www.bibliophilebooks.com Over 600


75694 FABERGE MENAGERIE


edited by Deborah Horowitz Peter Carl Fabergé was nothing if not courageous in his work. Certainly he had a sure hand, was confident in his taste and uncompromising in his standards, but it is testament to his greatness that even when he was the


undisputed “Crown Jeweller” of Europe he was not afraid to innovate, learn new techniques and do what other jewellers did not dare. Typical of this was his introduction in the early 20th century of semi-precious stones (hardstone) such as amethyst, agate, jade, obsidian, chalcedony, rock crystal and nephrite (as well as the usual diamonds, sapphires and rubies!) into his gold and silverwork, a trend that was aided by discoveries of new hardstone varieties in Siberia and the Urals. What Fabergé loved to produce in this new medium was depictions of animals. As part of St Petersburg’s tercentenary celebrations an exhibition toured Maryland, Ohio and Oregon between 2003-4 which brought together many of the finest pieces to emerge from the Fabergé workshop, with a particular emphasis on animals. This catalogue of the exhibition features 123 items. All are photographed in exquisite detail with full descriptions of materials, size, when made, workmaster, current whereabouts, etc and a description and brief history of the piece. There are also several 19th century examples of netsuke animals from Japan, which Fabergé often used for inspiration. And naturally, it could not be Fabergé without his exquisite bejewelled eggs, and there are several of those here too. Also includes essays on the history of the House of Fabergé, Fabergé’s illustrious clients and a history of Russian gem and hardstone production and decoration from the 17th century onwards. Breathtaking pieces with fascinating stories in this magnificent Philip Wilson publishers catalogue. 192pp softback, 9½” square. A rare find.


ONLY £7.50


75148 REMBRANDT by Michael Bockemuhl Rembrandt was one of the greatest painters of all time and this attractively produced Taschen book spans the whole of his career, from the early biblical canvases which made his name in the bourgeois society of Leiden to the subtle impasto portrait studies of his later


years. “Belshazzar’s Feast”, in the National Gallery, is a masterpiece of dramatic realism, with the King in profile looking in terror at the writing on the wall. Throughout his life Rembrandt used compositional structure to heighten the theatricality of a scene. “The Angel Preventing Isaac’s Sacrifice of his Son” brings the viewer, and Abraham himself, terrifyingly close to the moment of no return. Quieter canvases show the Apostle Paul in prison and Rembrandt’s mother modelling the biblical prophetess Hannah. Light and dark are the key to the drama of the early canvases and Rembrandt took his mastery of visual effects into the group portraiture of his mature years, including the celebrated study of the Syndics of Amsterdam and “The Night Watch”. His wife, mistress and children provided models for many canvases, and the portraits of Saskia are justly famed, as is the National Gallery’s “Hendrickje Bathing in a River”, while his beautiful son Titus is lovingly portrayed in several works. Later canvases have been subject to varied interpretations, for instance the masterly painting “The Jewish Bride”, also titled “Isaac and Rebecca”. 96pp, colour reproductions on most pages, chronology.


ONLY £9


75149 BOTTICELLI by Barbara Deimling


Like all Renaissance artists, Botticelli saw paintings as much more than a surface impression: he expected the viewer to interpret their significance. His most famous painting, “Primavera”, shows the goddess of Love in the centre and may have been commissioned for a wedding;


on the left of the picture the god Mercury is wielding his staff to drive away any discord threatening the garden of Love. Recent research has revealed that “Primavera” was hung in the palace of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco next to another commission, “Pallas and the Centaur”, in which Pallas Athene is twisting the Centaur’s hair, representing the victory of chastity. Love is again the dominant theme in “Venus and Mars” and also in “The


74931 ANCIENT AMERICAN ART


IN DETAIL by Colin McEwan The breathtakingly lovely objects in this luxurious volume are fashioned from jade, turquoise, feather- work, metalwork, wood, stone, ceramics and textiles. Drawing on the extraordinary breadth and depth of the British Museum’s American collection, and with essays written by an expert in Ancient American art, this beautifully photographed work offers fascinating insights into the design and production of a wide range of objects from Mexico and Central and South America. Enlarged details, chosen specifically to inspire, illuminate and surprise bring readers close to the world of the Olmecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, Aztecs and Incas. How do the practices of ancestor deification, sacrifice and rituals related to fertility and procreation shape the visual and material culture of the Ancient Americas? 144 pages very lavishly illustrated. 21 x 22cm. $21.95 NOW £5


