Richly illustrated with colourful, quirky rag rugs (also known as hooked rugs), this delightful book examines Winifred Nicholson’s relationship with the Cumbrian craft, the way in which she helped revive the tradition in the 1960s and ’70s, and her influence on contemporary makers. For anyone interested in textiles, naive art, British folk traditions or mid-century craft, this book will be a treasure trove.British artist Winifred Nicholson (1893–1981) initially encountered rag rugs in Cumberland in the early 1920s, when, with her husband Ben Nicholson (1894–1982), she visited her neighbour Margaret Warwick, who was sat in her kitchen making a rug from scraps of old clothing. The Nicholsons were interested in ‘naive art’ at that time and had explored the work of Rousseau, as well as African sculpture, but this was the first time they had come face to face with naive art being made in their own country. In 1960 Winifred moved back to Banks Head, the old Cumbrian farmhouse she had owned since 1923. It was here that she helped to revive the local ‘hooky’ rag rug making tradition. Through Winifred’s efforts, well over a hundred new rugs were made. Notable makers included Mary Bewick, Janet Heap and Florence Williams. Winifred herself designed a number of rugs, and she also encouraged her grandchildren, who were paid a pound a time for a design.This beautiful book also presents a number of contemporary rag rug makers, with direct links to Winifred. Emma Tennant, who lives in Scotland not far from Winifred’s house, was inspired to start making rugs after seeing the ones in Winifred’s home. Also included are works by Winifred’s nieces Louisa Creed and the late Jenny Steinbugler. The author also discusses the extensive rag rug collection at Chillingham Castle, Northumberland, which has interesting parallels with Winifred Nicholson’s approach to rug making, as well as the rug by Lucie Aldridge in the Fry Art Gallery, Essex.

This stunning catalogue of 15th and 16thcentury Italian drawings from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen will showcase highlights from this outstanding but still relatively little known part of the collection. It includes internationally significant sheets by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Pontormo, Pisanello, Giorgione and Tintoretto, as well as an important group of early Venetian drawings and a large number of workshop studies by Fra Bartolommeo. Published to accompany exhibitions at the Fondation Custodia, Paris, and The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, this volume will mark the conclusion of a five year cataloguing project at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, funded by the Getty Foundation. During the project all the Italian drawings were fully researched and catalogued, many for the first time. Several of these drawings have not been published in the last 70 years, if at all.The catalogue is a scholarly touchstone for this part of the collection. It includes two essays and 111 catalogue entries based on the online catalogue texts prepared by several Italian drawings specialists. They include the most well known drawings in Rotterdam as well as drawings that have never been published or exhibited before, such as newly attributed sheets by Pontormo, Federico Zuccaro and Aurelio Lomi.

American artist Glenn Ligon (b. 1960) is best known for his landmark text-based paintings, which draw on the influential writings and speeches of twentieth-century historical and cultural figures including James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston and Gertrude Stein. This catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, in which Ligon’s art will be displayed in dialogue with objects from the Fitzwilliam and Trinity College collections selected by the artist himself. Glenn Ligon is widely considered one of the most important figures in the contemporary art world. Informed by his experiences as an African American living in New York, his art is a sustained meditation on issues of interpretation through translation and quotation, the role of the past in the present, and the representation of the self in relation to culture and history, both as the conceptual underpinning and as a critique of modern society. His text-based paintings, made since the late 1980s, engage provocatively and incisively with the written and oral legacy of writers and cultural icons, from Ralph Ellison to Richard Pryor, highlighting the social, linguistic and political constructions of race, gender and sexuality. The catalogue accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, while also serving as an introduction to the artist’s oeuvre. A large-scale neon, Waiting for the Barbarians (2021), will be installed in the museum’s grade-I listed portico and two dedicated galleries will be linked by interventions threaded throughout the museum’s permanent collection, in which the artist has been invited to select artworks and objects following themes including annotation, cultural hybridity and legibility. By exploring Ligon’s curatorial practice alongside his artworks, the exhibition showcases the ideas of one of the most significant Black artists working today in direct dialogue with museological tradition. Issues such as art making and aesthetics, as well as broader questions about race and its socio-political implications, will be further developed in the catalogue, which includes a series of essays and conversations between Ligon and a range of museum curators.

