This catalogue sheds new light on the Paris Olympics of 1924, often considered the first international games. From their origins in ancient Greece to their modern transformation into a visually powerful event on the world stage, the Olympics have retained their unique place in sport and culture. Published to coincide with the Paris Olympics of 2024, the book accompanies a major exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The summer of 2024 will see the Olympics return to Paris after a century. The Olympics in 1924 were arguably the first truly international games, the first games to transmit live radio broadcasts and the first to have an Olympic village. They incorporated an art competition as well as sporting events, and yielded thirty-five medals for Britain, including for Cambridge sprinter Harold Abrahams of Chariots of Fire fame. This catalogue explores the Olympic games from a visual perspective, investigating the tensions between their classical beginnings and their representation in 1924 and across the modern era. How were the 1924 Olympics shaped by the visual culture of the period? And how, in turn, were the arts shaped by them? From plaster casts of fifthcentury BCE athletic statues to Hollywood cinema, and from classic portraits of the protagonists to more abstract art, this catalogue brings together painting, sculpture, film, photography, posters, letters, medals and other memorabilia to tell a story of sporting endeavour that equally mirrored and shaped its times. Issues of gender, race and class, as well as an exploration of celebrity and spectatorship, show that the debate around sport was as complex and momentous in the past as it is today. The exhibition catalogue offers readers the opportunity to explore some of the key themes of the show in more depth. It comprises essays by specialists from the fields of Classics, art history, French history, sports history and medicine, each of whom will focus on key themes in the exhibition and key protagonists in the Olympic story. The wide range of art will appeal to fans of classicism, modernism, Cubism, Surrealism and Futurism, as well as Art Deco, while the subject matter will also chime with sports fans – and tap into the enthusiasm for all things Olympic in 2024.

This fascinating volume presents a wide-ranging overview of one of the lesser known yet fundamental disciplines of Art History: conservation. What happens when art ages? By bringing together some of the leading experts in the field, the essays chart a journey through the theoretical, aesthetic and technical debates surrounding the conservation of Old Masters. The problem of how to look after paintings as they grow old is a historically complex one. Should they be ‘restored’ to their original glory, or should the patina of time be acknowledged? What is to be done with damp and dirt, with rotten panels and yellowing varnishes? The development of conservation is profoundly entwined with the development of Art History itself, as both deal in the interpretation of the past and its preservation for the future. The seventeen essays collected by editors Jane Martineau and David Bomford, which originally appeared in The Burlington Magazine, explore how these questions have been answered from the mid-sixteenth century to the present day. Masterpieces like Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece or Rembrandt’s Night Watch have been treated and mis-treated many times in their long lives. By the nineteenth century, the growing knowledge of the techniques employed by the old masters had a profound influence on the treatments applied to their works. In the same period, the birth of national galleries as public institutions entrusted with the collective heritage led to the need to preserve large numbers of paintings and establish conservation departments rooted in scientific research. By the mid-twentieth century, the materials and techniques of painting were utterly transformed, demanding fresh approaches to their preservation. A discipline that sits uniquely at the crossroads of art, science, philosophy and technology, modern conservation is the result of an ongoing collaboration between conservators, scientists and art historians following rigorous ethical standards and training programmes.

This catalogue invites readers to dive deeper into the captivating dialogue between materiality and imagination, as envisioned by IRTH إرث at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Prepared for the Biennale Architettura 2023, for which the theme was ‘The Laboratory of the Future’, the catalogue of IRTH إرث immerses visitors into the profound interplay between material and immaterial. It chronicles the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia’s multi-faceted contribution to the discussion, in which the essence of earth as a material becomes a canvas for envisioning tomorrow’s architectural legacies. In a curatorial journey told through essays from visionary architects, researchers and experimental material alchemists, the catalogue represents the multiple viewpoints and projects emerging from Saudi Arabia and its wider region. It delves into vernacular Saudi architecture, which, meticulously deconstructed and reimagined, forms the key point of reference for this journey. As we navigate the universal challenges of belonging and legacy, this exhibition transcends geographical boundaries, seeking common ground in the tapestry of diverse identities and perspectives. Through the lens of materiality, the National Pavilion of Saudi Arabia compels us to answer collectively the problems of tomorrow, one narrative at a time. Notable topics: The Exploration of Immateriality in Architecture; Examining Experimental Materials for Future-proofed Built Environments; Understanding Vernacular Architecture and Modernization in Saudi Arabia.