Birth of Venus”, acquired by the Medici family in the early 17th century, though it is not certain who commissioned it. Religious themes began to dominate Botticelli’s work as the city of Florence fell under the grip of the ascetic hell-fire preacher Savonarola. Botticelli’s religious paintings are suffused with intense feeling, expressed for instance in the pose of the crouching Angel of the Annunciation, and in Mary lamenting over the dead Christ. Perspective becomes less important in these later paintings where spiritual power dominates, but Botticelli’s elegant figures and dynamic composition remain instantly recognisable. 96pp, 91 colour plates, chronology. ONLY £9


73952 THE FAMILY OF TOUCANS: The


Complete Plates by John Gould


Simply gorgeous. Presented as 51 unbound, fine art prints in an enormous red linen clamshell case, this portfolio contains what is generally thought to be the most dramatic illustrations of John Gould (1804-1881), the only ornithological artist of the 19th century to rival John James Audubon in ambition and quality. The range of vivid colour in The Family of Toucans - shiny black, vibrant red, yellow, and orange - creates an unprecedented sense of animation; the birds seem to emerge from the page more like living creatures than two-dimensional representations. Each beautiful bird is anatomically correct and exquisitely rendered in colour, in a natural setting on a branch or under foliage, often in pairs. The plumage is dazzling and appealing and all nature lovers can appreciate the rarity of this collection. Taken from the revised and expanded edition published in London in 1854, the facsimile plates are individual prints ready for framing, 13" x 19", plus 31 page introduction. Slipcased. ONLY £50


73924 A VISION OF SPLENDOUR: Indian Heritage In the Photographs of Jean Philippe


Vogel, 1901-1913 by Gerda Theuns-de Boer


‘A great privilege’ - that was how Dutch Sanskritist Jean Philippe Vogel (1871-1958) viewed his entry in 1901 into the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). It would enable him as an Indologist to enrich his academic knowledge by working in the context of the indigenous culture of India. Vogel added substance to the tasks of preservation, restoration and research and to the increasing visibility of archaeology in museums. He was familiar with the Islamic art of Lahore, Delhi and Agra, the largely Buddhist art of Gandhara and Mathura, the Hindu art of the Panjab or the Jain art of Maheth. For this monograph, the author focuses on the years 1901- 1913 and from his collection of 10,000 photographs, 150 views have been selected, taken between 1870 and 1920. In superb detail we can enjoy the statues of Vishnu, ornately carved fountain slabs and jinas, long lost and long forgotten landscapes, votives and statues, tombs and famous monuments. 192 page huge hardback with colour map. Sepia images. £32 NOW £16


74374 ENGLISH STAINED GLASS by Painton Cowen


English stained glass occupies a curious position in the study of visual arts. This sumptuous volume covers the period 1100-1530, widely regarded as the “golden age” of English stained glass, and features 200 colour illus. of over 100 windows and panels, spanning the whole country. The English patrons who commissioned works for English places of worship very often employed European glaziers, initially from France, then latterly from Germany and the Low Countries, but working in a recognisably English style. This can be seen as we traverse the country from Carlisle to Cornwall, omitting nothing of significance and covering in extra depth the most important monuments, such as York Minster, the cathedrals at Canterbury, Wells, Ely and Lincoln and the University chapels at Oxford and Cambridge. Each example is dated, described and explained in the accompanying caption. 128pp, 9½”×10". £14.95 NOW £7.50


73956 GAUGUIN: Maker of Myth by Tate Modern, London


Huge paperback exhibition catalogue from January 2011 navigating the myth behind Paul Gauguin, his landscape and rural narrative, sacred themes, fictions of femininity, allusive and elusive titles. Contributors include Belinda Thomson, Tamar Garb on Martinique, Linda Goddard on the ‘Myth of the Primitive’, Gauguin’s politics, portrait of the artist as Mohican and exoticism, finishing with ‘A Very British Reception’ by Amy Dickson. Gauguin was deeply immersed in world art and a great reader of Polynesian stories and myths. More than 200 museum- quality reproductions of paintings, works on paper, ceramics, wood carvings and writings including his beautifully illustrated letters and books. 256pp, colour. $35 NOW £8


74003 GAUGUIN CÉZANNE MATISSE: Visions of Arcadia


by Joseph J. Rishel


The notion of a golden age set in an earthly paradise has long kindled the human imagination. The resonance of this enduring topic for European painters around 1900 is the subject of a superbly illustrated catalogue. It focuses on three monumental paintings - Paul Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? painted in 1897-8, Paul Cézanne’s Large Bathers (1900-1906) and Henri Matisse’s Bathers By A River (1909- 1913, 1916-17). Cézanne’s Large Bathers in particular had a profound impact on the European avant-garde during the period of creative ferment that took place in the first two decades of the 20th century. Why did the subject hold such fascination for the generation of Henri Matisse, André Derain, Pablo Picasso and Robert Delaunay? Masterpieces by Nicolas Poussin and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot also serve as examples of the high value given to Arcadia in the history of French painting. These are joined by major works from the likes of Henri Rousseau and Paul Signac, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Franz Marc and Natalia Sergeyevna Goncharova. 243 pages 31cm x 25cm with plates in faithful colour, gatefold. $40 NOW £15.50


book reviews! Great American Artists


75262 THOMAS HOVENDEN: His Art and Life by Anne Gregory Terhune et al


Unusually, the work of Thomas Hovenden (1840-95), which specialised in narrative scenes of domestic rural life and, latterly, on the American Civil War, was acclaimed during his lifetime but


slowly forgotten after his death, until recently. Born in County Cork, the potato famine claimed the lives of his parents when he was six, and he was placed in an orphanage in Cork itself, which was at the time second only to Dublin in size and commercial importance. He was a great deal more fortunate than many and the orphanage was a good one and it had him apprenticed to a cabinetmaker. His new master quickly recognised his talent for drawing and design, and paid for him to attend the new Cork School of Design when he was 17. However, as he reached his twenties he realised the limitations of the Cork School and crossed the Atlantic to New York to live with his brother and some 150,000 Cork emigrants who had fled the famine to New York. This was also the time of the Civil War and this plus the vexed issue of slavery would exert a powerful influence upon Hovenden. Further schooling in New York and Baltimore was followed by a period at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Alexandre Cabanel, whereupon he returned to an astonishingly successful career as a painter and teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Thomas Eakins and Thomas Anschutz. Recording everyday home and family activities was quite commonplace in art, but where Hovenden differed from most was in his portrayal of the domestic life of African Americans, recently freed slaves who enjoyed hugely varying levels of “freedom” depending on the state in which they lived. In his paintings black families could be going about their daily chores, reading the Bible or receiving a cordial visit from their ex-masters, or they could be fleeing for their lives or working in conditions that seemed barely changed from those of slavery. His firm aesthetic position was that sentiment and beauty were the goals of his artistic pursuits and this most evident in the nostalgic paintings for which he is famed. His immense (6’6"×5’3") oil on canvas “The Last Moments of John Brown” (1884) depicts the famous abolitionist stopping to kiss a black child on his way to the gallows in 1859, and the Civil War and the build up to it exerted a powerful influence on his work in the final 15 years of his life. A total of 133 colour and b/w illus. depict the not only the best examples of Hovenden’s work but also that of contemporary artists who were influenced by, or were influences on him, as well as numerous photos and daguerreotypes. Terhune’s first full-length study of Hovenden provides a detailed biography as well as a detailed examination of his output, and many of the paintings, studies and sketches are reproduced here for the first time. Luxury 276pp, 9"×11½” tome from the University of Pennsylvania Press. £32.49 NOW £10


75256 EDWARD W. REDFIELD: Just Values And Other Fine Seeing


by Constance Kimmerle Born in Bridgeville, Delaware, Edward Willis Redfield (1869-1965) was fascinated by the forces that coloured a person’s reaction to nature. He attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine


Arts in 1887, which had been transformed by the teaching of the great Thomas Eakins, and also travelled


74658 GREAT WORKS: 50 Paintings Explored by Tom Lubbock


First published in the Independent, here are 50 of Lubbock’s best essays on painting, which span 800 years of Western art from Giovanni Bellini to Jeremy Moon and from Rembrandt van Rijn to Jackson Pollock. Each piece is devoted to a single painting, and explores, with intelligence and humour, Lubbock’s thoughts about that particular work and about art in general. What was it, he asks, that made Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres such an exciting weirdo? Why was Edouard Vuillard’s genius confined to the decade when he worked at home? Having done Germolene, sticking plaster, marshmallows, prawn cocktail, pork paté and sausage meat, how many other ways could Philip Guston have found to paint pink? Lubbock’s writing is original and exciting. It finds Hitchcock’s lighting tricks on Suspicion compared to a still life by Francisco de Zurbaràn and the figure in Gwen John’s Girl In A Blue Dress withdrawing from life, ‘fading into its surface, pressed like a flower’. 216 pages, colour plates.


