8 minute read

Museum Collections

The Courtauld: Highlights from the Gallery

Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen with Alixe Bovey, Alexandra Gerstein, Ketty Gottardo, Coralie Malissard, Karen Serres, Rachel Sloan, Barnaby Wright

£15 / $19.95 Publication: November 2021 136 pages; pb 250 × 210 mm (8.3 × 9.8 in.) 978 1 78551 405 0

Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen is A&F Petitgas Head of the Courtauld Gallery; other contributors are members of the Courtauld Curatorial Department.

Published to mark the reopening of the gallery in November 2021 after a major renovation.

The Courtauld is one of the UK’s great art collections, displayed throughout the magnificent historic setting of Somerset House in central London. This elegant book is a curated selection of its highlights – paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and decorative arts – each beautifully illustrated and accompanied by an insightful commentary. Notable among these treasures are remarkable impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, including the world-famous A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.

In ancient Greece, funerary monuments were visual expressions of mourning that provided the opportunity for the living to commemorate and communicate with the dead. The works presented in this richly illustrated volume, from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s outstanding collection, represent a variety of media and were created between the seventh and the second centuries BC. Through their shared focus on memorialising the dead, these extraordinary artworks offer insight into all facets of life in ancient Greece.

Roman Art: A Guide through The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Collection

424 pages; pb 280×216 mm 978 1 78551 183 7 £39.95 / $55

Afterlives: Ancient Greek Funerary Monuments in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Paul Zanker

£35 / $45 Publication: April 2022 192 pages; pb 254 × 229 mm (9 × 10 in.) 978 1 78551 384 8

Paul Zanker is former Dietrich von Bothmer Distinguished Research Scholar in the Department of Greek and Roman Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART SELECT BACKLIST

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Director’s Tour: A Walking Guide

96 pages; pb 197×110 mm 978 1 85759 828 5 £6.50 / $9.95

The Colmar Treasure: A Medieval Jewish Legacy

112 pages; pb 250×210 mm 978 1 78551 231 5 £19.95 / $24.95

A beautifully illustrated survey of eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury European fans in the French rococo and rococo revival styles. Sixty-six superb examples, selected from the Eurus Collection in South Korea, offer a glimpse into the life of European royalty and aristocracy, and demonstrate the intermingling of cultures which resulted from trade between Europe and the East. This book explores the fans’ thematic and stylistic aspects as well as their assembly and production and reveals their untold stories.

European Fans: The Untold Story

Hahn Eura EunKyung and Dr HaYoung Joo

£14.95 / $20.95 Publication: April 2022 248 pages; hb 224 × 167 mm (6.5 × 8.8 in.) 978 1 78551 412 8

Hahn Eura EunKyung is the Founder and Director of Eurus Collection. Most of Eurus Collection’s artifacts were collected by her late father, Dr Hahn Kwang-ho CBE, who was one of the key contributors to the establishment of the Korea Foundation Gallery at the British Museum. Director Hahn’s research interests are in the field of conservation studies and the history of cultural artifacts. Dr HaYoung Joo is an Assistant Professor of Art Theory and Criticism at the School of Arts, Chonnam National University, Korea. Eurus Collection, a sister institution of Hwajeong Museum in Seoul, is dedicated to researching antique fans and other historical artifacts from East and West. With more than one thousand fans from all over the world, it is the second largest collection of its kind in the world after The Fan Museum in London, and the largest in Asia.

28 1-1

“VERNIS-MARTIN” LACQUERED IVORY BRISÉ FAN

France, early 18th century

Painted with a pastoral “Moment musicale” front and a landscape back, guards with incidental chinoiserie decoration, signed “L. Bayard”, 19 × 34.5 cm

This fan is made of ivory and painted with gouache. Its pastoral landscape artwork is quite striking. The fan is made solely of decorative sticks without a leaf, with the top part connected by a ribbon and the bottom part fixed with a pivot pin. This fan is finished with a “Vernis Martin” (“Martin varnish”) technique, which is similar to the lacquer technique popular in East Asia. In the seventeenth century, craft works made using the East Asian lacquer technique became available in Europe, and were much admired by Europeans due to their rarity. The Martin family in France developed their own variation of the technique (“Vernis Martin”, after their family name) in the eighteenth century. It was one of many techniques imitating East Asian lacquer during that period.

