From 1874 to 1882, John Singer Sargent produced more than 200 paintings and water-colours aside from portraiture, including figures in landscape settings, architectural studies, seascapes, subject paintings, and studies after old masters. This book discusses these pictures. Each painting is documented with exhibition history and bibliography.

My Dear Mr. Stalin is the first publication that contains the complete correspondence between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph V. Stalin. This collection of more than three hundred hot-war messages, never before fully available in any language, is an invaluable primary source for understanding the relationship that developed between these two great world leaders during a time of supreme world crisis. The correspondence, secret at the time, begins with a letter Roosevelt wrote to Stalin offering aid to the Soviet Union following Hitler's surprise attack in 1941. It ends with a message that was an attempt to minimise the differences between the two leaders, approved by Roosevelt only minutes before his death in 1945. The book traces the evolution of their unique relationship, revealing the statesmanship of the two men and their thinking about the grave events of their time. An informative introduction to the volume and generous annotations set the letters in context.

Born in 1895 in a remote fishing village in Spain, Cristobal Balenciaga learned sewing and tailoring at his mother's knee. By 1937, the talented and persistent young man had opened his own design salon in Paris, and in the years following World War II, he emerged as a designer to be reckoned with in the world of haute couture. The House of Balenciaga grew to serve an international clientele from locations in Paris, Madrid, and Barcelona, and from 1937 to its closing in 1968 created some of the most outstanding and innovative examples of French and Spanish haute couture of the era. This beautifully illustrated book presents nearly 70 Balenciaga creations for day and evening, along with 25 hats, from the extraordinary archives of the Texas Fashion Collection of the University of North Texas. The book also includes striking fashion photographs from Vogue magazine and Harper's Bazaar by Richard Avedon and Louise Dahl-Wolfe. A series of essays explores many aspects of the designer's work, among them his contributions to fashion history; connections with such other prominent designers as Hubert de Givenchy and Oscar de la Renta; important relationships with Neiman Marcus and fashion buyer Bert de Winter in Dallas; and his close friend and client Claudia Heard de Osborne.

Late in his career Thomas Gainsborough became preoccupied with the theme of the cottage door, and he created a group of paintings and drawings that show rustic figures clustered around the open door of a cottage set in a deeply wooded landscape. Often seen as exemplars of the rural idyll, these works were among the first landscape paintings to reflect the eighteenth-century aesthetic of sensibility. As a way of seeing, sensibility valued nature for its innocence and simplicity, and images, such as Gainsborough’s cottage subjects, for their power to move the viewer. This lovely book brings together the cottage door paintings and essays that discuss Gainsborough’s departure from the more naturalistic style of his earlier career and that place his new concern with sentimentalism and artificiality in the context of sensibility and the growing interest in expressive, even sensational, visual spectacles. To this end, contributors to the volume investigate new viewing practices associated with sensibility, the meaning of the cottage for Gainsborough and his contemporaries, the artist’s creation of affecting landscapes through the use of peasant subjects, and his theatrical treatment of these subjects in order to heighten his viewers’ emotional responses.

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was a woman of extraordinary talent who carved for herself a career within the art world of nineteenth-century Paris. She was one of only a handful of women who exhibited with both the Paris Salon and the influential and innovative Impressionists. Her work, considered highly representative of the Impressionist movement, depicts the world of the bourgeoise: their clothes, their life-style, their surroundings and their relationships. Through her unusual talent, the everyday life of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie becomes tangible. In this beautiful book, around one hundred paintings from museums and private collections around the world are reproduced full-page and in colour, accompanied by original commentaries, which follow the artist's career from her training with Corot to her final work. The book examines her subtle, refined artistry, focused on the theme of women and children, and her use of pastel colours that recalls Watteau, Boucher and Fragonard. Her life and personality are discussed in detail, and the originality of her art — through its themes and technique — is highlighted, revealing its influence and its links with that of such illustrious contemporaries as Monet and Renoir. The exhibition that this book accompanies is the first retrospective of Morisot's work to be held in Paris for nearly half a century.

Oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, created at speed and in the heat of invention with a colourful loaded brush, convey all the spontaneity of the great Flemish painter's creative process. This ravishing book draws from both private and public collections to present in full colour 40 of Rubens's oil sketches. Viewers will find in these informal paintings an enchanting intimacy and gain a new appreciation of Rubens's capacity for invention and improvisation, and of his special genius for dramatic design and colouristic brilliance. The book investigates the role of the oil sketch in Rubens's work; the development of the artist's themes and narratives in his multiple sketches; and the history of the appreciation of his oil sketches. It also explores some of the unique aspects of his techniques and materials. By revealing the oil sketches as the most direct record of Rubens's creative process, the book presents him as the greatest and most fluent practitioner of this vibrant and vital medium. This book is the catalogue of the exhibition that appears at the Bruce Museum, Greenwich, Connecticut; the Berkeley Art Museum; and the Cincinnati Art Museum. The exhibition at the Bruce Museum coincides with the Metropolitan Museum's exhibition of Rubens's Drawings, and a number of joint events have been arranged.

Mark Wilson Jones explores how the architects of ancient Rome approached design. Drawing on new archaeological discoveries and his own analyses of Roman monuments, the author discusses how the ancient architects dealt with the principles of architecture and the practicalities of construction as they engaged in the creative process.

This is the second volume of the catalogue raisonne of the work of the American painter John Singer Sargent (1856-1925). It comprises over 150 formal portraits and portrait sketches in oil and watercolour that he painted between 1889 and 1900. The catalogued works have been grouped into chronological sections, each with its own introduction to set the particular group in context. In addition, an overall introduction places Sargent in the context of European portraiture of the past and of his own time. Each work is documented in depth: entries include traditional data about the painting or watercolour; details of the work's provenance, exhibition history, and bibliography; a short biography of the sitter; a discussion of the circumstances in which the work was created; and a critical discussion of its subject matter, style, and significance in Sargent's career. With very few exceptions, all the works are reproduced in colour. There is also an illustrated inventory of Sargent's studio props and accessories and a cross-referenced checklist of the portraits in which they appear.

An illustrated and comprehensive account of the history of Chinese painting from prehistoric times to the 21st century. It should be of interest to students and general readers who wish to gain an in-depth knowledge of Chinese painting.

From about 1425, artists in the region which is now Belgium and The Netherlands created paintings which were startling in their realism and innovative approach. Published to accompany an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this book celebrates one of the great epochs of western art, from the work of the inventor of oil painting, Jan van Eyck, to that of the highly original genius, Peter Bruegel. More than 100 colour reproductions, with individual commentaries, present the accomplishments of the major figures of the period, including Robert Campin, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David and Hans Memling. Essays by specialists in the field discuss various aspects of the subject, and biographies are provided for all the artists represented, together with comparative illustrations of prints and paintings from collections other than that of The Metropolitan.

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was one of the most important decorative artists working in Paris at the turn of the century. His distinctive and original posters and his decorative panels in le style Mucha became almost synonymous with French Art Nouveau. The admirer and iconographer of Sarah Bernhardt, he was also well known as the creator of familiar advertisements and as a book illustrator. Yet there was much more to Mucha's achievement than this. At the height of his career as a decorative artist, he became convinced that art should serve ideas, he became chief artistic and cultural adviser to the interwar Czech government, and he completed a major and controversial fresco cycle, the Slav Epic, as well as portraits and large symbolic paintings. This book — the first full-scale treatment of Mucha's oeuvre — includes discussions and reproductions of paintings, posters, panneaux decoratifs, pastels, drawings, and illustrations from throughout his career. In addition, the authors provide essays on Mucha's Paris years; his association with Sarah Bernhardt; the importance of American patronage on his later work; his graphic and painterly techniques; and the problems connected with the conservation of the large canvases. This lavishly illustrated book is the catalogue for an exhibition of Mucha's work that will tour the United States, beginning in San Diego in 1998.

Discussing the development of Greek architecture in the Aegean and other Greek lands from its earliest beginnings around 3000 BC to the first century BC. The temples of the Hellenic age are discussed, as are domestic Greek architecture, town planning, theatres and fortifications.

