Les eaux-fortes et les lithographies que nous présen a paru offrir de grands avantages. Présenter l'œuvre tons dans le catalogue ont été, dans la mesure du de Bresdin par catégorie aurait manqué de logique à possible, classées par ordre chronologique. bien des égards, sans rendre plus clair, bien au con Ce classement s'est révélé difficile pour les œuvres traire, l'ensemble de l'œuvre. datant d'avant I850, la documentation faisant défaut. La Troisième Partie du Volume 1 présente, à la page La classification choisie constitue donc souvent une I54, un tableau synthétique des vingt lithographies de l'artiste. hypothèse, encore que quelques dates connues éta blissent certains points de repère. Nous nous référons D'une façon générale, les gravures n'ont pas été dé aussi à la Troisième Partie du Volume I.A partir de I854, la plupart des œuvres de Bresdin, crites; le commentaire se contente d'indiquer et et notamment les plus importantes, sont datées, mais lorsque c'est nécessaire et possible-d'expliquer les comme les indications de l'artiste contiennent nom différences entre les divers états et, éventuellement, bre d'obscurités, nous avons dû, pour ces œuvres éga les divers tirages. lement, nous appuyer sur un appareil documentaire Les reproductions constituent l'élément essentiel permettant d'identifier les gravures dans leurs divers et une étude critique du style.

Rai lu et relu {laquo}Rodolphe Bresdim. C'est un beau livre, obscurs-Ia question des reports sur pierre des eaux et qui aura grand sucd~s. On ne Ie refera plus; on sera fortes, celle de la metamorphose de plusieurs cuivres, oblige de toujours s'y referer. C'est serieux, precis, in celle de la premiere litho de l'artiste, catalogue 82 telligent. (Neumann n6, complete par une piece de l'ancienne Un des grands interets du livre est une chronologie collection Bonger). II etait bien place pour Ie faire, serieuse, et tres sou vent nouvelle, des gravures et etant lui-meme graveur. lith os (l'auteur a eu raison de ne pas les separer dans II tient a ce qu'on n'oublie pas que, comme son son catalogue). Van Gelder croit-et sans doute les frere aine, l'historien de l'art J.G. van Gelder, il a eu lecteurs avec lui-avoir resolu les problemes si deli pour modele son pere, grand historien, fondateur du cats du classement anterieur a 1854; apres 1854, les hesi Musee municipal de La Haye. tations etaient moins nombreuses, mais Van Gelder On a donc ici, redisons-le, un beau travail, serieux, montre qu'on ne peut se fier completement aux indi honnete, representant plus de dix ans de la vie de son cations confuses de Bresdin lui-meme. auteur, intelligent et particulierement bien informe.

"For the Winthrop collection's international debut exhibition, curators at the Fogg Art Museum of the Harvard University Art Museums, headed by Stephan Wolohojian, organized the selection and invited more than sixty specialists to write on artworks in their particular area of expertise. Works include such highlights in their creator's oeuvre as Jacques-Louis David's sketchbooks for The Coronation of Napoleon and the Crowning of Josephine, Theodore Gericault's Mutiny on the Raft of the Medusa, Vincent van Gogh's The Blue Cart, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres's Odalisque with the Slave, William Blake's illustrations for the Divine Comedy, Dante Gabriel Rosetti's Blessed Damozel, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Nocturne in Blue and Silver. In addition, an essay by Wolohojian provides a fascinating and informative description of Winthrop and the growth of his collection."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Due to the technological advances of the nineteenth century, an abundance of black drawing media exploded onto the market. Charcoal, conte crayon, and fabricated black chalks and crayons; fixatives; various papers; and many lifting devices gave rise to an unprecedented amount of experimentation. Indeed, innovation became the rule, as artists developed their own unique—and often experimental—processes. The exploration of black media in drawing is inextricably bound up with the exploration of black in prints, and this volume presents an integrated study that rises above specialization in one over the other. Noir brings together such diverse artists as Francisco de Goya, Maxime Lalanne, Gustave Courbet, Odilon Redon, and Georges Seurat and explores their inventive works on paper. Sidelining labels like “conservative” or “avant-garde,” the essays in this book employ all the tools that art history and modern conservation have given us, inviting the reader to look more broadly at the artists’ methods and materials. This volume accompanies an eponymous exhibition on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum from February 9 to May 15, 2016.

Bristling with demons, grotesques, and bizarre apparitions, the graphic work of Odilon Redon has often seemed to be the product of a mind unhinged. In The Temptation of Saint Redon, Stephen F. Eisenman argues instead that these works are Redon's conscious and considered response to changing social realities—an attempt to find refuge from the forces of modernization in an imaginative world of the macabre and the fantastic. Eisenman's careful attention to the circumstances of Redon's life (1840-1916) allows him to bring into focus the interconnections between Redon's complex style and the culture and society of his time. Born and raised on a sixteenth-century estate near Bordeaux, Redon was immersed as a child in traditional rural culture. "I spent my entire childhood in the Médoc completely free, among peasant children," he recalled in his memoirs. "I heard them tell supernatural tales—witches still exist there." Indeed, local tales and legends of witches, ghosts, one-eyed monsters, evil eyes, and wood fairies figure prominently in Redon's graphic works, which he called his noirs, or "blacks." After formal training at Bordeaux and Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, Redon began to chart his independent artistic course. Eisenman shows how, rejecting both naturalism and classicism, Redon, a prototypical Symbolist, found in grotesque and epic genres the expression of organic communities and precapitalist societies. He places Redon's desire for this imagined world of superstitious simplicity a desire manifest in his entire mature artistic practice in the context of contemporary avant-garde movements. Redon's great noirs of the 1870s and 1880s, dreamlike configurations of seemingly irreconcilable elements from portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, show an increasingly subtle control of connotation and a complex indebtedness to caricature, allegory, and puns. Many of the noirs also visually interpret works by like-minded authors, including Baudelaire, Flaubert, Poe, and Mallarmé, one of Redon's close friends. Eisenman's analysis of the noirs underscores Redon's interest in creating an imaginative, even fantastic art, that could act directly on the human spirit. In addition to deepening our understanding of Redon and his art, The Temptation of Saint Redon exposes a link between place, politics, personal history, and the artistic imagination.

From monastic cloisters in the time of Charlemagne to the book-lined studies of twentieth-century authors, this splendid book presents an overview of the literary and artistic world in France. The Bibliothèque nationale de France, today rich in collections of illuminated manuscripts, books, medals, maps, and prints, had its beginnings when Charles V established his library in the falcon tower of the Louvre. During the Middle Ages, culture was the handmaiden of Church and government; during the absolute monarchy, it became an instrument of propaganda; in the eighteenth century, it developed an independent voice. This book explores the changing relationship between power and culture in France as seen in the history of its national library.