Joaquin Sorolla by Blanca Pons-Sorolla – Hardcover,
352 pages, Philip Wilson Publishers (January 19, 2006)
Reader review: This large Sorolla book contains reasonably
high quality images of most of the artist's important works.
The text is story-style and often moving (especially the description
of his stroke while painting a portrait), which is not surprising
as Sorolla's great granddaughter wrote it. What artists will
miss is the nearly complete exclusion of Sorolla's terrific
miniature ("apuntes") oil sketches (except for some
tiny color reproductions in the Chronology section of the book)
and virtually any technical information about the artist's methods
(If these are of interest to you, I would suggest Edmund Peel's
book "The Painter Joaquin Sorolla", now out of print
and usually pretty expensive). It seems that the book is geared
more towards the casual Sorolla enthusiast than those who are
already familiar with, and passionate about, his work. Nevertheless,
it is a very good Sorolla monograph and given its size, availability,
generous number of reproductions and reasonable price (this
is a large hardcover), I would not hesitate to recommend it.
William Bouguereau (1825-1905) was an influential
French academic painter, who taught a long succession
of gifted students, primarily at the private
Académie Julian in Paris. Among them,
Bouguereau instructed more than two hundred
young American artists. In the Studios of Paris
provides a unique look at the history of Parisian
art education during the last quarter of the
19th century and its profound influence on American
art.
This landmark publication—the first to
focus exclusively on Bouguereau and his American
pupils—presents sixty-five paintings, drawings,
and prints by the master and eleven of his most
prominent students, including Eanger Irving
Couse, Elizabeth Gardner Bouguereau, and Robert
Henri. A series of carefully researched essays
place the artists’ work in historical context
and discuss various American responses to Bouguereau’s
painting and pedagogical techniques, along with
the subsequent reception and collecting of their
work in the United States.
Bouguereau by Fronia E. Wissman –
1st Edition, Paperback, 128 pages, Pomegranate,
1996
Midwest Book Review: Fronia
Wissman's Bouguereau offers astute and
illuminating insights into his art, career,
and family life of the French artist Adolphe-William
Bouguereau (1825-1905) whose evocative visions
of a better, purer time and place earned him
a passionate following during his lifetime down
through the present. 60 full color reproductions
and 15 black & white illustrations perfectly
exemplify Bouguereau's prodigious talent in
creating works of sensual, emotional, and intellectual
appeal.
Cecilia
Beaux: American Figure Painter(Hardcover) by Sylvia
Yount (Author), Kevin Sharp (Author), Nina Auerbach (Author),
Mark Bockrath (Author) – Hardcover: 195 pages Publisher:
University of California Press; 1 edition (August 1, 2007)
At the turn of the twentieth century, the celebrated American
artist William Merritt Chase named Cecilia Beaux "not only
the greatest living woman painter, but the best that has ever
lived." While Beaux--unlike her contemporaries John Singer
Sargent and Mary Cassatt--has not fared well in modernist-driven
art history, her work has become the subject of renewed interest
on the part of art historians, collectors, and general viewers
on both sides of the Atlantic, and her forty-year career represents
a compelling and under-examined chapter in the history of American
art. Cecilia Beaux: American Figure Painter is the most comprehensive
appraisal of Beaux's talent in more than three decades. This
handsomely illustrated book presents a range of the artist's
strongest work and offers a fresh understanding of her career
by examining critical questions of gender, class, and the importance
of place. It features substantive essays which examine Beaux's
participation in the international portrait market of the 1890s,
explore the artist's professional identity and changing fortunes
through a close reading of key images, investigate Beaux's sensitivity
to the framing and display of her work. An illustrated chronology
of Beaux's life and work, compiled by Alison Bechtel Wexler,
completes the study.
Author Alice A. Carter expertly traces Cecilia Beaux’s
fascinating and unconventional life, from her privileged Philadelphia
childhood to her successful penetration into the male-dominated
inner circle of the art world of Paris, Philadelphia, and New
York. Carter reveals how Beaux’s passion for her work and
her headstrong spirit enabled her to achieve professional success
unrivaled by any other female artist--and the personal price
she paid for it.
