In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: ‘There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.
In celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of one of Victorian Britain’s greatest thinkers, the art critic and social reformer John Ruskin, the distinguished Ruskinian Robert Hewison introduces Ruskin’s ideas and values through revelatory studies of the people and issues that shaped his thought, and the ideas and values that in turn were shaped by his writings and personality. Beginning with an exploration of the rich tradition of European art that stimulated his imagination, and to which he responded in his own skilful drawings, Ruskin and his Contemporaries follows the uniquely visual dimension of his thinking from the aesthetic, religious and political foundations laid by his parents to his difficult personal and critical relationship with Turner, and his encounters with the art and architecture of Venice. Victor Hugo makes a surprising appearance as Ruskin develops his ideas on the relationship between art and society. Ruskin’s role as a contemporary art critic is explored in two chapters on Holman Hunt, one focussing on the Pre-Raphaelite’s The Awakening Conscience, one examining his later Triumph of the Innocents. The development of Ruskin’s role as a social critic is traced through his teaching at the London Workingmen’s College and his foundation of the Guild of St George, a reforming society that continues to this day. Oscar Wilde came under his personal influence, as did Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust. The evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin are shown to have been deeply unsettling to Ruskin’s worldview. The book concludes with a demonstration of the profound influence of the Paradise Myth on all of Ruskin’s writings, followed by an exploration of the concept of cultural value that shows why Ruskin’s ruling principle: `There is no wealth but Life’ is as relevant to the 21st century as it was to the 19th.
‘One of the very few necessary and inevitable utterances of the century.’ William Morris, in the Preface. The Nature of Gothic started life as a chapter in Ruskin’s masterwork, The Stones of Venice. Ruskin came to lament the ‘Frankenstein monsters’ of Victorian buildings with added Gothic which ‘The Stones’ inspired; but despite his misgivings the original moral purpose of his writing had not fallen on stony ground. The Nature of Gothic, the last chapter of the second volume, had marked his progression from art critic to social critic; in it he found the true seam of his thought, and it was quickly recognised for the revolutionary writing it was. As Morris himself put it, The Nature of Gothic ‘pointed out a new road on which the world should travel’; and in its indictment of meaningless modern labour and its celebration of medieval architecture it could be called the foundation stone of Morris’s aesthetic and purpose in life. 40 years after he first read it, Morris chose Ruskin’s text for one of the first books to be published at his Kelmscott Press, using his own Golden type. It is one of the summits of his career, and one of the most beautiful books ever published.
Few books can so completely sum up an era. The Kelmscott Nature of Gothic encapsulates the meeting of two remarkable minds and embodies their influence in word, image and design. But more than that, Ruskin’s words are increasingly relevant for our times. In this facsimile edition, the first ever made of this rare book, the reader can fully appreciate their importance and their legacy, as understood by one of the most potent visual imaginations to have worked in Britain.
In this enlarged edition, essays by leading scholars, Robert Hewison (who was one of Ruskin’s successors as Slade Professor of Fine Art at Oxford University), Tony Pinkney (Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University) and Robert Brownell (lecturer, stained glass maker and author of Marriage of Inconvenience) explain the importance of this book for Ruskin, for Morris and for us today.
Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens’ London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colours. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians’ perception of colour and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life. Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians’ new attitudes to colour through a multi-disciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key ‘chromatic’ moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colours of the past, the sumptuous colours of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colours that defined the end of the century.
Few, if any, cities have a literary history as rich as that of London. Writers have written about it; and lived, loved, stayed and died there. Here are 111 stories to be revealed. Among them are the lives of writers and their characters, and the plots and venue. Where can you see the first printed book in the western world, or visit the library with no books? Where did two poets marry secretly and then flee to Italy; and what happened when Sigmund Freud met Salvador Dalí? What is the mystery of the signed copy of Mein Kampf?
This is a guide to the capital unlike any other – not only enlightening to residents who may have thought that they knew their city (and their books), but the visitor, too. These are sights you shouldn’t miss – but which you’re unlikely to find without this book.
In 1851 John Ruskin came to the defence of the young artists of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood by writing two letters to The Times, refuting widespread criticism of their paintings. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet entitled Pre-Raphaelitism, beginning almost a decade of public support for the work of William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and their associates.
Already established as one of the leading writers on art, he took a personal risk in defending the Pre- Raphaelite cause, but saw a parallel in the hostile reaction to the paintings of his artistic idol J. M. W. Turner. In Millais especially, Ruskin hoped to nurture a worthy successor in landscape painting, arguing that the Pre-Raphaelites’ attention to truth and detail offered the opportunity to establish a “new and noble school” of British art.
This is the first compilation of all of Ruskin’s published writings relating to the Pre-Raphaelites, beginning with the celebrated passage in the first volume of Modern Painters (1843) exhorting young artists to “go to nature in all …. rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing,” later claimed by Hunt to have been an inspiration. As well as Pre- Raphaelitism (1851), rarely reprinted since, and the fourth of the 1853 Edinburgh lectures, it includes all the comments on paintings in the annual Academy Notes (1855-9) which pertain to Pre-Raphaelitism, underlining Ruskin’s significant contribution to the movement’s popular success and the widespread acceptance of its principles. From the period after 1860, when Ruskin was concentrating more on social issues, come the the little-known articles published in the Nineteenth Century magazine under the title The Three Colours of Pre-Raphaelitism (1878), and a number of lectures, including the last of his Slade Lectures, The Art of England (1883), delivered just a few years before his mental faculties failed.
Edited with a commentary and preface by Stephen Wildman, Director of the Ruskin Library and Research Centre, University of Lancaster, and with an introduction by Robert Hewison, one of Ruskin’s successors as Slade Professor of Art at the University of Oxford.
A full-size facsimile of John Ruskin’s as yet unpublished book of pressed plants with notes, collected and compiled by Ruskin during 1844 from the mountains and forests around Chamonix, France. This rare example of a herbier to be reproduced and published is accompanied with a second volume of notes and commentary. Here, Ruskin’s full, scientific explanations are fully commented on in the light of modern botanical knowledge.
Professors David Ingram and Stephen Wildman provide an introduction, illuminating essays and detailed notes and commentary on Ruskin’s herbier.
Since the end of the 1990s, through her videos, sculptures, photographs, art installations, and performances, the internationally acclaimed Brazilian artist Cinthia Marcelle (b. 1974) has been critically examining the established and hierarchical social structures upon which our daily lives are built. Marcelle uses collective action as the medium through which to break down rigid mechanisms and organisational forms and to renegotiate new ones. This publication is the first comprehensive monograph of Marcelle’s work and provides multidimensional and analytical insight into her work, reflecting the complex societal discourse it explores. It was created through the artist’s close cooperation with the Museum Marta Herford and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP).
Text by Anna Roberta Goetz, Eungie Joo, Leandro Muniz, Adriano Pedrosa, Kathleen Rahn, Ana Raylander Mártis dos Anjos, Isabella Rjeille
Text in English and German.
Dramatic biographies of 50 famous generals and admirals of the Union and Confederacy, with full-colour portraits. Exciting illustrations of nearly seventy important battles, including the complete series of Kurz and Allison prints. Informative chronology of significant events illustrated with authentic documents. Accurate full-page maps show the location of every momentous battle of the Civil War. Official uniforms with rank and grade insignia and buttons. Authentic drawings of all the major weaponry, including muskets, rifles, revolvers, swords, and artillery.
And more!
October 21, 1982. Three singers stand on the steps of the High Court with large cheques and broken dreams. The women are Annie (Annabel Leventon, the book’s author), GB (Gaye Brown), and Di-Di (Diane Langton). Their dream was of a British three-woman rock band, unique and different from anything that had gone before. They called themselves Rock Bottom. They were raunchy, rude and hilarious – the contemporary media described them as ‘a cross between the female Rolling Stones and the female Marx Brothers’ – and they nearly made it.
Until Thames Television stole everything and made a major award-winning series called Rock Follies, about them, based on them, but without them. It made stars of the three lookalikes playing them. And they lost everything.
A common enough tale of showbiz betrayal. Except that they fought back. At the offset of the Court trial, the Head of Drama at Thames TV sarcastically quipped, ‘three little actresses against the might of EMI?’ Forget it, the three ladies were told. Move on. They didn’t. They took the case to the High Court and won. Breach of Confidence is now on the Statute Books and it has become one of the defining cases in Intellectual Property.
