Richard Thomson

Edgar Degas was one of the great pioneers of modern art, and the J. Paul Getty and Norton Simon museums are fortunate to own jointly one of his finest pastels, Waiting (L'Attente), which he made sometime between 1880 and 1882, about midway in his career. In this fascinating monograph, author Richard Thomson explores this brilliant work in detail, revealing both the intricacies of its composition and the source of the emotional pull it immediately exerts upon the viewer. For Waiting is, indeed, an extraordinary object both in its craftsmanship and color and, perhaps most especially, in its aura of ambiguity and even mystery.

Waiting

Edgar Degas

Richard Shiff

George T. M. Shackelford

Mary Dailey Desmarais

Ms Anthea Callen

The first comprehensive examination of the painter s formative years, tracing the evolution of Monet s early style and personal ambitions that drove the rest of his career This elegant volume is the first to be devoted to the young genius of Claude Monet (1840 1926). Bringing together the greatest paintings from his early career including his first Salon-exhibited work, the Kimbell Art Museum s "La Pointe de la Heve at Low Tide";" Dejeuner sur l Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)" and "The Magpie "from the Musee d Orsay; and"The Green Wave"""and "La Grenouillere "from the Metropolitan Museum of Art it features essays by distinguished scholars, focusing on the evolution of Monet s own distinctive mode of painting. Through the 1860s, the young painter absorbed and transformed a variety of influences, from the lessons of the Barbizon school and his mentor Boudin to the challenges posed by his friends Manet, Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. Artistic innovation and personal ambition shaped the work of the celebrated impressionist painter from the very start of his long and illustrious career."

The Early Years

Monet

Exploring the derivatives market and its key players: the greed, the risk, the drama, madness, amazing personalities, war stories, colossal bonuses and the terrible losses, Thomsom reveals how the financial world is living on the edge of an apocalypse waiting to happen.

The Lethal World of Derivatives

Apocalypse Roulette

Michael Clarke

Landscape Painting in France, 1874-1914

Monet to Matisse

An exhibition catalog discusses how Pissarro's work was influenced not only by Impressionism but also by his anarchist ideal of a classless society based on agricultural labor

Impressionism, Landscape and Rural Labour

Camille Pissarro

This innovative book introduces a vivid new reading of French art and society at a crucial period of history The study of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French art tends to focus on a search for the modern. Richard Thomson presents an innovative approach to a popular period of art history, instead investigating how art in early Third Republic France adapted styles from the past. The classical is the predominant theme, punctuated by other stylistic currents, notably the Rubensian and the Botticellian. It asks, how did these styles--all three derived from foreign art--come to be adapted into French visual culture? How did the Republic customise classicism to its ideological ends? How was classicism manipulated by progressive painters for radical and reactionary readings? The Presence of the Past in French Art 1870-1905​ considers artists of very different character and type--from Degas to Henner, Cézanne to Besnard, Roty to Seurat, Dalou to Maillol--as well as a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, medals and celebrity photographs, to open up new vistas of interpretation in this fascinating field.

Modernity and Tradition

The Presence of the Past in French Art, 1870-1905

John House

Cornelia Homburg

St. Louis Art Museum

Saint Louis Art Museum

Elizabeth C. Childs

Steven A. Hammer

Published to accompany the exhibition held at the Saint Louis Art Museum, 17 February - 13 May 2001, and the Stadelsches Kunstinstitut und Stadtisches Galerie, Frankfurt, 8 June - 2 September 2001.

Vincent Van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard

Chronicles of London Bridge

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) created just six major figure paintings during his lifetime, one of which, the alluring Circus Sideshow (Parade de cirque), has remained the most challenging to interpret since it first intrigued viewers at the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in Paris. Unlike Seurat’s earlier sunlit scenes, Circus Sideshow presents a nighttime tableau depicting a parade—a street show enticing passersby to purchase tickets. With its geometrically precise composition, muted colors, and elements of abstraction, the painting stands apart as a masterpiece of Neo-Impressionism and heralds Seurat’s subsequent depictions of popular entertainments. This book, the first comprehensive study of Circus Sideshow, situates the painting in the context of nineteenth-century Paris and of the many social changes France was undergoing. Renowned art historian Richard Thomson illuminates the roles of caricature, naturalist and avant-garde painting, and circus advertising; examines Seurat’s use of contemporary aesthetic theory; and discusses how artists ranging from Rouault to Picasso mined the sideshow theme into the twentieth century. Illustrated with Seurat’s related drawings, works by other artists, and period posters and broadsides, Seurat’s Circus Sideshow delves into the history of traveling circuses and seasonal fairs in France, exploring the ongoing appeal of this traditional form of popular entertainment through the fin de siècle. Two additional essays describe the painting’s enthusiastic reception in New York upon its 1929 debut and present the results of a fresh technical examination of the canvas, making this volume the definitive resource on one of Seurat’s most captivating works.

Seurat's Circus Sideshow

To which are Added, the Great Charter in Latin and English : the Charters of Liberties and Confirmations, Granted by Henry III and Edward I ...

An Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of King John

National Gallery of Art (U.S.)

Phillip Dennis Cate

Gale Barbara Murray

Paris in the 1890s : from the Collections of Virginia and Ira Jackson and the National Gallery of Art

Prints Abound

Composed of ... Pieces of Divers Excellent Poets ... in Memory of the First Opening ... 1571 ... [and] in Honour of the Second ... 1669 ...