Accompanying a major exhibition at Philip Mould & Company, Fruit of Friendship: Portraits by Mary Beale presents the work of the remarkable sevenenteenth-century woman artist. Mary Beale (1633–1699) was Britain’s first woman artist to run a successful studio practice. In an era when the arts in Britain were flourishing and portraitists were in high demand, Beale established a unique practice that set her apart from her competitors and brought her great acclaim. Friendship and family played a crucial role in Beale’s success. She was the figurehead of her family and studio, while her husband dedicated himself to supporting the business, often preparing paints and canvasses. Beale’s portraits, many of which are illustrated here for the first time, build a picture of a talented and multi-faceted woman – artist, writer, businesswoman, mother and friend. The title of this publication and of the accompanying exhibition is drawn from Beale’s own writings, and the materials presented span her entire career. Featuring essays by leading scholars, the catalogue introduces a number of recently discovered portraits by Beale and showcases several important works that have never been publicly displayed before.

Focusing on the British virtuoso Rex Whistler (1905–1944), who was linked to many of the most illustrious figures of the inter-war period, this book explores an exceptional case of artistic patronage in the twentieth century. In weaving together social and art history, this beautifully illustrated volume will be as much about the artist as it is about his patrons. It accompanies a major exhibition at the Salisbury Museum, which holds the Rex Whistler Archive. Whistler’s cast of patrons reads like the Who’s Who of his time: the art collector and poet Edward James, the avid diarist and socialite Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, Lord and Lady Louis Mountbatten, Cecil Beaton, Duff and Diana Cooper, author and poet Lady Dorothy Wellesley and many others for whom Whistler worked on a diverse range of commissions, from murals, portraits and bookplates to architectural improvements and even book illustrations. The exchange with his patrons, the book argues, gave Whistler an opportunity to explore a rich variety of subjects, materials and techniques. The artworks discussed in the volume range from a recently re-discovered painting for Sir Malcolm Bullock, a substantial history painting unique in Whistler’s oeuvre, to the magnificent murals at Port Lympne and Trent Park designed for Sir Philip Sassoon, one of the greatest hosts of the age, to Plas Newydd, where Whistler created one of the largest private mural schemes in the inter-war period for the 6th Marquess and Marchioness of Anglesey. It culminates with Maud Russell’s mansion at Mottisfont, where in 1938–39 the artist was painting one of his fi nest works in trompe l’oeil as war loomed over Europe, the war in which Whistler gave his life for his country. Whistler’s commissioning circle were both diverse and privileged, with many embracing the sexual fluidity of the time, and the book deepens our understanding of how the elite were protected by their wealth and position from the strict societal mores of the 1920s and 30s. The artist understood the importance of creating beautiful private spaces for all his clients; but, for some, at a time when homosexuality was still illegal, he was painting murals in houses that were acknowledged havens where sexual preferences could be expressed without fear of discrimination. Dr Nikki Frater, an expert on Whistler’s work, draws on extensive archival research and newly available material to present a fresh interpretation of the relationship between the artist and his milieu. Frater’s behind-the-scenes approach illuminates Whistler’s creative methods and techniques and includes many previously unseen drawings and sketches. The book speaks not only of his patrons, but also paints a nuanced portrait of his oeuvre and the artist himself, as he tried to combine his challenging career with a complicated romantic life. This is a timely re-examination, given the recent controversy surrounding his mural at the Tate Gallery Restaurant, and offers an opportunity to understand fully Whistler’s place in and contribution to the arts and culture of his time.

This is a revised second edition of the best-selling book which incorporates new and additional material on the majority of the objects as well as an expanded glossary which will be of interest to both collector and scholar. The first edition was long-listed for the R.L. Shep Award by the Textile Society of America and chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Crafts Council of the UK, both in 2020.

John Carr of York (1723 – 1807) was one of the most prolific and significant architects of the eighteenth century, with an output of over 400 designs, most of which were executed. His designs vary from simple gateways through to the grandest schemes, such as that for the palatial hospital at Oporto in Portugal, Harewood House and village in Yorkshire, and Basildon Park in Berkshire.

This fascinating book presents the first biography of Helen Coombe, a woman admired not only for her artistic skill, but also for her intellect, personality and wit. It reveals her family background and education, her place in the Arts and Crafts Movement and her outstanding artistic output.

What is a family? And how is family experienced? These questions, explored through artists’ eyes, are at the heart of the exhibition, Real Families: Stories of Change, a collaboration between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research. The book provides a catalogue of the exhibition in four sections, containing twelve illuminating essays that discuss the concept of the family.Real Families: Stories of Change focuses on art produced in the past 50 years, a period of significant change in how families are created and structured, with historical works woven into the exhibition to examine what is genuinely new, and what has remained the same, about the family. The catalogue includes reproductions of paintings, photography and sculpture.In the first section, ‘What is a Family?’, artists portray new forms of family, including families formed by assisted reproduction and families with LGBTQ+ parents, as well as families affected by divorce, adoption and infertility. The works prompt viewers to consider stereotyped beliefs about what makes a family and society’s prejudice against childlessness.Second, ‘Family Transitions’ starts with artists’ representations of motherhood, followed by an examination of the positive role that fathers play. Works on siblings speak to the dynamic and intense relationships that exist between siblings, and those on grandparents and grandchildren highlight the benefit of having each other in their lives. Artists also convey their complex feelings about their ageing parents.‘Family Dynamics’ explores positive and negative relationships between couples, parents and children, and extended family, with works that foreground affection and rejection, comfort and conflict, enmeshment, estrangement and not fitting in. The works also examine the wider social, cultural and political influences on family relationships. Finally, ‘Family Legacies’ highlights the importance to many people of a sense of connection and belonging. This section explores the transmission of family from one generation to the next through genetic inheritance, social and cultural practices, language and objects, which can forge emotional connections and give rise to family memories.

When the famous Dutch art historian and connoisseur Frits Lugt (1884-1970) and his wife Jacoba Klever (1888-1969) decided to present their collections in the Hôtel Turgot in Paris, Chinese porcelain ranked among their priorities. They intended to give the French public an impression of Dutch Golden Age interiors and a porcelain cabinet had traditionally been part of Dutch material culture. Lugt started assembling his Chinese porcelain collection when he lived in the Netherlands. After the Second World War, the couple settled in Paris, and Lugt continued to buy from dealers and at auctions in France and England. He acquired a variety of pieces, either made for export or for domestic Chinese use. The result, now permanently exhibited in the Fondation Custodia, is a small but exquisitecollection of high-quality Chinese porcelain, ranging mainly from the 16th to the late 18th centuries. It reflects the Dutch preference for Kraak, Transitional and Kangxi porcelain, but a number of unusual or even unique non-export porcelains are also on display. Almost all of these pieces are decorated in underglaze cobalt-blue. In this catalogue, written by Dr. Christiaan J.A. Jörg, Dutch specialist on Chineseand Japanese porcelain, each of the 125 pieces is described in detail and placed in a scholarly context. Special attention is paid to iconography, inscriptions and marks. A longer, informative essay elaborates on the history of the collection and shorter essays introduce each of the six sections into which the catalogue is chronologically divided. Every object has been photographed and reproduced from multiple angles, including the base.