The Real Rock Follies is a real-life story of youthful trust betrayed, dreams of stardom dashed and cruel lessons learnt. The three girls, then in their late twenties, learned too late that in the harsh showbiz world you can hardly trust anyone, not even your friends. However, despite everything, they got the last laugh. Their promising career couldn’t be returned to them but they enjoyed the huge satisfaction (both emotional and financial) that the ruling confirmed that the creative concept behind Rock Follies was fully theirs.
Meet Albert Einstein and find out about his life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography. Join physicist Albert Einstein on his journey of scientific discovery and see how the Nobel Prize winner forever changed the way we think about energy, gravity, and the world around us. Children will learn about Einstein’s training, his struggle to find a teaching job, and how he developed his famous theory of relativity. The book also looks at his personal life, including his family, his emigration to America after the Nazis came to power, and his love of music. Appealing illustrations, information on his breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how Einstein left his mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet artist Frida Kahlo and find out about her life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo created vibrantly hued paintings – and led an equally colourful life. Known for her self-portraits, she became a feminist icon whose work now sells for millions of dollars. This lively biography looks at Frida’s childhood – including her bout with polio – as well as her devotion to Mexican culture and political causes; the bus accident that left her in chronic pain but also sparked her career; and her marriage to Diego Rivera. Appealing illustrations, information on her breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how Frida left her mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet Galileo Galilei and discover the story of his life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography – narrated by the scientist himself. Astronomer, physicist, and philosopher Galileo Galilei was referred to as “The Father of Modern Science,” because of his groundbreaking research. Making observations about nature, and using mathematics to back them up, he proved the Copernican Theory true: the Sun, not the Earth, is the centre of the universe. Join Galileo on his pioneering journey to see why his work had such long-lasting implications, and why the Catholic Church even condemned him for heresy. Ages: 6 plus
Meet Leonardo da Vinci and discover the story of his life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography. Why could Leonardo da Vinci paint the human form so accurately, in all its beauty? How was he educated and trained as an artist? What inspired his most famous work, including The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa? And what fun machine did he invent? Find out about this unique artist and the many areas, from architecture to flight, he drew on and influenced. Appealing illustrations, information on his breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how da Vinci left his mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz at the end of the book help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet Pablo Picasso and discover the story of his life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography – narrated by the artist himself. Pablo Picasso redefined 20th-century art, moving from realistic portrayals and experiments in colour to primitivism and cubism, in which he deconstructed the subjects he painted. This engaging first-person biography explores the unique career of this master, who began learning to draw and paint at just seven years old. It delves into Picasso’s training, including at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona; his various stylistic periods, from naturalism to surrealism; his experience living in Paris under German occupation during World War II; his many marriages; and his profound influence on later artists. Ages 6 plus
A new series of illustrated books specifically designed for children in elementary education, narrating the stories of those great historical figures who have left their mark on humanity in fields such as science, art, exploration, music and other subjects. Young readers will be able to read all about these famous people’s main achievements, experiencing the main steps of their lives through Isabel Munoz’s engaging illustrations, and finding out some curious facts about their work and success. In the six volumes of the series, children will be fascinated by the genial and revolutionary intuition of Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci’s vast breadth of expertise, the incredible discoveries about space made by Galileo Galilei, Mozart’s infinite musical creativity, the masterpieces created by Picasso and Van Gogh. There is an index at the end of each volume listing the main biographical events and some simple quizzes will help children to further understand and test their knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and learn about his life and music in this engagingly illustrated biography. Wolfgang Amadeus rose to fame as a child genius who wrote his first piece at the age of five, spent a lifetime making music for archbishops and emperors, and created countless compositions until his untimely death at only 35 years old. This engaging biography explores his amazing career, from when Mozart began his musical studies under his father’s tutelage; through his time as a court composer, musician, and concertmaster; to his final work in honour of the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia. Along the way, we find out about Mozart’s travels and the great composers he met, his difficulties with his rich benefactors, his financial struggles, his marriage and family, and his final illness. Appealing illustrations, information on his breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how Mozart left his mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet Coco Chanel and discover the story of her life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography – narrated by Chanel herself. Her name was Coco Chanel, and her couture creations revolutionised women’s fashion, winning fans around the world. Take a walk down the Parisian catwalk and follow the story of Chanel’s life, and of the high-fashion house she founded. Find out about Coco’s years in an orphanage where she learned how to sew, her time as a singer, her marriage, and how a simple hat shop led to international fame. Appealing illustrations, and an index of major events reveal how Chanel left her mark on humanity. Ages: 6 plus
