Reproduction of the original: Modern Painters by John Ruskin

Dealing with not only specific artists in the context of their national identity, but also with overarching themes in the rise of modernism, Czech Modern Painters is an articulate and well-researched overview of modern art styles from the former Czechoslovakia, focusing on impressionism, the Art Nouveau movement, and cubism. This study covers three generations of artists who changed the landscape of traditional art at the turn of the twentieth century, and looks specifically at how these artists pushed the boundaries of and came into conflict with the work of their predecessors. To do so, Petr Wittlich has combed through each artist's work in art school, galleries, and new art journals, while tracking each individual's own personal style. The result is a beautifully illustrated book that carefully explains the aesthetic theory of each movement, and provides biographical information on the leading personalities of the period and brief, informative captions for each reproduction. Wittlich also investigates the profound influence of capitalism, and the way in which these artists departed from the prevailing aesthetic tastes of their contemporaries. Czech Modern Painters has the magisterial quality of a textbook for students of modern art styles while maintaining readability, making it appealing to art lovers and historians alike.

Le revers de la jaquette indique : "With the rise of museums in the 19th century, including the formation in 1824 of the National gallery in London, the art of the past became visible and accessible (in Victorian England) as never before. Inspired by the work of Sandro Botticelli, Jan van Eyck, Diego Velazquez, and others, British artists transformed contemporary art through a creative process that emphasized imitation and emulation. Elizabeth Prettejohn analyzes the ways in which the Old Masters were interpreted by artists, as well as critics, curators, and scholars, and argues that Victorian artists were, paradoxically, at their most original when they imitated the Old Masters most faithfully. Covering Victorian art from the Pre-Raphaelites through to the early modernists, she vividly traces the ways in wich artist such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, and William Orpen engaged with the art of the past to produce some of the greatest art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries."