The Courtauld is one of the United Kingdom’s great art collections. This elegant book is a curated selection of its highlights, accompanied by lively commentaries. The Courtauld is one of the United Kingdom’s great art collections, displayed throughout the magnificent historic setting of Somerset House in central London. This elegant book is a curated selection of its highlights — paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture and decorative arts — each beautifully illustrated and accompanied by an insightful commentary. Notable among these treasures are remarkable Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, including the world-famous A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear.This book is also an engaging account of how The Courtauld became an internationally renowned centre for the teaching and research of art history, conservation and curating. It was founded nearly a century ago in the belief that art has the power to enrich people’s lives. The Courtauld continues that mission today, promoting the understanding of the visual arts and offering a place where everyone can find enjoyment and inspiration.

Published to accompany the first substantial exhibition on the tradition of Spanish drawings to take place in London, this catalogue captures the excitement and importance of this rapidly developing field of study. It presents highlights from The Courtauld Gallery's collection of Spanish drawings, one of the most important in Britain. Comprising some 120 works, the collection ranges from the 16th to the 20th centuries and features examples by many of Spain's greatest artists, including Ribera, Murillo, Goya and Picasso.

In 1966 Mark Gambier Parry bequeathed to the Courtauld Gallery the art collection formed by his grandfather Thomas Gambier Parry, who died in 1888. In addition to important paintings, Renaissance glass and ceramics, and Islamic metalwork, this included 28 medieval and Renaissance ivories. Since 1967 about half of the ivories have been on permanent display at The Courtauld, yet they have remained largely unknown, even to experts. This catalogue is the first publication dedicated solely to the collection. There are examples of the highest quality of ivory carving, both secular and religious in content, and a number of the objects are of outstanding interest. They are a revealing tribute to the perceptive eye of Thomas Gambier Parry, a distinguished Victorian collector and Gothic Revival artist responsible for a number of richly painted church interiors in England, such as the Eastern part of the nave ceiling, and the octagon, at Ely Cathedral. The earliest objects in date, probably late 11th century, are the group of walrus ivory plaquettes set into the sides and lids of a casket, portraying the Apostles and Christ in Majesty surrounded by the symbols of the Evangelists. The style leaves little doubt that they should be associated with a group of portable altars at Kloster Melk in Austria. A gap of some two centuries separates the casket panels from the next important object - the central portion of an ivory triptych, containing a Deesis group of Christ enthroned between angels holding instruments of the Passion in the upper register, and the Virgin and Child between candle-bearing angels below. The style of the ivory relates it securely to the atelier of the Soissons Diptych in the Victoria & Albert Museum. The Gambier-Parry fragment employs bold cutting of the frame to accentuate the three-dimensional quantities of the relief. Somewhat later in date, towards the middle of the 14th century, is a complete diptych of the Crucifixion and Virgin with angels, the faces of which Gambier-Parry described as "worthy of Luini". The extraordinary foreshortening of the swooning Virgin's head can happily be paralleled to a diptych in the Schoolmeesters Collection, Liège, by the "aterlie aux visages caractérisés", as named by Raymond Koechlin. The Gambier- Parry diptych, must rank with the finest productions of the workshop.

This beautiful and scholarly catalogue accompanies the exhibition Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from The Courtauld Gallery, organized by Colin B. Bailey, the Frick's Associate Director; Peter Jay Sharp, Chief Curator; and Stephanie Buck, Martin Halusa Curator of Drawings at The Courtauld Gallery. The drawings represent a survey of the extraordinary of Italian, Dutch, Flemish, German, Spanish, British and French artists active between the late Middle Ages and the early twentieth century.

Richard Serra is one of the most important and revered artists working today. Rising to prominence on the New York art scene more than forty years ago, Serra (born 1939) is now celebrated internationally for his unprecedented monumental steel sculptures and for his radical approach to drawing. Richard Serra: Drawings for the Courtauld accompanies the first museum exhibition of Serra's most recent drawings, which mark an exciting new departure for the artist. The display will unveil 12 of Serra's new works, created especially for this installation at The Courtauld. Made using thick black pigment applied to both sides of a clear plastic sheet, these drawings, which he calls 'transparencies', are extraordinary objects that challenge preconceptions of what constitutes a drawing. For Serra, drawing has always been an essential way of exploring new creative impulses, materials and working methods. 0Exhibition: The Courtauld Gallery, London, UK (19.9.2013-12.1.2014). 0.

The exhibition focusses on an Islamic inlaid handbag made in Mosul, northern Iraq about 1300. The bag was made for a lady in the courtly circles of the Mongol Ilkhanid dynasty established in west Asia by Genghis Khan's grandson, Hulagu. The bag, inlaid with gold and silver, features intricate geometric patterns and roundels with images of musicians and horsemen. No other object of this kind is known.

The Courtauld Gallery holds the most important group of works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in Britain. This book presents the entire collection for the first time, with major paintings such as the iconic Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1887) and Card Players (1892-95) shown alongside rarely seen drawings and watercolors.