Bücher veröffentlicht von Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd

Extensively illustrated, this is the first accessible publication on the history of tapestry in over two decades.Woven with dazzling images from history, mythology and the natural world, and breath-taking in their craftsmanship, tapestries were among the most valuable and high-status works of art available in Europe from the medieval period to the end of the eighteenth century. Over 600 historic examples hang in National Trust properties in England and Wales - the largest collection in the UK.This beautifully illustrated study by tapestry expert Helen Wyld, in association with the National Trust, offers new insights into these works, from the complex themes embedded in their imagery, to long-forgotten practices of sacred significance and ritual use. The range of historical, mythological and pastoral themes that recur across the centuries is explored, while the importance of the 'revival' of tapestry from the late nineteenth century is considered in detail for the first time. Although focussed on the National Trust's collection, this book offers a fresh perspective on the history of tapestry across Europe.Both the tapestry specialist and the keen art-history enthusiast can find a wealth of information here about woven wall hangings and furnishings, including methods of production, purchase and distribution, evolving techniques and technologies, the changing trends of subject matter across time, and how tapestries have been collected, used and displayed in British country houses across the centuries.

The first major book on Riesener, one of the greatest French cabinet-makers of all time. Jean-Henri Riesener (1734-1806) was one of the greatest French cabinet-makers of all time, supplying the court of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette and furnishing royal and aristocratic houses. His pieces are of exquisite design and superb workmanship, using the most costly materials throughout and becoming a byword for all that is admired in French furniture worldwide. This first major monograph on Riesener traces his career in pre-revolutionary France, highlighting his work as the most celebrated cabinet maker of the Louis XVI period and focusing on the enduring appeal of his furniture through the nineteenth century and beyond. Based on the extensive collections of the Wallace Collection, Waddesdon Manor and the Royal Collection it is fully illustrated with new photography and includes much new research making it essential not only to art historians and collectors, but also to decorative arts enthusiasts and lovers of fine furniture.

William Powell Frith (1819-1909), famous for his picture The Derby Day which normally hangs at Tate Britain, was the most celebrated painter of modern-life subjects in mid-Victorian England and the most popular British artist of that time. Published to mark the bicentenary of his birth and in association with an exhibition at the Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate, this richly illustrated volume of essays offers fresh and fascinating perspectives on Frith''s career and context. Despite dramatic shifts in taste with regard to Victorian painting during subsequent generations, Frith''s name has never been eclipsed, let alone forgotten ΓÇô unlike those of most of his genre-painter contemporaries ΓÇô as an introductory survey of critical responses to the artist''s work reveals. This provides a starting point for investigations, drawing on much new and original material, of three of Frith''s great panoramas of the Victorian world ΓÇô Life at the Sea-Side (Ramsgate Sands), The Derby Day and The Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881. Further contributions explore important but hitherto neglected aspects of Frith''s personal life and professional activity. Of significant biographical interest are studies of Frith''s close connections with Yorkshire (the county of his birth and also his first wife Isabelle''s) and his friendships with contemporary writers, notably the Sensation novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. The artist''s less well-known historical genre pictures are reappraised, with focus on the early success of An English Merry-Making, a Hundred Years Ago, while the key role played by the print trade in the widespread dissemination of Frith''s images is examined in detail for the first time. An intriguing manifestation of Frith''s popularisation was the re-creation of certain of his most famous compositions as tableaux on the London stage, yet another fresh topic in this presentation of ''The People''s Painter''. Revisiting Frith and his achievement through new approaches, this book confirms his position as the pre-eminent visual chronicler of the mid-Victorian scene and the importance of his place in the history of British art.