This bold catalogue brings together the work of two cultural icons for the very first time: Beryl Cook (1926–2008) and Tom of Finland (1920–1991). It was inspired by the 2024 exhibition Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland at Studio Voltaire in London. Beryl Cook was a painter renowned for her exuberant style and descriptions of everyday life. Her work captures the social milieu of the areas she lived in and visited, notably Plymouth. Her most enduring images are of larger-than-life women carousing in nightclubs, eating in cafés or enjoying ribald hen parties, rendered in graphic and colourful forms. Cook’s work came to prominence in the mid-1970s and she quickly became known as one of Britain’s best-loved artists, highly recognised for her distinctive works, which are both celebratory and provocative. Tom of Finland’s pioneering depictions of homosexual machismo in his images of bikers, soldiers, cowboys, sailors and labourers broadly represent queer, leather and muscle communities. A master draughtsman, he used his works to give form to an imaginative universe that, in turn, helped fuel real-world liberation movements and had significant influence on a wide range of cultural figures including the Village People, Freddie Mercury, Jean Paul Gaultier and Robert Mapplethorpe. Beryl Cook / Tom of Finland puts their work into conversation for the first time. The pairing is perhaps unexpected, yet immediate and compelling relationships between their practices are evident. Fundamentally, both artists employed a sustained and coherent way of hyper-realising the body in images that celebrate pleasure and deny shame. Together, their works reveal interconnected ideas surrounding sexuality, gender, taste and class. Artist and writer Huw Lemmey has contributed an incisive new essay exploring the queer contexts inherent to Tom of Finland’s work, but that also finds latent resonance in Cook’s paintings of gay bars and shapely women. He further considers the commercial forms of distribution that made their complex bodies of works highly accessible. Spanning five decades of paintings, drawings and archival materials, this companion catalogue contributes to new readings of the artists’ practices and their enduring impact on popular culture.

This fascinating volume presents a wide-ranging overview of one of the lesser known yet fundamental disciplines of Art History: conservation. What happens when art ages? By bringing together some of the leading experts in the field, the essays chart a journey through the theoretical, aesthetic and technical debates surrounding the conservation of Old Masters. The problem of how to look after paintings as they grow old is a historically complex one. Should they be ‘restored’ to their original glory, or should the patina of time be acknowledged? What is to be done with damp and dirt, with rotten panels and yellowing varnishes? The development of conservation is profoundly entwined with the development of Art History itself, as both deal in the interpretation of the past and its preservation for the future. The seventeen essays collected by editors Jane Martineau and David Bomford, which originally appeared in The Burlington Magazine, explore how these questions have been answered from the mid-sixteenth century to the present day. Masterpieces like Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece or Rembrandt’s Night Watch have been treated and mis-treated many times in their long lives. By the nineteenth century, the growing knowledge of the techniques employed by the old masters had a profound influence on the treatments applied to their works. In the same period, the birth of national galleries as public institutions entrusted with the collective heritage led to the need to preserve large numbers of paintings and establish conservation departments rooted in scientific research. By the mid-twentieth century, the materials and techniques of painting were utterly transformed, demanding fresh approaches to their preservation. A discipline that sits uniquely at the crossroads of art, science, philosophy and technology, modern conservation is the result of an ongoing collaboration between conservators, scientists and art historians following rigorous ethical standards and training programmes.

Accompanying a major exhibition at Philip Mould & Company, Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale presents the work of the remarkable sevenenteenth-century woman artist. Mary Beale (1633–1699) was Britain’s first woman artist to run a successful studio practice. In an era when the arts in Britain were flourishing and portraitists were in high demand, Beale established a unique practice that set her apart from her competitors and brought her great acclaim. Friendship and family played a crucial role in Beale’s success. She was the figurehead of her family and studio, while her husband dedicated himself to supporting the business, often preparing paints and canvasses. Beale’s portraits, many of which are illustrated here for the first time, build a picture of a talented and multi-faceted woman – artist, writer, businesswoman, mother and friend. The title of this publication and of the accompanying exhibition is drawn from Beale’s own writings, and the materials presented span her entire career. Featuring essays by leading scholars, the catalogue introduces a number of recently discovered portraits by Beale and showcases several important works that have never been publicly displayed before.

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.

This is a revised second edition of the best-selling book which incorporates new and additional material on the majority of the objects as well as an expanded glossary which will be of interest to both collector and scholar. The first edition was long-listed for the R.L. Shep Award by the Textile Society of America and chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Crafts Council of the UK, both in 2020.

John Carr of York (1723 – 1807) was one of the most prolific and significant architects of the eighteenth century, with an output of over 400 designs, most of which were executed. His designs vary from simple gateways through to the grandest schemes, such as that for the palatial hospital at Oporto in Portugal, Harewood House and village in Yorkshire, and Basildon Park in Berkshire.

This fascinating book presents the first biography of Helen Coombe, a woman admired not only for her artistic skill, but also for her intellect, personality and wit. It reveals her family background and education, her place in the Arts and Crafts Movement and her outstanding artistic output.

What is a family? And how is family experienced? These questions, explored through artists’ eyes, are at the heart of the exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, a collaboration between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research. The book provides a catalogue of the exhibition in four sections, containing twelve illuminating essays that discuss the concept of the family.Real Families: Stories of Change focuses on art produced in the past 50 years, a period of significant change in how families are created and structured, with historical works woven into the exhibition to examine what is genuinely new, and what has remained the same, about the family. The catalogue includes reproductions of paintings, photography and sculpture.In the first section, ‘What is a Family?’, artists portray new forms of family, including families formed by assisted reproduction and families with LGBTQ+ parents, as well as families affected by divorce, adoption and infertility. The works prompt viewers to consider stereotyped beliefs about what makes a family and society’s prejudice against childlessness.Second, ‘Family Transitions’ starts with artists’ representations of motherhood, followed by an examination of the positive role that fathers play. Works on siblings speak to the dynamic and intense relationships that exist between siblings, and those on grandparents and grandchildren highlight the benefit of having each other in their lives. Artists also convey their complex feelings about their ageing parents.‘Family Dynamics’ explores positive and negative relationships between couples, parents and children, and extended family, with works that foreground affection and rejection, comfort and conflict, enmeshment, estrangement and not fitting in. The works also examine the wider social, cultural and political influences on family relationships. Finally, ‘Family Legacies’ highlights the importance to many people of a sense of connection and belonging. This section explores the transmission of family from one generation to the next through genetic inheritance, social and cultural practices, language and objects, which can forge emotional connections and give rise to family memories.

