Seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish paintings were aesthetic, intellectual, and economic touchstones in the Parisian art world of the Revolutionary era, but their importance within this framework, while frequently acknowledged, never attracted much subsequent attention. Darius A. Spieth’s inquiry into Revolutionary Paris and the Market for Netherlandish Art reveals the dominance of “Golden Age” pictures in the artistic discourse and sales transactions before, during, and after the French Revolution. A broadly based statistical investigation, undertaken as part of this study, shows that the upheaval reduced prices for Netherlandish paintings by about 55% compared to the Old Regime, and that it took until after the July Revolution of 1830 for art prices to return where they stood before 1789.

Les peintures, dessins et aquarelles présentés dans ce catalogue montrent l'étendue du talent de John Constable, l'une des figures de la peinture européenne du début du XIXe siècle. Les oeuvres reproduites ici montrent que ce peintre anglais exerçait son art aussi bien comme portraitiste que comme paysagiste.

Revolution and profusion -- these are the hallmarks of Western art from 1780 to 1850. The astonishingly rapid changes wrought by the industrial -- and American and French -- revolutions led to a wealth of artistic production. This profusely illustrated guide to the arts of the early 19th century on both sides of the Atlantic is the most comprehensive volume available on the subject. Through both famous and obscure works, William Vaughan explores a stunning variety of artistic achievement, including landscape, still life, and figure painting by Gericault, Ingres, Delacroix, Turner, Blake, Constable, Goya, and Friedrich. Vaughan also treats sculpture, architecture, town planning, and photography, and offers an in-depth survey of the decorative arts: furniture, ceramics, glass, metalwork, and more. Drawing on the most up-to-date research, the author brings this exciting period and its inexhaustible artistic production to life.

In this engrossing book, Hollis Clayson provides the first description and analysis of French artistic interest in women prostitutes, examining how the subject was treated in the art of the 1870s and 1880s by such avant-garde painters as Cézanne, Degas, Manet, and Renoir, as well as by the academic and low-brow painters who were their contemporaries. Clayson not only illuminates the imagery of prostitution-with its contradictory connotations of disgust and fascination-but also tackles the issues and problems relevant to women and men in a patriarchal society. She discusses the conspicuous sexual commerce during this era and the resulting public panic about the deterioration of social life and civilized mores. She describes the system that evolved out of regulating prostitutes and the subsequent rise of clandestine prostitutes who escaped police regulation and who were condemned both for blurring social boundaries and for spreading sexual licentiousness among their moral and social superiors. Clayson argues that the subject of covert prostitution was especially attractive to vanguard painters because it exemplified the commercialization and the ambiguity of modern life.

Published to accompany the 1994 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, this book constitutes the most extensive survey of modern illustrated books to be offered in many years. Work by artists from Pierre Bonnard to Barbara Kruger and writers from Guillaume Apollinarie to Susan Sontag. An importnt reference for collectors and connoisseurs. Includes notable works by Marc Chagall, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.