decorative – dating from antiquity to modern times. This catalogue focuses on about one hundred special rings, chosen as highlights of this extensive collection with the aim to offer the reader a real history of the art of the ring across the ages.Covering as they do so many facets of civilization, rings tell us more about the hopes, aspirations, taste and sentiments of our ancestors than any other jewels surviving from the past. Moreover, the examples from the Griffin Collection, which have been assembled with taste and discernment over several decades, are not only rare but also of unusually high quality and intrinsic value. As well as being aesthetically attractive, these rings offer us a glimpse into the lives of their owners, as becomes evident in the vivid account offered by Diana Scarisbrick, one of the world’s leading jewellery historians.The collection illustrates the many uses of rings—as seals needed for business, in expressing religious belief, political loyalties and personal interests such as theatre going, hunting, classical art and astrology. Some demonstrate high rank and commemorate great historical occasions; others dating from the Middle Ages to Victorian England mark the major events of human existence – love, marriage and death – with rings bearing symbols and inscriptions. Often connected with historical figures, monarchs, notably Charles II and William IV or Isabella Zápolya, Queen of Hungary, but also with popes or artists, such as the Romantic poet Lord Byron. Each ring reveals personal information about the people who wore them and the societies in which they lived. An unusually high proportion of the rings have distinguished later provenance, coming from celebrated collectors: George Spencer 4th Duke of Marlborough, Constantine Ionides, Ernest Guilhou, Ralph Harari and Maurice de Rothschild.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, Frank Auerbach: The Charcoal Heads presents a remarkable series of hauntingly beautiful largescale drawings by the artist. The catalogue includes a new piece of writing on one of the drawings from critically acclaimed novelist Colm Tóibín. This catalogue explores one of Frank Auerbach’s most remarkable bodies of work – a series of large-scale portrait heads made in charcoal, produced during his early years as a young artist in postwar London. Auerbach (b. 1931) spent months on each drawing, working and reworking them during numerous sessions with his sitters. This prolonged and vigorous process of creation is evident in the finished drawings, which are richly textured and layered. Auerbach would sometimes even break through the paper and patch it up before carrying on. His heads thus emerge from the darkness of the charcoal with burning vitality, born of an artistic as well as a physical struggle with the medium. The process of repeated creation and destruction, of which these images bear the visible scars, speaks profoundly of their times, as people rebuilt their lives after the ruination and upending of the war. The exhibition will be the first time Auerbach’s extraordinary drawings, made in the 1950s and early 1960s, have been brought together as a comprehensive group. They will be shown together with a selection of paintings he made of the same sitters; for the artist, painting and drawing have always been deeply entwined. The accompanying catalogue – by Deputy Head of The Courtauld Gallery, Barnaby Wright, and with an essay by one of the greatest contemporary voices in the English language, Colm Tóibín – is the first publication to explore in depth this magnificent series. Tóibín spent several hours one afternoon in front of Auerbach’s Self-Portrait (1958), which features on the front cover of the book, looking closely and taking notes. His essay is an account of his experience and offers new insights into the work and the nature of self-portaiture.

Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 offers a fresh perspective on the art of Venice and the Veneto. The volume brings together the contributions of scholars and curators specialist on a wide variety of artists and art forms including drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and architecture.Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 takes disegno as its central theme, that in its plurality of meaning allows for a consideration of the conceptual role of design and the act of drawing. The relationship between disegno and RenaissanceVenetian art has historically been a problematic one, with emphasis instead being placed on the Venetian predilection for colore. This volume is reflective of an ongoing challenge to this perspective and draws attention to the importance of Venetian disegno and the study of drawings for understanding various art forms.The book commences with a critical study of what constitutes disegno in Venetian art. It does so through questioning the historiography of Venetian artistic scholarship and the restrictive framework and preconceptions that have emerged before setting out the merits of a broader, more inclusive approach. Disegno is applied in its multifaceted nature to address the physical act of drawing, the tangible drawn object and the role of design in artistic practice. The term ‘Venetian’ is taken to encompass both Venice and its mainland territories not least because of the mobility of artists across and beyond the region.Contributions are divided into five thematic sections. The first, entitled ‘Peripheries’, frames the art of Venice within a wider discourse on the movement of ideas across and beyond the Veneto in locations including Padua, Verona and Rome. A section on Media considers the origins and innovations that took place in the use of materials such as blue paper, oil and coloured chalks. In another, the theories that have developed on Venetian notions of disegno are brought under scrutiny, addressing topics such as the long upheld perspective that Venetian artists did not draw, the role of sculpture in Tintoretto’s drawing practice and the interrelation between the written and drawn line in Palma Giovane’s draftsmanship. The section on Invention reflects on the technical innovations that were facilitated through theuptake of printmaking and the intellectual freedom granted by humanist patrons. Finally, Function gets to the heart of the practical purpose of disegno. Contributions focus on the workshops of the Bellini family and Titian to consider the diverse ways they used drawing within their artistic practices with an emphasis on technical analysis. These sections are all preceded by introductions that provide an overviewon each theme while the volume is bookended by two reflections on the state of research into Venetian disegno and the potential for further progress.Sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images with a comprehensive bibliography, Venetian Disegno: New Frontiers circa 1420 to 1620 represents a significant contribution to scholarship on the art of Venice, Renaissance workshops and drawing studies.