How does one account for the change in style of Edgar Degas' work during the latter half of his life? Starting in 1870, why did the artist gradually adopt such a different style, so removed from the meticulous precision of his initial painting? Using scientific analysis, this original book compares the painter's canvases as we view them at present in museums, with how Degas saw them: evermore hazily, with failing vision. It shows the consequences that the deterioration of Degas' sight had on the evolution of his style. Surprising and innovative in the quality of its illustrations, this book yields new insight into the relationship between art and science.

Beyond a mere introduction to great art, Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart is about loving to learn what art has to teach us about the wonder and struggle of being alive. Did you know that: Vincent van Gogh's attempt to start an artist's colony with Paul Gauguin lasted only nine weeks, ending in his infamous "ear episode"? Pablo Picasso was a prime suspect in the disappearance of the Mona Lisa? Artemisia Gentileschi was tortured with thumbscrews to verify her testimony at her own rapist's trial? Norman Rockwell's critics said his work would never be accepted as "high art"--and he agreed? These stories--and many more--shaped the work these artists left behind. In their art are lessons common to the human experience about the wonder and struggle of being alive: dreams lost, perspectives changed, and humility derived through suffering.?? In Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart, Russ Ramsey digs into these artists' stories for readers who may be new to art, as well as for lifelong students of art history, to mine the transcendent beauty and hard lessons we can take from their masterpieces and their lives. Each story from some of the history's most celebrated artists applies the beauty of the gospel in a way that speaks to the suffering and hope we all face.

There are many myths about the artist Edgar Degas—from Degas the misanthrope to Degas the deviant, to Degas the obsessive. But there is no single text that better stokes the fire than Degas and His Model, a short memoir published by Alice Michel, who purportedly modeled for Degas. Never before translated into English, the text’s original publication in Mercure de France in 1919, shortly after the artist’s death, has been treated as an important account of the master sculptor at work. We know that Alice was writing under a pseudonym, but who the real person behind this account was remains a mystery—to this day nothing is known about her. Yet, the descriptions seem too accurate to be ignored, the anecdotes too spot-on to discount; even the dialogue captures the artist’s tone and mannerisms. What is found in these pages is at times a woman’s flirtatious recollection of a bizarre “artistic type” and at others a moving attempt to connect with a great, often tragic man. The descriptions are limpid, unburdened; the dialogue is lively and intimate, not unlike reading the very best kind of gossip, with world-historical significance. Here in these dusty studios, Degas is alive, running hands over clay, complaining about his eyes, denigrating the other artists around him, and whispering salaciously to his model. And during his mood swings, we see reflected the model’s innocence and confusion, her pain at being misunderstood and finally rejected. It is an intimate portrait of a moment in a great artist’s life, a sort of Bildungsroman in which his model (whoever she may be) does not emerge unscathed.

A story of Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas, from the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter Robin Oliveira’s latest novel, Winter Sisters, will be available in February from Viking The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary’s fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. Years later she will learn that he had begged for the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships. In I Always Loved You, Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart. For readers of The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan.

A lyrical novel about what art can reveal, and a nuanced imagining of the people who influenced Edgar Degas and his work. With key roles for beloved Degas paintings.

A sensuous, textured novel of life in a refugee camp, long-listed for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction On a hill overlooking a refugee camp in Sudan, a young man strings up bedsheets that, in an act of imaginative resilience, will serve as a screen in his silent cinema. From the cinema he can see all the comings and goings in the camp, especially those of two new arrivals: a girl named Saba, and her mute brother, Hagos. For these siblings, adapting to life in the camp is not easy. Saba mourns the future she lost when she was forced to abandon school, while Hagos, scorned for his inability to speak, must live vicariously through his sister. Both resist societal expectations by seeking to redefine love, sex, and gender roles in their lives, and when a businessman opens a shop and befriends Hagos, they cast off those pressures and make an unconventional choice. With this cast of complex, beautifully drawn characters, Sulaiman Addonia details the textures and rhythms of everyday life in a refugee camp, and questions what it means to be an individual when one has lost all that makes a home or a future. Intimate and subversive, Silence Is My Mother Tongue dissects the ways society wages war on women and explores the stories we must tell to survive in a broken, inhospitable environment.