£18.99 NOW £9


74573 SOME OF MY LIVES: A Scrapbook Memoir by Rosamond Bernier


Bernier’s father chaired the directors of the Philadelphia Orchestra, and when she herself was a young harp student she met all the great musicians of her day, from Otto Klemperer to Leopold Stokowski who went off to India with Greta Garbo. Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein were lifelong friends, and in 1975 when Bernier married her second husband, the critic John Russell. Bernstein was John’s witness and Copland gave Rosamond away. Before then, however, Bernier had developed her own formidable career as an art historian based in Paris, where she co-founded the hugely influential magazine L’Oeil. When her friend


Art and Architecture


3


to Britain and France. By the end of the century Redfield was widely regarded as the stylistic leader of the Pennsylvania impressionist school of painting. His paintings, immediate and direct, reflect an engagement with the American experience in an unsentimental impressionist style, as exemplified in his advice to other artists: “See it, seize it, remember it - then get out and paint it.” Come the 20th century, he was one of most popular and widely exhibited painters in America, his life and work viewed as an embodiment of the national spirit of American progress, raw and energetic as it transformed itself from a mainly agrarian nation to an industrialised superpower. Bold and vibrant, his work provided welcome images of the natural world with an authentic spirit and craftsmanship. This book was published to coincide with the biggest ever exhibition of Redfield’s work at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Philadelphia from 2004-2005. It features over 65 exhibits, each reproduced in colour with full descriptions, dates, medium etc and also, when possible, contemporary comments or correspondence regarding the work. Subjects include a decorated blanket chest and boxes he painted, canals and harbors in Maine painted in oils in all seasons, cherry blossoms, a sleigh, Evening on the Seine, Dune Walk in France, charcoal studies of nudes and an elderly man, a beautiful house and garden scenes in summer, with his wife seated under a wisteria arbour, even a fine portrait of Thomas Eakins. With an excellent essay on his life and work, colour and b/w family photos. 142pp, 8½”×11"


softback exhibition catalogue.


£22 NOW £8 75260 POETRY IN DESIGN:


The Art of Harry Leith-Ross by Erika Jaeger-Smith Harry Leith-Ross (1886-1973) was born in Mauritius to his banker father Frederick and mother Sina van Houten, who came from a family of famed Dutch artists. He studied in Paris for two years, then Cornwall to study landscape under the renowned Stanhope


Forbes. He established the New Hope arts community in Pennsylvania. He encouraged his students not to fear painting from memory and to focus on conveying mood and ideas into a single concept before painting “just one thing”. Enjoy his vibrant, colourful, powerful, realistic carefully composed oil paintings and renowned transparent watercolour technique. His work from museums and private collections has been photographed for this fine showcase of a prolific Pennsylvanian Impressionist. His use of light is a little like Edward Hopper and his themes range from harboursides, construction workers, cottages, lighthouses and towpaths to watercolours in Holland, a lone skater and winter scenes to Apples From My Garden (brought in by his wife) with strong yellow background, Golden Maple, The Fair and meadows in summer. The book reproduces over 70 of his finest works, mostly oils, 144pp softback, 9"×11½”. £20.50 NOW £8


76006 U.S. ARTISTS: Set of Three From the University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Buy all three beautiful art books and save a further £5.


£74.99 NOW £21


Picasso heard about the new venture, he sent Bernier to Spain to see the cache of paintings he had left there, and as a result the journal had a sensational launch with the coup of being able to publish new Picassos. Kandinsky was a great friend too, although Picasso and Braque ignored him. The daughter of Berthe Morisot gave the magazine her recollections of Manet, Monet and many other Impressionists, while Miro contributed his memories of boxing with Ernest Hemingway. Henry Moore, Hockney, Matisse, Goncharova, Giacometti and many others appear in these pages. 292pp, photos. $30 NOW £7.50


74243 BIRTH OF IMPRESSIONISM: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay curated


by Guy Cogeval et al


Focusing on the tumultuous period of the 1860s and 1870s, when social and political events in France influenced and were reflected in the art and politics of the state-run Salon, here are more than 100 canvases by famous masters that provide an overview of the contentious artistic community that gave rise to the innovators of the ‘New Painting’. This comprehensive book presents the sources, the birth and the transformations of Impressionism around 1874, the date of the inaugural exhibition of the group that included Boudin, Cézanne, Degas, Monet, Berthe Morisot, Pissarro and Renoir. It recalls the influence of Spanish art, the part played by the École des Batignolles and the legacy of Courbet and Millet. Each of the principal Impressionists is represented by many beloved favourites: Monet’s Gare Saint-Lazare, Pissarro’s Red Roofs, Sisley’s Snow at Louveciennes, Cézanne’s Gulf of Marseille and Renoir’s The Swing. 255 paperback pages 29cm x 25.5cm, colour. £34.95 NOW £11


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36