French architecture of the 18th century — which exhibited great technical ability and refined taste — influenced architectural style throughout Europe. This book is a survey of the French architecture of the period. It begins with the origins of the style moderne under the last years of Louis XIV, discusses the end of Rococo and the return to antiquity, and concludes with the Revolutionary architecture and the house of Madame Recamier. Kalnein describes the development of palace and hotel architecture by the two great architects de Cotte and Boffrand, discussing such large urban projects as the reconstruction of Rennes and the Places Royales. He traces the return to antiquity (which began when the scholars of the Academic d'Architecture were sent to Rome), the revolutionary architecture with its grand, but never executed, projects, and the shift from neoclassicism to early romanticism. Kalnein also examines the decorative arts of the period, which became even more important than architecture in the Rococo period. Focusing on such architects as Boffrand, Gabriel, and Redoux, he shows how a study of their building decoration illuminates the evolution of style moderne, the battle between Rococo and Neoclassicism, and the dissemination of French styles throughout Europe.

The magnificent bronze doors of Hildesheim Cathedral, the ivory, gold, enamelled and bejewelled book covers made to contain superbly illuminated manuscripts, the startling reliquary caskets made in the shape of the part of the body supposed to be contained within them — these and other sacred objects were contained within church treasuries and cloisters in the early Middle Ages in Europe. This book traces the development of these so-called Minor Arts and the major role they played alongside the other pictorial arts and architectural sculpture of the period.

Aims to provide a comprehensive guide to all forms of pictorial art — from wall and panel paintings to stained glass windows, mosaics and embroidery — and sets them against the historical and theological influences of the age. This study covers the period from 800 to 1200.

Roman sculpture was an integral part of Roman life, and the Romans placed statues and reliefs in their flora, basilicas, temples and public baths as well as in their houses, villas, gardens and tombs. In this illustrated book, Diana Kleiner discuses all the major public and private monuments in Rome, as well as many less well-known monuments in the capital and elsewhere in the empire. She examines art commissioned by the imperial elite as well as by private patrons, including freedmen and slaves and also highlights monuments honouring women and children. Kleiner demonstrates that the sociala, ethnic and geographical diversity of Roman patronage led to an art that was eclectic and characterised by varying styles, often tied to the social status of the patron, but she also examines the interrelations between works produced for different kinds of patrons. Kleiner begins with a long thematic introduction that describes Rome and its empire, characterises patrons from the capital and the provinces, discusses the position of the artist in Roman society and the materials he used, and presents a history of the study of Roman art. The remaining chapters constitute a chronological examination of Roman sculpture from the foundation of Rome in 753 BC to the transfer of the capital to Constantinople in AD 330. In each period the monuments are divided by type, for example portraiture, state relief sculpture, the art of freedmen and provincial art. Throughout, Kleiner treats Roman Sculpture in its cultural, political and social contexts and, wherever possible, as an element of the architectural commplex in which it was set.

This book presents an historical overview of women and gender in Islam. It is written from a feminist perspective, using the analytic tools of contemporary gender studies. The results of its investigations cast new light on the issues covered.

Presents an overall view of the history and changing character of Early Christian and Byzantine architecture, from Rome and Milan to North Africa, Constantinople, Greece and the Balkans and from Egypt and Jerusalem to the villages and monasteries of Syria, Asia Minor, Armenia and Mesopotamia.

This handsome book recounts the historical development of one city republic, Prato in Tuscany, from the eleventh through the fourteenth century. In telling the story of Prato's origins, construction, and demise, Alick McLean considers the planning, art, architecture, politics, faith, and daily life of Prato and its citizens, showing how major historical events and trends in the Italian middle ages were experienced within the architecture and streetscapes of this particular place.McLean's meticulous research is supported by a rich array of stunning new photography, plans, and maps. Together they provide a clear picture of what differentiates Italy's medieval communes from its ancient cities: the interest in economic growth rather than exclusively centralized military and administrative hegemony. This history of urban form in Prato shows how the commune sought to fashion a democratic version of urban life, one based primarily on rational, systematic, and legislative order, rather than religious belief and private interests, and it examines what happened to that experiment.

«Josef Albers' «Interaction of Color» is a masterwork in art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this influential book presents Albers' singular explanation of complex colour theory principles. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 colour plates, «Interaction of Color» first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten colour studies, and has remained in print ever since. With over a quarter of a million copies sold in its various editions since 1963, «Interaction of Color» remains an essential resource. This new edition presents a significantly expanded selection of close to sixty colour studies alongside Albers' original text, demonstrating such principles as colour relativity, intensity, and temperature; vibrating and vanishing boundaries; and the illusion of transparency and reversed grounds. A celebration of the longevity and unique authority of Albers' contribution, this landmark edition will find new audiences in studios and classrooms around the world.»