The front of the fan illustrates a romantic scene of a man playing the flute and a woman listening to the music. Both are seated under a tree and are enjoying the idyllic surroundings. A beautiful landscape is depicted on the back. The fan’s guards and sticks are decorated with Chinese motifs. The name, “L. Bayard” is inscribed on the right side of the fan’s front.

Otto Gutfreund The Path to Cubism

Otto Gutfreund: The Path to Cubism

Jiří Šetlík Translated from Czech by Tomáš Hausner

£19.95 / $29.95 Publication: December 2022 240 pages; pb 248 × 197 mm (7.6 × 9.8 in.) 987 1 78551 432 6

Jiří Šetlík is acknowledged as the world’s leading authority on Otto Gutfreund. Dr Šetlík was born in Prague in 1929 and was educated at Charles University and the Institute of History of Art of the Czechoslovak Academy of Science, and later at the Institute of International Education in the United States. His posts have included Head of the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery in Prague, Director of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague, Vice-Rector and Professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, and Professor of the History of Architecture and Arts at the Technical University of Liberec.

Prague was the world’s most important centre for cubist art outside Paris in the years preceding World War I, and Otto Gutfreund (1889–1927) the first artist to apply cubism to sculpture. He now enjoys the reputation as one of the most internationally important figures in the history of Czech art. Jiří Šetlík’s acclaimed account of Gutfreund’s life and work is now available in English for the first time. Richly illustrated, this is a sumptuous treatment of a uniquely significant artist.

50 MASTERPIECES OF CZECH CUBISM FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE GALLERY OF WEST BOHEMIA IN PILSEN

50 Masterpieces of Czech Cubism: From the Collections of The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen

Roman Musil, Marie Rakušanová, Alena Pomajzlová, Ivana Skálová

£12.95 / $19.95 Publication: April 2022 120 pages; pb 190 × 165 mm (6.5 × 7.5 in) 978 1 78551 341 1

Roman Musil is the Director of the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen. Marie Rakušanová is an Associate Professor at the Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague. Alena Pomajzlová is an Associate Professor at the Seminary of Art History, Masaryk University in Brno. Ivana Skálová is a Curator at the Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen.

Also available in a Czech edition

The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen is one of the most important and prestigious institutions in the Czech Republic for holding exhibitions and housing art collections. Its collection consists of more than 13,000 paintings, graphic and sculptural works, architectural designs, models, drawings and photographs. The selection of 50 masterpieces of Czech cubism from the collection of this institution represents one of the best art collections of this style in the Czech context, dominated by the personalities of its first protagonists, Bohumil Kubišta and Emil Filla. This book, expertly compiled by Gallery Director Roman Musil and his team, introduces some of the finest works of Czech Cubism to an international audience.

The fin de siècle artworks collection in The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen ranks among the best public collections in the Czech Republic. It covers all the key trends that appeared on the contemporary art scene, i.e. naturalism, symbolism, impressionism and art nouveau. At that time, Czech art was an integral part of international structures and many artists from the Czech lands studied, exhibited or worked in the key cultural centres of Europe, such as Vienna, Munich and Paris. The Pilsen collection includes, among others, works of two artists who achieved worldwide fame: one of the most important protagonists of art nouveau, Alfons Mucha, and the co-founder of abstract painting, František Kupka.

50 Masterpieces of

Fin de Siècle Art:

From the Collections of The Gallery of West Bohemia in Pilsen

Roman Musil, Ivana Skálová, Marie Rakušanová, Šárka Leubnerová, Aleš Filip

£12.95 / $19.95 Publication: October 2022 120 pages; pb 190 × 165 mm (6.5 × 7.5 in.) 978 1 78551 435 7

Roman Musil, Marie Rakušanová,

Ivana Skálová (see opposite). Šárka Leubnerová is the former Head of the Nineteenth Century Collection of the National Gallery in Prague. Aleš Filip is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Musicology, Masaryk University in Brno.

Also available in a Czech edition

This article is from: