Robert Wenley Livres

An updated edition of this classic survey illustrated in color throughout, this book is the definitive overview of Paul Cézanne’s life and work. For Picasso he was “like our father”; for Matisse, “a god of painting.” Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) is widely regarded as the father of modern art. In this authoritative and accessible study, Richard Verdi traces the evolution of Cézanne’s landscape, still-life, and figure compositions from the turbulently romantic creations of his youth to the visionary masterpieces of his final years. The painter’s biography—his fluctuating reputation and strained relations with his parents, wife, and close friend Emile Zola—is vividly evoked using excerpts from his own letters and from contemporary accounts of the artist. Cézanne was torn between the desires to both make and find art—to master the themes of the past, through his copying sessions in the Louvre, and to explore the eternal qualities of nature in the countryside of his native Provence. In this way, the artist sought “to make of Impressionism something solid and durable, like the art of the museums.” In this richly illustrated overview, now updated throughout and with a new preface, Verdi explores the strength, vitality, and magnitude of Cézanne’s achievement.

Full of humanity and even humour, the Old Testament paintings by master visual storyteller Jan Steen are often treated like incidents in 17th-century Holland. This groundbreaking examination considers the influence of Jewish history and Dutch theatre on this exciting element of his oeuvre.

Presents highlights from the collection of the Barber Institute, one of Britain's finest small galleries.

Accompanying an exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts - only the second exhibition ever devoted to the artist - this noteworthy publication considers De Beer's work and career, working methods, and traces the history of De Beer's paintings in British collections.0The Antwerp painter Jan de Beer (c.1475-1527/28) was highly esteemed in his lifetime and still famous a couple of generations after his death, but then fell into oblivion until the early twentieth century. Only recently have his achievements been fully recognized and documented. The artist's known oeuvre consists of forty works, mainly devotional paintings and triptychs but also a dozen drawings and a stained glass window, after a lost design. De Beer's stylish and elegant art appealed to patrons and collectors, churches abroad, and copyists. His work is typically associated with that of the Antwerp Mannerists, a prominent group of mostly anonymous painters active in the city during his lifetime.00Exhibition: The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham, UK (25.10.2019-19.01.2020)

"Diego Velázquez (1599-1660) was one of the towering figures of Western painting and Baroque art, a technical master renowned for his focus on realism and startling veracity. Everything he painted was treated as a portrait, from Spanish royalty and Pope Innocent X to a mortar and pestle. In this comprehensive introduction to Velázquez's life and art by Richard Verdi, the artist's major works are discussed along with most of his surviving output of approximately 110 paintings. Velázquez's greatest innovation, his unorthodox and revolutionary technique, is explored in relation to his most-celebrated contemporaries both in Spain and beyond, including Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. Velázquez concludes with a final chapter on the influence and importance of Velázquez's art on later painters from the time of his death to the art of recent times, including Francisco Goya, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, and the Impressionists."--Publisher marketing