Born in Philadelphia in 1855, Cecilia Beaux pursued an artistic
career with the same zeal as her male peers, and by the turn
of the century she had established an international reputation
and exhibited regularly. She worked with eminent artists of
her day, including Claude Monet, Winslow Homer, and John Singer
Sargent, and in 1895 she became the first full-time female faculty
member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
This is the first illustrated biography of Beaux’s work,
showcasing more than 150 paintings and drawings, including her
best known high-style portrait commissions of such notable figures
as Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt and Georges Clemenceau, as well as
later landscapes and still-life compositions. Much of this work
has rarely been seen.
Book News: Published in conjunction with an exhibition
held at the National Portrait Gallery and the Westmoreland Museum
of Art in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, during 1995 and 1996. One
of America's most sought-after portrait painters at the turn
of the century, Cecilia Beaux (1855-1942) was compared to John
Singer Sargent by contemporary critics and was internationally
admired. The 69 portraits presented here (31 color plates; the
rest in black & white), accompanied by thorough captions, stand
as evidence of her energy, insight, and genius. Annotation c.
by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.
Nicolai Fechin has long been a popular artist with other artists,
and very much sought for his out-of-print collections, which
today are quite scarce. We're pleased (from Alibris.com) to
offer the first in-print book we've ever found on this Russian
expatriate artist (1881-1955) who settled in the Taos artist
community in 1927. His ability to convey the spirit of his subject
was unrivaled by his contemporaries. From his spontaneous, vibrant
interpretations of the New Mexican landscape to his portraits
of the Balinese, his combined use of several schools of technique
defy categorizing of his work. His portraits are defined by
their air of intimacy, and his still lifes and landscapes virtually
sparkle with color and energy. 55 color plates of paintings,
sketches, wood sculptures and bronze casts. Peters, 1997. SC,
8x10, 84 pages, PC.
Nicolai
Fechin
Nicolai Fechin by Mary N Balcomb – Hardcover: 167 pages
Publisher: Fechin Art Reproductions]; 3rd ed edition (1999)
Guy Rose: American Impressionist by Will South –
Unknown Binding, 119 pages, Published by The Oakland Museum;
The Irvine Museum, Introduction by William H. Gerdts, and essay
by Jean Stern. Published by the Oakland Museum and The Irvine
Museum, 1995.
Comprehensive and well researched book on the life and art of
Guy Rose (1867-1925), California’s most important Impressionist
painter. 180 pages, 14" x 10", 120 color plates, 32
black and white photographs
Duveneck (1848-1919), most famous for his "vigorous brushwork
and bravura technique," received high praise as a portrait
and landscape painter, etcher, and teacher, yet his reputation
suffered greatly after his death. Some prominent American critics
considered him little more than an able technician. Also, a
number of his dark, opaque paintings proved physically unstable.
Neuhaus weighs the artist's strengths and limitations and presents
a more balanced view. The volume's format allows for the comfortable
arrangement of the text, 53 black-and-white illustrations, 45
handsome color plates, and research aids. Recommended for American
art history collections. —Kathleen Eagen Johnson, Sleepy
Hollow Restorations, Tarrytown, N.Y. Copyright 1987 Reed Business
Information, Inc.
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a titanic figure
in nineteenth-century British art. The father of British Symbolism
and portrait painter of his age, he forged a controversial career
that spanned the reign of Queen Victoria. This book, the first
in-depth biography of Watts, sheds new light on the pioneering
spirit and breadth of mind of the artist.
Drawing on Watts’s abundant personal correspondence
and diaries and an array of other contemporary
documents, the book chronicles the artist’s
career and personal life, including his friendships
with Edward Burne-Jones, Frederic Leighton,
William Gladstone, and Alfred Tennyson and his
relationships with a series of singular women.
The book also examines Watts’s wide reforming
zeal and political agenda as well as his role
and dealings in the Victorian art world.
