Mad Enchantment

Mad Enchantment
Author: Ross King
Publsiher: Bond Street Books
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780385684637

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Acclaimed historian Ross King paints the most nuanced, riveting and humane portrait yet of Claude Monet, arguably the most famous artist of the 20th century. We have all seen—live, in photographs, on postcards—some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world, and are among the most admired paintings of our time. Yet nobody knows the extraordinarily dramatic story behind their creation. Telling that story is the brilliant historian, Ross King—and in the process, he presents a compelling and original portrait of perhaps the most beloved artist in history. As World War I exploded within hearing distance of his house at Giverny, Monet was facing his own personal crucible. In 1911, his adored wife, Alice, had died, plunging him into deep mourning at age 71. A year later he began going blind. Then, his eldest son, Jean, fell ill and died of syphilis, and his other son was sent to the front to fight for France. Within months, a violent storm destroyed much of the garden that had been his inspiration for some 20 years. At the same time, his reputation was under attack, as a new generation of artists, led by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, were dazzling the art world and expressing disgust with Impressionism. Against all this, fighting his own self-doubt, depression and age, Monet found the wherewithal to construct a massive new studio, 70 feet long and 50 feet high, to accommodate the gigantic canvases that would, he hoped, revive him. Using letters, memoirs and other sources not employed by other biographers, and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Ross King reveals a more complex, more human, more intimate Claude Monet than has ever been portrayed, and firmly places his water lily project among the greatest achievements in the history of art.

The Judgment of Paris

The Judgment of Paris
Author: Ross King
Publsiher: Anchor Canada
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2012-01-11
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780307374967

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The fascinating new book by the author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling: a saga of artistic rivalry and cultural upheaval in the decade leading to the birth of Impressionism. If there were two men who were absolutely central to artistic life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, they were Edouard Manet and Ernest Meissonier. While the former has been labelled the “Father of Impressionism” and is today a household name, the latter has sunk into obscurity. It is difficult now to believe that in 1864, when this story begins, it was Meissonier who was considered the greatest French artist alive and who received astronomical sums for his work, while Manet was derided for his messy paintings of ordinary people and had great difficulty getting any of his work accepted at the all-important annual Paris Salon. Manet and Meissonier were the Mozart and Salieri of their day, one a dangerous challenge to the establishment, the other beloved by rulers and the public alike for his painstakingly meticulous oil paintings of historical subjects. Out of the fascinating story of their parallel careers, Ross King creates a lens through which to view the political tensions that dogged Louis-Napoleon during the Second Empire, his ignominious downfall, and the bloody Paris Commune of 1871. At the same time, King paints a wonderfully detailed and vivid portrait of life in an era of radical social change: on the streets of Paris, at the new seaside resorts of Boulogne and Trouville, and at the race courses and picnic spots where the new bourgeoisie relaxed. When Manet painted Dejeuner sur l’herbe or Olympia, he shocked not only with his casual brushstrokes (described by some as applied by a ‘floor mop’ ) but with his subject matter: top-hatted white-collar workers (and their mistresses) were not considered suitable subjects for ‘Art’. Ross King shows how, benign as they might seem today, these paintings changed the course of history. The struggle between Meissonier and Manet to see their paintings achieve pride of place at the Salon was not just about artistic competitiveness, it was about how to see the world. Full of fantastic tidbits of information (such as the use of carrier pigeons and hot-air balloons during the siege of Paris), and a colourful cast of characters that includes Baudelaire, Courbet, and Zola, with walk-on parts for Monet, Renoir, Degas, and Cezanne, The Judgment of Paris casts new light on the birth of Impressionism and takes us to the heart of a time in which the modern French identity was being forged.

An Enchantment of Ravens

An Enchantment of Ravens
Author: Margaret Rogerson
Publsiher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2017-09-26
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 9781481497589

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A skilled painter must stand up to the ancient power of the faerie courts--even as she falls in love with a faerie prince--in this gorgeous debut novel. 6 x 9.

Enchantments

Enchantments
Author: Kathryn Harrison
Publsiher: Random House Incorporated
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2012
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9781400063475

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Masha, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Rasputin, is sent to live in the imperial palace with Tsar Nicholas's family, where she tends the ailing Prince Alyosha, with whom she exchanges comforting family stories when the royal family is arrested.

Michelangelo And The Pope s Ceiling

Michelangelo And The Pope s Ceiling
Author: Ross King
Publsiher: Random House
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2012-10-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781446418833

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In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The thirty-three-year-old Michelangelo had very little experience of the physically and technically taxing art of fresco; and, at twelve thousand square feet, the ceiling represented one of the largest such projects ever attempted. Nevertheless, for the next four years he and a hand-picked team of assistants laboured over the vast ceiling, making thousands of drawings and spending back-breaking hours on a scaffold fifty feet above the floor. The result was one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. This fascinating book tells the story of those four extraordinary years and paints a magnificent picture of day-to-day life on the Sistine scaffolding - and outside, in the upheaval of early sixteenth-century Rome.

Defiant Spirits

Defiant Spirits
Author: Ross King
Publsiher: D & M Publishers
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2010-09-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1553658078

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Beginning in 1912, Defiant Spirits traces the artistic development of Tom Thomson and the future members of the Group of Seven, Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A. Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J. E. H. MacDonald, and Frederick Varley, over a dozen years in Canadian history. Working in an eclectic and sometimes controversial blend of modernist styles, they produced what an English critic celebrated in the 1920s as the “most vital group of paintings” of the 20th century. Inspired by Cézanne, Van Gogh and other modernist artists, they tried to interpret the Ontario landscape in light of the strategies of the international avant-garde. Based after 1914 in the purpose-built Studio Building for Canadian Art, the young artists embarked on what Lawren Harris called “an all-engrossing adventure”: travelling north into the anadian Shield and forging a style of painting appropriate to what they regarded as the unique features of Canada’s northern landscape. Rigorously researched and drawn from archival documents and letters, Defiant Spirits constitutes a “group biography,” reconstructing the men’s aspirations, frustrations and achievements. It details not only the lives of Tom Thomson and the members of the Group of Seven but also the political and social history of Canada

Oil Painting Secrets From a Master

Oil Painting Secrets From a Master
Author: Linda Cateura
Publsiher: Watson-Guptill
Total Pages: 150
Release: 1995-09-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0823032795

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Some of the most popular art instruction books ever written have been based on student notes culled over the years from actual workshop sessions, with all their power and immediacy - and with practical, on-to-one contact between student and teacher. This is such a book. For more than two years, Linda Cateura has pursued teacher / artist David A. Leffel, notebook in hand, as he critiqued the work of students. Linda Cateura's succinct notes capture his insights, philosophy, painting hints, and general comments. Leffel's classic, painterly, twentieth-century old master style, much in the manner of Rembrandt or Chardin, affords ample illustration of the ideas expressed - through his many paintings, details, demonstrations, and diagrams, almost all in color. No matter what your level of ability, there is something here to apply to your own work, ideas that will cause you to rething your own ways of painting, hints to save you effort, or solutions to persistent painting problems.

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators

Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators
Author: DK
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2020-09-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780744035261

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The only instructional book on watercolor you will ever need. Trying your hand at watercolor painting? Or looking to advance your range of artistic skills? Watercolor Techniques for Artists and Illustrators is for you. Beginning with the basics - such as honing your observational skills, choosing a subject, and learning about composition - the book then takes a comprehensive, in-depth look at techniques to expand your repertoire. With expert advice from artists and illustrators working in a range of styles - from classic to cutting-edge contemporary -this book will equip you with the skills and confidence to develop your own style and grow as an artist.