Meet scientist Marie Curie and learn about her life and pioneering research in this engagingly illustrated biography. At a time when women weren’t welcome in the world of science, Marie Curie made her mark on history. She was the very first woman to become a professor of physics in the Sorbonne, where she had studied, and even went on to win Nobel Prizes in two different scientific fields. With this fascinating biography, kids will find out how Curie, along with her husband, set up their lab and discovered both polonium and radium, and why their work on radioactivity was so important. Appealing illustrations, information on her breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how Marie left her mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking and learn about his life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography. Known for both his bestselling books and his work on black holes, physicist Stephen Hawking beat the odds and lived with ALS – a form of motor neuron disease – for longer than doctors ever expected. This engrossing biography shows why Hawking is such an inspiring example of someone who pursued his dreams in spite of his disability. Born into a family of thinkers who loved reading books at the dinner table, Hawking got his love of science and math from his father. Follow his path to fame as he formulates his groundbreaking theory, works on expanding our ideas about the universe and its creation, and becomes a “rock-star scientist” who appeared in TV shows and films. Appealing illustrations, information on his breakthroughs and successes, and an index of major events reveal how Hawking left his mark on humanity. A timeline and simple quiz help kids test their understanding and knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
A series of illustrated books specifically designed for children in elementary education, narrating the stories of those great historical figures that have left their mark on humanity in fields such as science, art, exploration, music, fashion and other subjects. Young readers will be able to read all about these famous people’s main achievements, experiencing the main steps of their lives through Isabel Munoz’s engaging illustrations, and finding out some curious facts about their work and success. In the twelve volumes of the series, children will be fascinated by the genial and revolutionary intuition of Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci’s vast breadth of expertise, the incredible discoveries about space made by Galileo Galilei, the visionary theories about the Universe by Stephen Hawking, the Maria Montessori’s educational method Mozart’s infinite musical creativity, the masterpieces created by Picasso, Van Gogh, and Frida Kahlo. Young readers will also discover how Marie Curie, Charles Darwin and Coco Chanel have changed science, medicine and fashion forever. There is a timeline at the end of each volume listing the main biographical events and some simple quizzes will help children to further understand and test their knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
Meet Maria Montessori and discover the story of her life and work in this engagingly illustrated biography – narrated by Montessori herself. Maria Montessori believed in the creative potential of every child – and she developed a brand-new approach to education, building on the way children naturally learn. Now, her methods, which won her three Nobel Peace Prize nominations, are practiced around the world. This fascinating biography shows how Maria, an avid reader, defied gender norms by earning a degree in physics and mathematics, became one of the first women physicians in Italy, and revolutionised educational theory – experimenting and refining to discover what worked best. Ages: 6 plus
A new series of illustrated books specifically designed for children in elementary education, narrating the stories of those great historical figures who have left their mark on humanity in fields such as science, art, exploration, music and other subjects. Young readers will be able to read all about these famous people’s main achievements, experiencing the main steps of their lives through Isabel Munoz’s engaging illustrations, and finding out some curious facts about their work and success. There is an index at the end of each volume listing the main biographical events and some simple quizzes will help children to further understand and test their knowledge. Ages: 6 plus
A new series of illustrated books specifically designed for children in elementary education, narrating the stories of those great historical figures who have left their mark on humanity in fields such as science, art, exploration, music and other subjects. Young readers will be able to read all about these famous people’s main achievements, experiencing the main steps of their lives through Isabel Munoz’s engaging illustrations, and finding out some curious facts about their work and success. There is an index at the end of each volume listing the main biographical events and some simple quizzes will help children to further understand and test their knowledge. Ages: 6 plus