128 pages, paperback, 280 x 240 mm, 100 colour illustrations
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ISBN: 978 1 903470 75 6
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Almost 200 years ago, William Hunter (1718–1783), founder of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, was one of a small number of British art collectors to acquire works by his contemporary Jean-Siméon Chardin. Among these, Woman taking Tea of 1735 has become something of an iconic image of French art from this period. It has a pair in a near contemporary painting Madame Boucher (1743) by François Boucher in the Frick Collection, New York.
Accompanying an exhibition at the Wallace Collection, this catalogue seeks to examine relationships between these two works and their creation, focusing on establishing common threads drawn from contemporary French social and cultural history. When seen together, the two paintings acquire a new resonance, showing the imaginative and Parisian response of two very different painters to a new interest in scenes from everyday life. The paintings are examined in the context of a dozen further works by the artists, and prints, drawings, books and decorative art objects including oriental textiles and porcelain. This provides an opportunity to address undercurrent social history themes, such as the artists’ attitudes to fashion, interior decoration, and even the consumption of tea – a pastime borne from the contemporary fashion in eighteenth-century France and Great Britain for anything oriental, influenced by new trade links with China.
Anne Dulau is curator at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow; Dr Christoph Vogtherr is curator of pictures pre-1800 at the Wallace Collection, London; Dr Ann Eatwell is curator in the Silver Department of theVictoria & Albert Museum, London.
This catalogue accompanied the first ever loan exhibition of drawings from Waddesdon Manor, the house that was built and furnished by Ferdinand de Rothschild (1839-1989) to show off his works of art and to entertain the fashionable world. More
One of the most famous and influential artists of the eighteenth century, Jean-Antoine Watteau (c. 1684–1721) fundamentally changed the course of French painting. With masterpieces such as Les charmes de la vie, Lady at her Toilet and Les Champs Élisées, the Wallace Collection preserves one of the three outstanding collections of his paintings worldwide (together with Paris and Berlin) but it has never before been the subject of a special exhibition or a separate study. More
Published to accompany the first substantial exhibition on the tradition of Spanish drawings to take place at The Courtauld Gallery, London, this catalogue captures the excitement and importance of this rapidly developing field of study. More
A Rake’s Progress (1734-5) and An Election (1755) are the most famous of William Hogarth’s series of ‘modern moral subjects’. Hazlitt described Hogarth’s paintings as ‘A perpetual collision of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, the prejudices and caprices of mankind let loose’ and they still delight, interest and amuse as much today as two hundred years ago and the biting quality of their moral satire is undiminished. More
‘A Time & a Place: Two centuries of Irish social life' focuses, through the art of their time, on Irish people engaged in recreational activities across the last two centuries. The book is arranged thematically, covering areas and subjects such as sport, music and dance, visits to the beach, religious observance and pilgrimage, theatre, circus, calendar customs, fairs and markets, pubs, clubs and parades. More
The sculptor and draughtsman John Flaxman (1755-1826) is here celebrated and described in six essays followed by a catalogue illustrating the various directions of his work. More
This is the only mongraph on the British sculptor Thomas Banks (1735–1805): it covers his entire oeuvre and is richly illustrated with new photographs of his remarkably accomplished sculpture. More
This catalogue accompanies an exhibition at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, and The Courtauld Gallery, London, which will be the first full display of the Courtauld’s outstanding collection of watercolours by J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851). The collection spans the artist’s career, ranging from an important early view of the Avon Gorge, Bristol, made when Turner was just sixteen years old, to examples of the monumental highly finished watercolours of his maturity and the celebrated expressive late works. More
Recently acquired by Waddesdon Manor, Jean-Siméon Chardin's early masterpiece Boy building House of Cards has a self-contained stillness that contrasts with the splendour of its new setting. This book accompanies an exhibition at Waddesdon that will unite Chardin's four paintings of a boy with a house of cards for the first time. More
A Rake’s Progress (1734-5) and An Election (1755) are the most famous of William Hogarth’s series of ‘modern moral subjects’. Hazlitt described Hogarth’s paintings as ‘A perpetual collision of eccentricities, a tilt and tournament of absurdities, the prejudices and caprices of mankind let loose’ and they still delight, interest and amuse as much today as two hundred years ago and the biting quality of their moral satire is undiminished. More
Philip IV of Spain (ruled 1621-1665) was known as the 'Planet King', shining brightly in the universe of the arts even if the Golden Age of Spanish painting coincided with imperial decline. The Buen Retiro Palace surpassed any palace ever built in Europe for the collection of paintings it contained - Velázquez, Zurbarán, Rubens, Claude, Poussin.< More
The first monograph to appear on Boucher in English for nearly twenty years, this book is an invaluable contribution to the study of eighteenth-century art. Boucher has cried out for reassessment, and here at last, following the tercentenary year of his birth, his work is seen at its very best in numerous beautiful reproductions. More
Jean de Jullienne (1686–1766) was one of the leading French amateurs and collectors of the eighteenth century. He played an important role as editor and dealer, most famously of Watteau’s œuvre, and held an influential position in the French art administration of his time, as director of the Gobelins factory until 1729. More
The Spooner collection of British watercolours is one of the finest of its kind, featuring all the leading artists of the period 1750–1850. Among the fine sheets included are watercolours of the Lake District by John White Abbott, and rural scenes by several artists – Gainsborough, Turner, Cozens, Rowlandson, Francis Towne, Samuel Palmer. Architecture dominates the setting in works by Girtin, Cotman and Sandby. More
This lavish and beautiful catalogue illustrates and discusses fifty-two French drawings dating from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, all from the Chateau de Versailles, which owns one of the finest collections of French drawings in the world. The catalogue has been prepared to accompany their exhibition at the Wallace Collection in autumn 2006. This is the only venue, and the drawings have never been discussed as a group. More
This beautifully designed and illustrated publication is the first comprehensive biography of the portrait painter Johan Zoffany (1733–1810), one of the leading figures of eighteenth-century British art. ALSO AVAILABLE IN HARDBACK. More
"[the book] has the air of brilliant performance about it, of the excitement of meticulous research and proved discovery [...] Simon has written with pace and passion the best book yet on Hogarth, encyclopaedic in its range of enquiry, utterly free of the jargon and nonsense of so much new art history." Brian Sewell, Evening Standard More
This beautifully designed and illustrated publication is the first comprehensive biography of the portrait painter Johan Zoffany (1733–1810), one of the leading figures of eighteenth-century British art. ALSO AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK. More
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788), for some the greatest English artists, was born in the small town of Sudbury on the river Stour in Suffolk in East Anglia. In his house in Sudbury, mainly during the time under the curatorship of Hugh Belsey, the Gainsborough's House Society has built an outstanding collection of paintings, drawings, prints, books and memorabilia relating to the artist and his time. More
Over the course of the last forty years art historian Jonathan Brown has done more than anyone to reform our approach to the art of the Hispanic world between the age of El Greco and Velazquez and that of Goya. More