A Garland for the New Royal Exchange

Mary Weaver Chapin

Florence E. Coman

Childhood illness and injuries steered Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) away from customary rural aristocratic avocations and toward a profession as an artist. He became a painter, draftsman, and lithographer whose work was immersed in famously hedonistic, fin-de-siècle Paris. In his hands, advertising posters were raised to a high art; he portrayed the nightlife of Montmartre-circuses, cafés, dance halls, and brothels-with clear, bold color and a certain seamy panache that is instantly recognizable as his. His much mythologized life has found its way into many biographies and into two feature-length movies called Moulin Rouge. Lavishly illustrated with 370 color plates, Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is the first major work to present the artist's oeuvre in the context of Montmartre's lively art scene from roughly 1885 to 1901. Accompanying an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, the book features the important paintings, drawings, prints, and posters Toulouse-Lautrec made on Montmartre subjects. It also includes masterpieces by contemporaries he inspired or who inspired him-Degas, Van Gogh, Picasso, and others-as well as rarely seen illustrations, lithographs, photographs, and ephemera of the era. And it discusses the artists, writers, actors, singers, and dancers who formed Toulouse-Lautrec's circle. The book's gracefully written essays by Richard Thomson, Phillip Dennis Cate, and Mary Weaver Chapin, with Florence E. Coman, address these themes in light of the rise of the color poster, the proliferation of new forms of entertainment, and the emergence of a celebrity-oriented popular culture. Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre evokes a colorful, chaotic era, and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the art of Toulouse-Lautrec.

Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre

Historical notes and other literary materials ... towards the formation of a systematic bibliographical description of mediæval illuminated manuscripts of hours, offices and other books of devotion [by R. Thomson].

Jordi Coca

An English adaptation of a Catalan book. This volume is based on Jordi Coca's autobiography, which tells of his youth in Barcelona, and the difficult times in the 1940s and 1950s. Written in a simple and uncluttered style, and it provides an honest portrayal of life.

Under the Dust

Nienke Bakker

Marie Robert

Isolde Pludermacher

Guy Cogeval

From the scandalous Olympia by Édouard Manet to Degas's The Absinthe Drinker, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch's forays into brothels to the bold figures and caricature portraits of Georges Rouault, Kees Van Dongen, and Pablo Picasso, this book foregrounds how the shadowy domain of prostitution played a central role in the development of modern painting. In nine chapters, readers roam the streets of Paris and head into its maisons closes and private boudoirs, where courtesans--often actresses, singers, or dancers--were looked after by rich protectors. These famous paintings, sculptures, lithographs, sketches, and press clippings are given context within the moral framework of a time when prostitution was considered--depending on the point of view--as an unavoidable or enticing evil. The catalogue also demonstrates how the works of art are intrinsically bound to the literary works of the period, in which Balzac, Baudelaire, and Zola negotiated parallel questions of presentation and representation, reverie and reality. Comprehensive appendices include a complete list of works featured in the exhibition organized by medium, a selected bibliography, and an index of names. The book powerfully evokes the ambivalent place held by prostitutes in the midst of nascent modernity--from the splendours of the demimondaines to the miseries of the working girl pierreuses.

Images of Prostitution in France 1850-1910

Splendours and Miseries

Chris Stolwijk

Sjraar van Heugten

Theo van Gogh, Vincent's younger brother, was an influential art dealer working in Paris in the 1880s. Artists and collectors respected him for his insight and integrity, Vincent spoke of his brother's humanity, and Paul Gauguin described Theo's death as an irretrievable loss. The extensive art collection that Theo built forms the core of today's collection in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Theo van Gogh (1857-1891): Art Dealer, Collector and Brother of Vincent presents his life and work in the context of the French art world of his day. Dazzling illustrations include works by Vincent that held a special significance for Theo, as well as a representative selection of the works Theo bought and sold as a dealer. The book provides a fascinating study of the sympathetic and intelligent art expert Theo van Gogh and a lively portrait of European painting in the second half of the 19th century.

Art Dealer, Collector, and Brother of Vincent

Theo Van Gogh, 1857-1891

Claude Monet

National Galleries of Scotland

Monet was the most remarkable of all the Impressionist landscape painters. And perhaps at no point in his career was his work more varied than in the years between 1878 and 1883. During this time he produced some 300 paintings, many of them are amongst his finest works. His painting encompassed motifs of village and river, cliff and wave, as well as expressive portraits and rich still-lifes. For much of this period Monet lived at Vétheuil, a village on the river Seine between Paris and the English Channel. In this tranquil setting, Monet painted in all seasons. He tackled orchards in spring, expansive fields of corn, and the bare trees of the winter months. Among his most memorable paintings are those he made of the ice-floes on the Seine during the great thaw of 1880. On the Normandy coast he painted views straight out to sea, as well as vistas of the beach and the sublime presence of the great cliffs. Monet: the Seine and the Sea shows Monet the innovator, the daring Impressionist challenging his brush to record the shifting moods of nature, as well as Monet the competitor, taking on the example of previous painters and reshaping their motifs in his vigorously personal painting. 150 colour illustrations

The Seine and the Sea, 1878-1883

Richard Thomson

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