Piano Nobile

Piano Nobile was established by Dr Robert Travers in 1985. The gallery has been based in Holland Park for twenty years and is today run by Robert and his son Matthew Travers. In 2019, Piano Nobile opened a further space on Portland Road to support the gallery’s growing exhibition programme. The gallery plays an active role in the market for twentieth-century British and international art. With curatorial flair, a refined aesthetic and rigorous scholarship, they seek to source and present exceptional works of art. Whether their clients are buying or selling, they place the utmost importance on discretion, tailoring to the specific needs of each individual.

Augustus John & the First Crisis of Brilliance Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 128
ISBN: 9781901192650
Pub Date: 25 Apr 2024
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Description:
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.
R.B. Kitaj Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 184
ISBN: 9781901192643
Pub Date: 01 Oct 2023
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Description:
R.B. Kitaj: London to Los Angeles explores the relationship between Kitaj’s art and the places where he lived.
Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 64
ISBN: 9781901192636
Pub Date: 02 May 2023
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Description:
Jean Cooke: Seascapes & Chalk Caves is the first publication about the artist in over ten years. It provides an original account of Jean Cooke and her connection with East Sussex, including a wide selection of paintings, pastels and watercolours made by the sea over a period stretching from 1963 to 2007. The book includes the first comprehensive chronology of the artist and an essay by Jane Alison, former Head of Visual Arts at the Barbican, which considers Cooke's work in the context of eco-feminism.

