Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-77), a printmaker and topographical watercolorist, was brought to London from his native Prague by the Earl of Arundel in 1636 and became the first great etcher to practice in England. Hollar's range of interests was enormous―from views of London to portraits to costume studies of the fashionable classes to book illustrations. He produced nearly 2,800 prints and numerous watercolors and drawings during his career. This handsome book portrays Hollar as a fascinating and influential artist with outstanding ability as a draftsman. It begins with an introduction by Richard T. Godfrey that interweaves information about Hollar's life with observations on his technique and artistic context. The book presents Hollar's etchings, watercolors, and drawings in a chronological fashion, beginning with the artist's early views of Germany and the celebrated series of drawings he undertook for the Earl of Arundel, moving to his London years and his book illustrations for publishers there, and ending with his panoramic watercolor views of the British colony at Tangier. Approximately 215 illustrations, most accompanied by full commentary, include not only Hollar's most famous works but also prints and drawings never before published. The book also illustrates works by artists who influenced Hollar, were influenced by him, or were his contemporaries.

Wenceslaus Hollar: A Bohemian Artist in England (Series; 5)

Arts & Photography

Godfrey, Richard T.

Individual Artists

YC British Art

Apocalyptic, revolutionary, visionary, and lyrical―these words all describe the imagination of William Blake. One of the most gifted rebels of the Romantic era, Blake was an accomplished poet, painter, experimental engraver, and philosopher. In particular, the series of illuminated books he created from the 1780s onward remains one of the most heroic achievements of British Romanticism. This book examines Blake's stupendous achievement by discussing and displaying some fifty works out of the Paul Mellon collection at the Yale Center for British Art. These include a number of Blake's illuminated books of poetry―the pastoral Songs of Innocence, the prophetic Songs of Experience, Book of Urizen, Book of Thel, and America a Prophecy, as well as plates that comprise the unique, hand-colored copy of Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion, Blake's master synthesis of visual imagery and prophetic verse. Blake's work in other media is represented by tempera paintings and watercolors from his series of illustrations to the Bible and a selection of watercolor illustrations to the Poems of Thomas Gray, which reveal the range and wit of Blake's genius at interpreting other poets' work and the brilliance of his mature watercolor technique. Also included in the book are Blake's late engraved illustrations to the Book of Job, Dante's Divine Comedy, and The Pastorals of Virgil. In an introductory essay, Patrick Noon discusses the history of the collection and Paul Mellon's role in promoting Blake studies.

Human Form Divine: William Blake from the Paul Mellon Collection

Noon, Patrick

In 1966, American collector and philanthropist Paul Mellon presented to Yale University a glorious collection of British paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, and rare books. Subsequently he provided funds for the celebrated Louis Kahn building to house the collection, bestowed additional works of art, and established an endowment for continuing acquisitions. This lavishly illustrated book presents eighty masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art―a collection of British art that is unrivalled outside the United Kingdom for either size or comprehensiveness. In his introduction, Patrick McCaughey describes Mellon’s lifelong passion for British culture and the imprint of his taste on the nature of the collection: the love of sport and the outdoor life that led him to Stubbs, for example, and the dislike of pomp that led him to the informal delights of the British "conversation piece." The book reflects the latest scholarship on individual paintings by such leading British artists as Hogarth, Gainsborough, Stubbs, Turner, Constable, and Bonington, and by foreign painters―from Canaletto to Whistler―who made rich contributions to the development of British art. The volume spans five centuries and groups the paintings by themes ranging from "Court and Country" in the seventeenth century through "The Romantic Vision" in the nineteenth, to "Modern High and Low" in the twentieth. This book is an expanded version of the catalogue accompanying an exhibition that will tour several museums in Australia in 1998. Copublished with the Yale Center for British Art