Artists and travel have for centuries been intertwined where the desire to explore beyond the confines of one’s home has provoked a truly astonishing outpouring of creativity, much of which was captured through drawings and prints. Comprising over 100 such works, Connecting Worlds: Artists& Travel will be the first exhibition to approach the subject through the lens of artists’ experiences of travel from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century, before the establishment of the railroad and use of photography as a means of recording changed these experiences deeply. A collaboration between the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and the Katrin Bellinger Collection, London, the exhibition will include works by major artists, lesser known professionals as well as amateurs, mostly from Northern Europe, amongst them Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Wenceslaus Hollar, Zacharias Wagner, Valentin Klotz, Maria Sibylla Merian, Angelika Kauffmann, Franz Pforr, Augusta von Buttlar, Julie von Egloffstein,Ludwig Richter, and Friedrich Preller the Elder. Divided into three sections, “On the road”, “Destination Rome”, and “Dresden”, the exhibition begins by exploring artists on the road and what they regarded as important to record in sketchbooks and individual sheets. The second section looks at Rome as one of the most important destinations for Northern travellers, with its incomparable remains of antiquity and as the seat of the Catholic Church that celebrated its religious and administrative life through processions and public spectacle. The journey ends in Dresden, as a centre for collecting, cultural exchange and glamorous festivities, ambitiously competing with other international courts since the time of Augustus the Strong. A different kind of travel, made possible by collecting images and stories of landscapes, flora, fauna, and cultures previously unknown in Europe, is explored. This section closes with the story of the IndonesianRomantic artist Raden Saleh, who first visited Dresden in 1839, and was warmly welcomed by the Saxon court. The richly illustrated catalogue will feature essays by an international panel of experts addressing such topics as the uses of artist sketchbooks across time, written and visual accounts of travel in books and prints, encounters with the Ottoman world, travel and collecting at the Saxon court.

In London in 1770 Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) remarked, ‘What a work could be written on Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick! There is something similar in the genius of all three.’ Two-and-a-half centuries on, Robin Simon’s highly original and illuminating book takes up the challenge. William Hogarth (1697–1764) and David Garrick (1717–1779) closely associated themselves with Shakespeare, embodying a relationship between plays, painting and performance that had been understood since Antiquity and which shaped the rules for history painting drawn up by the Académie royale in Paris in the seventeenth century.History painting was considered the highest form of art: a picture illustrating a moment drawn from just a few lines in a revered text. Hogarth’s David Garrick as Richard III (1745) transformed those ideas because, although it looked like a history painting, it was also a portrait of an actor in performance. With it, Hogarth established the genre of theatrical portraiture, a new and distinctively British kind ofhistory painting.This book offers a fresh examination of theatrical portraits through close analysis of the pictures and of the texts used in performance. It also examines the central role of the theatre in British culture, while highlighting the significance of Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick in the European Enlightenment and the rise of Romanticism. In this context another trio of genius features prominently: Lichtenberg, GottholdEphraim Lessing and Denis Diderot.Familiar paintings and performances are seen in an entirely new light, while unfamiliar pictures are also introduced, including major paintings and drawings that have never been published.The final chapter shows that the inter-relationship between plays, painting and performance survived into the age of cinema, revealing the pictorial sources of Laurence Olivier’s legendary film Richard III.

This vibrant catalogue presents the work of contemporary artist Harmonia Rosales. Featuring over twenty paintings and a monumental sculptural installation, Harmonia Rosales: Master Narrative is the artist’s first major touring exhibition and first scholarly catalogue of her work. Los Angeles-based artist Harmonia Rosales (b. Chicago, 1984) rewrites the canon, or the master narrative of art history, from the perspective of an Afro-Cuban American woman in the twenty-first century. Her canvases seamlessly weave the tales and charactersrooted in West African Yorùbá religion, Greek mythology, and Christianity with the canonical works and artistic techniques of the European Renaissance. Through her visual storytelling, Rosales presents the notion of human and cultural survival on her own terms– one that highlights the beauty and strength of Black people, particularly women, while touching upon grand narratives of creation, tragedy, survival and transcendence. This beautifully illustrated publication includes a catalogue of works in the exhibition, a biography of the artist and new essays by noted scholars in their fields. These essays explore themes ranging from storytelling and narrative to gender and depiction of beauty to race and diaspora.