Frank Auerbach

The Sitters
Format: Hardback
Pages: 176
ISBN: 9781901192629
Pub Date: 15 Oct 2022
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Description:
Frank Auerbach: The Sitters provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s portraiture. It reveals the special connection between the artist and his ‘sitters’ - the small group of dedicated models who have been Auerbach’s chief subject over a career spanning seven decades. A comprehensive list of his sitters has been compiled here for the first time, providing new biographical information about his models from E.
William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 55
ISBN: 9781901192612
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2022
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 31
Description:
Between 1958 and 1961, William Crozier painted a series of daring and original landscapes. He lived in north Essex at the time and found inspiration in that bleak environment, even as he looked inwards to give his paintings existential angst. William Crozier: Nature into Abstraction brings these works together for the first time since the 1960s.
William Crozier: Seize the Flow’r Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 55
ISBN: 9781901192605
Pub Date: 01 Feb 2022
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 36
Description:
Returning from a visit to New York in 1979, William Crozier had a rush of creative energy. Newly confident in his European identity and inspired by art of the past, he produced a cycle of still life work. This fully illustrated book presents a selection of Crozier’s still life paintings and watercolours from an important period in his career.
SICKERT Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 185
ISBN: 9781901192599
Pub Date: 15 Dec 2021
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 112
Description:
Sickert: The Theatre of Life explores the human side of Walter Sickert's art. Among the sources of inspiration which sustained him over a long career, none won him so much acclaim and infamy as the human face and body. After a short period as an actor, he spent his life fashioning new identities for himself and his sitters.
Ben Nicholson Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 88
ISBN: 9781901192568
Pub Date: 15 Nov 2020
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 37
Description:
Ben Nicholson: Distant Planes provides a succinct and insightful introduction to a little-known period of the artist's career: his years in Switzerland. Nicholson is one of the great British modernists of the twentieth century and this publication includes contributions from the leading specialists in the field, with original essays by Dr Lee Beard, director of the Ben Nicholson catalogue raisonné project, Peter Khoroche, author of Ben Nicholson: Drawings and Painted Reliefs (2002), and Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne Museum, Bath. In 1958, at the height of his creative powers and buoyed by recent accolades at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere, Nicholson left behind the coastal wilds of Cornwall for the serene beauty of Lake Maggiore.
Drawn to Paper Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 40
ISBN: 9781901192582
Pub Date: 02 Jul 2020
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 22
Description:
Drawn to Paper: Degas to Rego is a publication showcasing works on paper by some of the leading figures of European modernism. The selection is built around a group of works from a private collection and have not been seen in public since they were acquired in the 1970s and early ‘80s. At the heart of the collection is a group of works made by leading artists on the mid-twentieth-century Paris art scene, including the American Alexander Calder and Spaniards Picasso, Dalí and Miró, as well as the French artists Raoul Dufy and Fernand Léger.
Craigie Aitchison Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 152
ISBN: 9781901192551
Pub Date: 11 Nov 2019
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Description:
For the first time, Craigie Aitchison and the Beaux Arts Generation tells the story of Craigie Aitchison’s role amongst the bright young figurative painters of post-war London. Along with Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff and Euan Uglow, Aitchison belonged to ‘the Beaux Arts generation’: a set of highly talented painters first shown at the Beaux Arts Gallery by Helen Lessore. Under her discerning gaze, the early careers of these five artists were launched and close friendships formed, even as a wild divergence of artistic styles took place.
Paul Nash Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 100
ISBN: 9781901192544
Pub Date: 30 Apr 2019
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 78
Description:
Following the sell-out 2014 publication ‘Paul Nash: Watercolours 1910 – 1946' this revised and expanded edition has been published to coincide with an exhibition of Paul Nash’s work in New York, May 2019. The fully illustrated catalogue includes major oils as well as watercolours, prints and photographs and examines one of Britain’s most acclaimed artists of the twentieth century. Written by David Boyd Haycock, author of 'Paul Nash' (Tate Publishing, 2002) and the hugely successful 'A Crisis of Brilliance' (Old Street Publishing, 2009), the catalogue charts the whole of Nash's career from his early days before studying at the Slade School of Art, through to his time at the Western Front during World War I as a serving officer and then an official War Artist, and to his mature Surrealist-era works.
Leon Kossoff Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 144
ISBN: 9781901192537
Pub Date: 28 Feb 2019
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 76
Description:
Published to accompany the exhibition, Leon Kossoff: A London Life, this fully illustrated catalogue examines the paintings and drawings of one of Britain’s most acclaimed living artists. With a catalogue raisonné of Kossoff’s paintings in preparation, this is an apt moment to consider his oeuvre. The publication brings together masterworks from each period of the artist’s career, demonstrating the unwavering rigour, the nuance and the psychological intensity of his output.
Cyril Mann Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 56
ISBN: 9781901192520
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2018
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: 33
Description:
Published to accompany Piano Nobile's exhibition of the same title, Cyril Mann: The Solid Shadow Paintings, is the first book to describe this vivid and art historically significant group of still-life paintings. As well as including a fully-illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, the book describes how Mann's solid shadow style emerged in the early nineteen-fifties. Though Mann spent the rest of his career painting natural light, the solid shadow paintings were made under the glow of an electric lightbulb.
The Nobile Index Series Cover
Format: Hardback
Pages: 200
ISBN: 9781901192490
Pub Date: 30 Nov 2017
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Series: The Nobile Index
Description:
The Nobile Index is a series of monographic publications of art sales prices achieved at auction, for a selection of leading 20th-century British artists - Walter Sickert, David Bomberg, L.S. Lowry, Stanley Spencer and Francis Bacon & Lucien Freud.
Bomberg/Marr Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 74
ISBN: 9781901192506
Pub Date: 16 Nov 2017
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Illustrations: Fully Colour illustrated:34
Description:
Published to accompany the exhibition at Piano Nobile that concentrates on the years after the Second World War when Bomberg became an influential teacher at the Borough Polytechnic, the fully illustrated catalogue Bomberg / Marr: Spirits in the Mass will be the first examination of the personal and creative bonds uniting these two pioneers of modern British painting. Both artists endeavoured to strip the external world to its bare essentials. Often using powerful organic tonalities, Bomberg and Marr worked toward a vigorous expression of their subjects through an architectural and analytic, yet fraught and unstable formal construction.
Auctioning Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon Cover
Format: Paperback
Pages: 48
ISBN: 9781901192421
Pub Date: 31 Oct 2017
Imprint: Piano Nobile
Series: The Nobile Index
Illustrations: Fully colour illustrated throughout
Description:
The Nobile Index is a series of monographic publications of art sales prices achieved at auction, for a selection of leading 20th-century British artists. They involve the collaboration of a commercial art dealership, Piano Nobile Works of Art and the University of Bristol's History of Art Department; bringing together academic and commercial expertise on the artists for the benefit of those with an interest in their work. They are funded by the generosity of a private benefactor.