"Bloomsbury on the Mediterranean," is how Vanessa Bell described France in a letter to her sister, Virginia Woolf. Remarking on the vivifying effect of Cassis, Woolf herself said, "I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim.... Complete heaven, I think it." Yet until now there has never been a book that focused on the profound influence of France on the Bloomsbury group. In Bloomsbury and France: Art and Friends, Mary Ann Caws and Sarah Bird Wright reveal the crucial...

The New York Times–bestselling biography of Manet, Cezanne, Degas, and others—a "revealing group portrait . . . lively, required reading" (People).Though they were often ridiculed or ignored by their contemporaries, their paintings are now revered around the world. Their dazzling works are familiar to even the most casual art lovers—but how well do we know the Impressionists as people? The first book to offer an intimate and lively biography of the world's ...

Helena Rubinstein revolutionised the beauty industry. Her mission was to teach women the importance of skincare and the empowering effect of looking your best. Rubinstein's company was the first to use science in the development of cosmetics, and with her unerring instinct for what customers wanted, she built a beauty empire that spanned the world. A legend in her own lifetime, this is her amazing story.

From an acclaimed social and architectural historian, the tumultuous, scandalous, glitzy, and glamorous history of English country houses and high society during the interwar periodAs WWI drew to a close, change reverberated through the halls of England's country homes. As the sun set slowly on the British Empire, the shadows lengthened on the lawns of a thousand stately homes.In The Long Weekend, historian Adrian Tinniswood introduces us to the tu...

The name Chanel brings immediately to mind the signature scent of No. 5 and the understated but sophisticated glamour of a simple black dress and pearls. But to consider Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (1883–1971) as simply a fashion designer fails to capture her social and cultural significance. As Linda Simon reveals in this biography, Chanel was an iconoclastic entrepreneur who rebelled against and manipulated gender expectations of her time. With her menswear-inspired designs, her loose jersey...

This edition does not include illustrations.Please note that due to the level of detail, the family tree is best viewed on a tablet.The wayward life (1898–1979) of the voracious art collector and great female patron of world-famous artists.‘Mrs Guggenheim, how many husbands have you had?’ ‘Do you mean my own, or other people’s?’ Peggy Guggenheim was an American millionairess art collector and legendary lover, whose father died on the Titanic returning from installin...

The innovative works of the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne laid the foundations of a new and radically different form of art in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional values of art in his time, Cézanne’s insistence on personal expression and the integrity of the painting itself, regardless of subject matter, have since earned him universal praise among his fellow artists, with Matisse and Picasso calling him "the father of us all." Delphi’s Masters of Art Se...

A painter of the Impressionist movement, Alfred Sisley was born on October 30th 1839 in Paris but was of British origin. He died on January 29th 1899 in Moret-sur-Loing. Growing up in a musical family, he chose to pursue painting rather than the field of business. In 1862 he enrolled in Gleyre’s studio where he encountered Renoir, Monet, and Bazille. The four friends left their master’s studio in March 1863 to work outdoors, setting their easels to paint the forest scenes of Fontainebleau....

This "expert and elegantly written" book reveals how dealers have been a major force in art history from the Renaissance to the avant garde ( The Guardian, UK).Philip Hook's riveting narrative takes us from the early days of art dealing in Antwerp, where paintings were sold by weight, to the unassailable hauteur of contemporary galleries in New York, London, Paris, and beyond. Along the way, we meet a surprisingly wide-ranging cast of characters—from tailor...

Frances Partridge: the last survivor of the Bloomsbury group - the authorised biography.Frances Partridge was one of the great British diarists of the 20th century. She became part of the Bloomsbury group encountering Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, the Bells, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes, Dora Carrington and Ralph Partridge. She and Ralph fell in love and married in 1933. During the Second World War they were committed pacifists and they enjoyed the happiest times o...

Drawing on exclusive and unprecedented access to David Hockney’s extensive archives, notebooks, and paintings, interviews with family, friends, and on Hockney himself, Christopher Simon Sykes provides a colorful and intimate portrait of one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.Born in 1937, David Hockney grew up in a northern English town during the days of postwar austerity. By the time he was ten years old he knew he wanted to be an artist, an...

John Constable was the first English landscape painter to take no lessons from the Dutch. He is rather indebted to the landscapes of Rubens, but his real model was Gainsborough, whose landscapes, with great trees planted in well-balanced masses on land sloping upwards towards the frame, have a rhythm often found in Rubens. Constable’s originality does not lie in his choice of subjects, which frequently repeated themes beloved by Gainsborough. Nevertheless, Constable seems to belong to a ne...