The Private Lives Of Pictures

A novel art history of England told through the artworks on display in domestic space over hundreds of years. The Private Lives of Pictures offers a new history of British art, seen from the perspective of the home. Focusing on the nineteenth and early-twentieth-century, the book takes the reader on a tour of an imaginary Victorian or Edwardian house, stopping in each room to look at the pictures on the walls. Nicholas Tromans opens up the intimate history of art in everyday life as he examines a diverse array of issues, including how pictures were chosen for each room, how they were displayed, and what role they played in interior design. Superbly illustrated, The Private Lives of Pictures will appeal to readers interested in both art and social history, as well as the history of interiors.

New York Times Bestseller “Anyone who has ever lost themselves in Monet’s color-saturated gardens or swooned over Degas’s dancers will enjoy this revealing group portrait of the artists who founded the Impressionist movement. . . . For the armchair dilettante, as well as the art-history student, this is lively, required reading.” — People The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world’s most popular group of artists, including Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot, and Mary Cassatt. Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, today astonishing sums are paid for their paintings. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well does the world know the Impressionists as people? Sue Roe's colorful, lively, poignant, and superbly researched biography, The Private Lives of the Impressionists, follows an extraordinary group of artists into their Paris studios, down the rural lanes of Montmartre, and into the rowdy riverside bars of a city undergoing monumental change. Vivid and unforgettable, it casts a brilliant, revealing light on this unparalleled society of genius colleagues who lived and worked together for twenty years and transformed the art world forever with their breathtaking depictions of ordinary life.

"As the sixteenth century opened, members of the patriciate were increasingly withdrawing from trade, desiring to be seen as "gentlemen in fact" as well as "gentlemen in name." The author considers why this was so and explores such wide-ranging themes as attitudes toward wealth and display, the articulation of family identity, the interplay between the public and the private, and the emergence of characteristically Venetian decorative practices and styles of art and architecture. Brown focuses new light on the visual culture of Venetian women - how they lived within, furnished, and decorated their homes; what spaces were allotted to them; what their roles and domestic tasks were; how they dressed; how they raised their children; and how they entertained. Bringing together both high arts and low, the book examines all aspects of Renaissance material culture."--BOOK JACKET.

Today’s home is filled with pieces from Pottery Barn, IKEA, and Crate & Barrel, and we pore over glossy catalogs in hopes of achieving the “modern interior.” This idealized aesthetic is the subject of Penny Sparke’s study, as she explores the style in both its absolute form and the diverse decorating approaches seen in the contemporary home. The shift from Victorian to modern style, The Modern Interior reveals, was not as simple and smooth as it is often perceived and the book probes the complicated history behind that transition. Sparke examines the work of such designers as Marcel Breuer, Frank Lloyd Wright, Charles and Ray Eames, and Mies van der Rohe, and draws upon design examples from the United States and Europe to reveal that, unlike the designed exteriors of buildings and institutions, the idea of the “interior” has been a largely abstract conception promoted through exhibitions, retail stores, and mass media. A comprehensive and in-depth investigation of the design environments we live and play in, The Modern Interior will be essential reading for all scholars and interested observers of architecture and modern design culture.