When the famous Dutch art historian and connoisseur Frits Lugt (1884-1970) and his wife Jacoba Klever (1888-1969) decided to present their collections in the Hôtel Turgot in Paris, Chinese porcelain ranked among their priorities. They intended to give the French public an impression of Dutch Golden Age interiors and a porcelain cabinet had traditionally been part of Dutch material culture. Lugt started assembling his Chinese porcelain collection when he lived in the Netherlands. After the Second World War, the couple settled in Paris, and Lugt continued to buy from dealers and at auctions in France and England. He acquired a variety of pieces, either made for export or for domestic Chinese use. The result, now permanently exhibited in the Fondation Custodia, is a small but exquisitecollection of high-quality Chinese porcelain, ranging mainly from the 16th to the late 18th centuries. It reflects the Dutch preference for Kraak, Transitional and Kangxi porcelain, but a number of unusual or even unique non-export porcelains are also on display. Almost all of these pieces are decorated in underglaze cobalt-blue. In this catalogue, written by Dr. Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Dutch specialist on Chineseand Japanese porcelain, each of the 125 pieces is described in detail and placed in a scholarly context. Special attention is paid to iconography, inscriptions and marks. A longer, informative essay elaborates on the history of the collection and shorter essays introduce each of the six sections into which the catalogue is chronologically divided. Every object has been photographed and reproduced from multiple angles, including the base.

Artists and travel have for centuries been intertwined where the desire to explore beyond the confines of one’s home has provoked a truly astonishing outpouring of creativity, much of which was captured through drawings and prints. Comprising over 100 such works, Connecting Worlds: Artists& Travel will be the first exhibition to approach the subject through the lens of artists’ experiences of travel from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, before the establishment of the railroad and use of photography as a means of recording changed these experiences deeply. A collaboration between the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, London, the exhibition will include works by major artists, lesser known professionals as well as amateurs, mostly from Northern Europe, amongst them Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Wenceslaus Hollar, Zacharias Wagner, Valentin Klotz, Maria Sibylla Merian, Angelika Kauffmann, Franz Pforr, Augusta von Buttlar, Julie von Egloffstein,Ludwig Richter, and Friedrich Preller the Elder. Divided into three sections, “On the road”, “Destination Rome”, and “Dresden”, the exhibition begins by exploring artists on the road and what they regarded as important to record in sketchbooks and individual sheets. The second section looks at Rome as one of the most important destinations for Northern travellers, with its incomparable remains of antiquity and as the seat of the Catholic Church that celebrated its religious and administrative life through processions and public spectacle. The journey ends in Dresden, as a centre for collecting, cultural exchange and glamorous festivities, ambitiously competing with other international courts since the time of Augustus the Strong. A different kind of travel, made possible by collecting images and stories of landscapes, flora, fauna, and cultures previously unknown in Europe, is explored. This section closes with the story of the IndonesianRomantic artist Raden Saleh, who first visited Dresden in 1839, and was warmly welcomed by the Saxon court. The richly illustrated catalogue will feature essays by an international panel of experts addressing such topics as the uses of artist sketchbooks across time, written and visual accounts of travel in books and prints, encounters with the Ottoman world, travel and collecting at the Saxon court.

In London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) remarked, ‘What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.’ Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon’s highly original and illuminating book takes up the challenge. William Hogarth (1697–1764) and David Garrick (1717–1779) closely associated themselves with Shakespeare, embodying a relationship between plays, painting and performance that had been understood since Antiquity and which shaped the rules for history painting drawn up by the Académie royale in Paris in the seventeenth century.History painting was considered the highest form of art: a picture illustrating a moment drawn from just a few lines in a revered text. Hogarth’s David Garrick as Richard III (1745) transformed those ideas because, although it looked like a history painting, it was also a portrait of an actor in performance. With it, Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture, a new and distinctively British kind ofhistory painting.This book offers a fresh examination of theatrical portraits through close analysis of the pictures and of the texts used in performance. It also examines the central role of the theatre in British culture, while highlighting the significance of Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick in the European Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism. In this context another trio of genius features prominently: Lichtenberg, GottholdEphraim Lessing and Denis Diderot.Familiar paintings and performances are seen in an entirely new light, while unfamiliar pictures are also introduced, including major paintings and drawings that have never been published.The final chapter shows that the inter-relationship between plays, painting and performance survived into the age of cinema, revealing the pictorial sources of Laurence Olivier’s legendary film Richard III.