This beautiful publication presents a collection of exquisite ancient bronzes from the Wadsworth Atheneum that were collected by John Pierpont Morgan. It accompanies a special exhibition of the bronzes at Bowdoin College. This fully illustrated catalogue presents highlights of the ancient bronzes that were collected by J. Pierpont Morgan and are currently in the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum. Purchased between 1904 and 1916, the bronzes were given to the museum by Morgan’s son in 1917. Morgan was a passionate collector and spent years of his life acquiring exquisite works of art. He had a discerning eye and discriminating taste, and his driving motivation was to find works of quality and beauty. His Greek and Roman bronzes include a range of figure and vessel types: males and females, gods and mortals, humans and animals and hybrid mythological creatures, free-standing statuettes, and furniture embellishments. This is the first exhibition and publication to consider the bronzes as a group. Morgan chose each work of art for its exquisite craftsmanship, its quality of composition and execution, and its preservation. These objects represent the very best of ancient Mediterranean bronze sculpture, with carefully rendered clothing, hair, and fur, and adorned with inlays of silver and other luxury materials. Showcasing different types of objects and figures that were made in bronze in the ancient world, this exhibition and book demonstrate the high level of quality that these works of art could achieve. The bronzes are important not only for their provenance and place in America’s ‘Gilded Age’, but also as highly significant individual works of art that represent the best of ancient bronzeworking. New high-resolution photography of each work of art will allow readers to appreciate their intricate details of craftsmanship, including copper and silver inlay. This focused publication will also present current research on these exceptional objects to help readers better understand how they were made and what they represented in an ancient context.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, this book explores island identities in the ancient Mediterranean, questioning how ‘insularity’– being of an island – affected and shaped art production and creativity, architectural evolution, migrations and movement of people. It extends beyond the ancient, incorporating current discourses on island versus mainland cultural identities, in contemporary Art and other disciplines. Throughout history, islands have been treated as distinct places, unlike mainland and continental masses. In geographic terms, islands are merely pieces of land surrounded by water, but the perception of island life has never been neutral. Rather, the term ‘insularity’ – belonging to/being of an island – has been romanticized and associated with otherness. Islands have often been deemed to have differenthistories from the mainland and with more readily isolated socio-political, cultural and economic characteristics. Yet connectivity has also been an important feature of island life as the sea can be a linking rather than just a dividing body, motivating and maintaining informal and formal connections. Fifty unique archaeological objects – most never displayed before outside Cyprus, Crete and Sardinia – tell exceptional stories of insular identity, over a period of 4000 years. The movement of people and episodes of migration between islands and their surrounding mainlands is also explored, through architecture, material culture, crafts and technologies present in the Mediterranean islands. Islanders has a broad diachronic scope and applies integrative analytical approach, bringing together research findings from scientific fields within archaeology, as well as a multi-scalar approach to past human interaction within continental and island environments.

Coins from the 18th and early 19th centuries are physically and visually intriguing. In addition to their monetary uses, they were repurposed to communicate private and public messages – from ad hoc scratchings and punch marks to full-scale re-engraving of surfaces. This book aims to give 21st-century readers insight into that experience and to the many unofficial purposes these objects served. Drawing on the largest extant collection of defaced coins and tokens, this publication brings together for the first time the full-range of expertise required to understand the phenomenon, with contributions from 11 scholars and collectors. It focuses on a significant period in British history, when modification expressed political commentary, commercial activity, familial and emotional commitment, personal identity and life history. It will examine the coins and tokens themselves and look at who modified them, where, why and how. The circumstances of the coins’ subsequent survival is explained, and each aspect will be set in its specific historical contexts. Defaced coins and tokens are often enigmatic objects, and this book will offer a means of decoding and assessing them, while also drawing attention to their value as a distinctive source of historical evidence. The contributors will also consider what these surviving coins reveal about the society in which they were produced and the light they shed on major historical developments of the period. Tim Hitchcock, for example, discusses the new prison culture that emerged following the outbreak of the American Revolution in 1776, evidenced in a growing number of convict tokens made in Newgate. Hamish Maxwell Stewart examines love tokens illustrated with the'Sailor’s Farewell' within the context of the market for sailor’s gifts and tattoos to ward against the dangers of oceanic travel. Steve Poole looks at tokens as souvenirs of public hangings, not only in terms of the influence they exerted on contemporary public opinion but as exemplars of the wider material culture of public punishment. And Sally Holloway examines the design and iconography of love tokens exchanged as romantic gifts. As well as 12 essays, there is an annotated catalogue of 100 coins, selected for their individual interest or representativeness of a distinctive type of modification or motif.