This series acts as an introduction to key artists and movements in art history. Each title contains 48 full-page colour plates, accompanied by extensive notes, and numerous comparative illustrations in colour or black and white, a concise introduction, select bibliography and detailed source information for the images. Monographs on individual artists also feature a brief chronology.
Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was one of the many and diverse talents who were drawn to Paris in the early years of this century, making the city a vibrant but pressurized environment for artistic expression. A legend grew up around Modigliani, who, along with others, engendered the concept of the peintre maudit – the accursed painter – whose poverty, corruption and excess were the very seeds from which his remarkable works of art were conceived.Unlike the Italian Futurists, who stormed at their own overwhelming tradition, Modigliani seemed to sense the possibility of returning to it for renewal. His interpretation of a central theme of the tradition, the reclining female nude, produced a series of uniquely beautiful works, outstanding in the grace and harmony of their linear designs and the quality of their colour. Nude, portraits and studies of a surprising range of personalities and psychological types are represented in this ideal introduction to the artist, as is a selection of his remarkable stone carvings, of which about 25 survive.
For three years, former teacher Lillian Beckwith has lived in the Hebrides, immersing herself in the land and its people. So familiar has she become that she is determined to stay on the island. She purchases a long-vacant cottage at the edge of the village and enthusiastically embarks on renovating her property and embracing the life of a small farmer. Throughout her endeavors, she keenly observes the peculiar antics of the island's inhabitants with her trained eye. Beckwith, originally from Ellesmere Port/Cheshire, has spent nearly two decades in the Hebrides and now resides on the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea.
A collection of more than sixty traditional nursery rhymes is illustrated with drawings of animals.