Vision
of G.F. Watts by Veronica Franklin Gould
Paperback: 96 pages Publisher: The Watts Gallery
(January 25, 2007)
Accompanies a survey of his visionary works
at the Watts Gallery, July 2–October 31,
2004, Coincides with his Symbolist display at
the Tate Britian, August 2004- July 2005.
Philip de László (1869-1937), following a
meteoric rise to recognition in his native Hungary, settled
in Britain in 1907 and became the leading portrait painter in
the country, taking over from Sargent. He is known especially
as a portraitist of beautiful women, but his male portraits
(including those of four U.S. Presidents) are very forceful
and his talent was universal, including landscape, animal subjects
and children, and drawings and sketches as well as oil paintings.
This book, accompanying the first retrospective exhibition of
de László since his death, illustrates a rich
and representative selection of his work, drawn from a range
of private collections, and re-introduces this well-known but
little studied artist to a wider public. Its distinguished contributors
include Christopher Lloyd, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures;
Gábor Bellák, curator of nineteenth-century paintings
and drawings at the Hungarian National Gallery; Richard Ormond,
formerly director of the National Maritime Museum; and Christopher
Wood, well known for his books on nineteenth-century art. The
catalogue entries, by Sandra de László, contain
fascinating biographical as well as art historical information.
This book, which accompanies a retrospective exhibition at the
Imperial War Museum London in January 2005, reappraises an artist
who, at the time of his death in 1931, was probably the best-known
painter in Britain. The book reveals the full variety of William
Orpen's work from his highly accomplished portraits, his revitalization
of the nude and the conversation piece, to his extraordinary
allegories and war paintings. It analyzes the series of self-portraits,
many mocking his own character with a mixture of humor and bitterness,
that are a particular feature of his oeuvre. His experiences
as an official war artist in France from 1917 to 1919 made him
cynical of politicians. Although he painted brilliant portraits
of these very men, and of generals and war heroes, he also produced
some bitter allegories of war. The war years form the climax
of both the book and the exhibition.
Self-taught portrait painter Shoumatoff (1888-1980) captured
more than 2000 sitters, including FDR, LBJ, Lady Bird Johnson,
Rabindranath Tagore, Liberian president William Tubman and generations
of Fricks, Mellons and DuPonts. Born in Russia, she moved to
New York in 1917 with her husband
Leo, then a representative of Alexander Kerensky's provisional
government. The prosaic memoir, consisting mostly of Shoumatoff's
informal, chatty impressions of the subjects she painted, intersperses
reproductions of her art. The focus is on FDR;his second sitting
for her, on April 12, 1945, was cut short by a seizure, and
he died later that day of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her Unfinished
Portrait hangs in the "Little White House" museum
in Warm Springs, Ga. Shoumatoff's recollections of FDR's last
hours will interest history buffs. —Copyright 1991 Reed
Business Information, Inc.
The color-drenched gardens and sun-dappled nudes by Frederick
Carl Frieseke (1874-1939) have long been loved by admirers of
American Impressionism, and his paintings are treasured in museum
collections across the country. Surprisingly, this beautiful
and comprehensive volume, with more than one hundred color and
almost eighty black-and-white plates, is the first ever devoted
to his work. It is being published in conjunction with the artist's
first retrospective.
Dawn Cookson recounts interesting experiences about her life
in Florence, whilst studying with Annigonni. The book has several
fine reproductions and is well written. Unfortunately the author
spends more time recounting "her" experiences and
diffuculty finding apartments in Florence than she does talking
about Annigoni. I would still highly recommend this book to
any one interested in Pietro Annigoni. Just don't expect to
learn anything about how the artist painted (other than a recipe
for egg tempera paints).
Paul Delaroche was one of the most celebrated artists of the
first half of the nineteenth century. His major paintings, which
include Lady Jane Grey, The Princes in the Tower,
Young Christian Martyr, and other works based on historical
events, achieved widespread recognition throughout Europe. Although
Delaroche's major works continue to be popular when they are
exhibited, his name is little known among many museum goers
today. This is the first fully illustrated book to be devoted
to Delaroche since the publication of a small catalogue raisonne
after the artist's death in 1856. This is a unique study that
surveys the whole spectrum of visual representation including
paintings, drawings, refined reproductive engravings, lithographs,
photographs, and popular prints.
A Major Impressionist and Post-Impressionist, Bernhard Gutmann
(1869-1936) recorded his travels and the joys of family life
in paintings distinguished by luscious color and an exuberant
sensibility. He was not only a painter who received serious
critical acclaim during his lifetime but also a beloved teacher,
a successful illustrator, and a master of ceramic and graphic
art.
Born and educated in Germany, Gutmann arrived in the United
States at the age of twenty-three. After moving to New York
and marrying Bertha Goldman, granddaughter of the founder of
the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, he was financially
secure and free to concentrate on his art alone. The last decades
of his life were spent in Connecticut, where he raised his family,
and in traveling to Europe with his wife and daughters.
Because Gutmann had no need to sell his art, it remained with
his family rather than going to the galleries, auction houses,
and museums that would have kept it in the public eye. His work
therefore was little known from his death until his rediscovery"
in 1988, when Gutmann was lauded as "an American Gauguin." Millais:
Portraits by John Everett Millais (Editor), Malcolm
Warner, Kate Flint (Contributor), H. Matthew, Peter Funnell
– Paperback, 240 pages (March 1999)
John Everett Millais is still thought of mostly as a Pre-Raphaelite
painter, but a much longer portion of his career was devoted
to painting the portraits of the Victorian rich and famous.
Not only did this prove extraordinarily lucrative—Millais
earned what by today's standards would be millions from his
portraits—it offered one of the most talented 19th-century
painters the chance to fashion powerful and memorable images
of the people of his age. This book is the catalog to the 1999
Millais Portrait exhibition debuting at the National Gallery
in London and traveling around the United States. It is a much
more handsome production than most catalogs.
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Joaquin Sorolla
Sorolla: A Selection from His Paintings in the Hispanic Society
of America Hispanic Society Of America (Editor)
Bouguereau
Cecilia
Beaux: A Modern Painter in the Victorian Age
Cecilia Beaux and the Art of Portraiture 
Nicolai Fechin: Across Two Continents
Nicolai
Fechin
Nicolai Fechin by Mary N Balcomb – Hardcover: 167 pages
Publisher: Fechin Art Reproductions]; 3rd ed edition (1999)
The Genius of Nicolai Fechin: Recollections
by Forrest Fenn
Giovanni
Boldini: Catalogo generale dagli archivi Boldini (Libri illustrati
Rizzoli)
by Bianca Doria – Unknown Binding Publisher: Rizzoli (2000)
Language: Italian
Guy Rose: American Impressionist
Unsuspected
Genius: The Art and Life of Frank Duveneck
by Robert Neuhaus – Hardcover: 155 pages Publisher:
Chronicle Books (December 1, 1991) 
A
Brush With Grandeur: Philip Alexius de Laszlo (1869-1937)
William Orpen: Politics, Sex & Death
FDR's Unfinished Portrait: A Memoir
by Elizabeth Shoumatoff – Hardcover: 137 pages Publisher:
Univ of Pittsburgh Pr (Txt) (May 1991)
husband
Leo, then a representative of Alexander Kerensky's provisional
government. The prosaic memoir, consisting mostly of Shoumatoff's
informal, chatty impressions of the subjects she painted, intersperses
reproductions of her art. The focus is on FDR;his second sitting
for her, on April 12, 1945, was cut short by a seizure, and
he died later that day of a cerebral hemorrhage. Her Unfinished
Portrait hangs in the "Little White House" museum
in Warm Springs, Ga. Shoumatoff's recollections of FDR's last
hours will interest history buffs. —Copyright 1991 Reed
Business Information, Inc.
Frederick Carl Frieseke: The Evolution of an American Impressionist
Paul Delaroche: History Painted
Bernhard Gutmann: An American Impressionist, 1869-1936
Millais:
Portraits