This Other Eden: Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art

Warner, Malcolm

Alexander, Julia Marciari

History & Criticism

Outside Britain itself, the richest holdings of British art are found in American collections. This extraordinary presentation of some 85 works pays tribute to this strength of American collecting, while offering a fresh and engaging account of the history of painting in Britain from the sixteenth century to the present. The selection is drawn from collections from around the United States, both public and private, and includes spectacular pictures from the Yale Center for British Art and the Huntington Art Collections in California--the two leading collections of British art in America. Among the highlights are such masterpieces as Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria with her dwarf, Sir Jeffrey Hudson, William Hogarth’s Beggar’s Opera, Thomas Gainsborough’s Blue Boy, Henry Fuseli’s Nightmare, John Constable’s Hadleigh Castle,J. M. W. Turner’s Staffa, Fingal’s Cave, and William Holman Hunt’s Lady of Shalott.Following introductory essays by Malcolm Warner on anglophilia and art, and by Robyn Asleson on the history of collecting British art in the States, each painting is reproduced in color, with a discussion of its artistic importance and the circumstances of its crossing the Atlantic.

Great British Paintings from American Collections: Holbein to Hockney

Warner, Dr. Malcolm

Asleson, Robyn

Among the Whores and Thieves: William Hogarth and The Beggar's Opera

Canaletto to Constable: Paintings of Town and Country from the Yale Center for British Art

Roman, Cynthia

Roide, Carrie

Roider, Carrie

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century

Forrester, Gillian

Wilcox, Scott

O'Neill, Morna

Sloan, Kim

This book investigates the different cultural roles played by photographs of Indian architecture from the latter half of the nineteenth century, an inquiry stretching from their pre-history to their migration into book illustrations, calendar art, and religious imagery. Beyond the apparent purposes of these images - as picturesque views, scientific records of an architectural past, political memorials, travel mementos, textbook vignettes - deeper considerations influenced the way their makers worked in selecting, framing, composing, and populating their representations. Shaping the viewer's thinking about what they represented, these images remain enduring records of a way of seeing, of minds as well as monuments, and exist today as artefacts of the visual culture of colonialism. Twelve essays from scholars working in several disciplines (history, anthropology, art history, and the history of photography) show how photographs of architecture reveal the inescapable ways in which the practice of image making is aligned with the purposes of power, the presumptions accompanying the encounter with strangeness, the internal order of the colonial and the scientific mind, and even our metaphysical dispositions toward the world.

Traces of India: Photography, Architecture, and the Politics of Representation, 1850 1900

Maria Antonella Pelizzari

History

The return of Charles II to the English throne after eleven years of Interregnum heralded the beginning of a new era in which the court was characterized by the licentious behavior of the new king. Edited by the authors of the critically acclaimed Painted Ladies: Women at the Court of Charles II (2002), this book brings together ten distinguished scholars of history, literature, music, theatre, and art to explore the political and cultural implications of the court’s transgressive new character. With particular reference to the perception and representation of women, it offers a varied examination of topics including popular prints and broadsheets; court masque; poetry and painted portraits; and the operation of women in the political sphere.

Politics, Transgression, and Representation at the Court of Charles II (Volume 18) (Studies in British Art)

Coinciding with the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, this multi-disciplinary volume chronicles the iconography of sugar, slavery, and the topography of Jamaica from the beginning of British rule in 1655 to the aftermath of emancipation in the 1840s. Focusing on the visual and material culture of slavery and emancipation in Jamaica, it offers new perspectives on art, music, and performance in Afro-Jamaican society and on the Jewish diaspora in the Caribbean. Central to the book is Sketches of Character (1837–38)—a remarkable series of lithographs by the Jewish Jamaican artist Isaac Mendes Belisario—the earliest visual representation of the masquerade form Jonkonnu. Innovative scholarship traces the West African roots of Jonkonnu through its evolution in Jamaica and continuing transformation today; offers a unique portrait of Jamaican culture at a pivotal historical moment; and provides a new model for interpreting the visual culture of empire.

Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds

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