The Wrightsman Collection

The Wrightsman Collection
Author: Charles B. Wrightsman
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 478
Release: 1966
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0870990128

Volume Five: This catalogue of a private collection includes works by such artists as Vermeer, Rubens, Renoir, La Tour, the Tiepolos, El Greco, Canaletto, and Van Dyck. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

The Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Wrightsman Galleries for French Decorative Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Author: Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2010
Genre: Decoration and ornament
ISBN: 1588393666

The authors, Danielle Kisluk-Grosheide and Jeffrey Munger, are curators in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. They oversaw the recent reinstallation of the Wrightsman Galleries --Book Jacket.

The Wrightsman Pictures

The Wrightsman Pictures
Author: Jayne Wrightsman
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2005
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588391442

This lavish catalogue presents 150 European paintings, pastels, and drawings from the late fifteenth to the mid-nineteenth century that have been given to the Metropolitan Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wrightsman or are still held in Mrs. Wrightsman's private collection. These notable works were collected over the past four decades, many of them with the Museum in mind; some were purchased by the Museum through the Wrightsman Fund. Highlights of the book include masterpieces by Vermeer, El Greco, Rubens, Van Dyck, Georges de La Tour, Jacques-Louis David, and Caspar David Friedrich as well as numerous paintings by the eighteenth-century Venetian artists Canaletto, Guardi, and the Tiepolos, father and son, plus a dozen remarkable portrait drawings by Ingres. Each work is reproduced in color and is accompanied by a short essay.

Lists

Lists
Author: Liza Kirwin
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2010-03-15
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9781568988887

From the weekly shopping list to the Ten Commandments, our lives are shaped by lists. Whether dashed off as a quick reminder, or carefully constructed as an inventory, this humble form of documentation provides insight into its maker's personal habits and decision-making processes. This is especially true for artists, whose day-to-day acts of living and art-making overlap and inform each other. Artists' lists shed uncover a host of unbeknownst motivations, attitudes, and opinions about their work and the work of others. Lists presents almost seventy artifacts, including "to do" lists, membership lists, lists of paintings sold, lists of books to read, lists of appointments made and met, lists of supplies to get, lists of places to see, and lists of people who are "in." At times introspective, humorous, and resolute, but always revealing and engaging, Lists is a unique firsthand account of American cultural history that augments the personal biographies of some of the most celebrated and revered artists of thelast two centuries. Many of the lists are historically important, throwing a flood of light on a moment, movement, or event; others are private, providing an intimate view of an artist's personal life: Pablo Picasso itemized his recommendations for the Armory Show in 1912; architect Eero Saarinen enumerated the good qualities of the then New York Times art editor and critic Aline Bernstein, his second wife; sculptor Alexander Calder's address book reveals the whos who of the Parisian avant-garde in the early twentieth century. In the hands of their creators, these artifacts become works of art in and of themselves. Lists includes rarely seen specimens by Vito Acconci, Leo Castelli, Joseph Cornell, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, H. L. Mencken, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Richard Pousette-Dart, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Andrew Wyeth.

Visitors to Versailles

Visitors to Versailles
Author: Daniëlle Kisluk-Grosheide
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 396
Release: 2018-04-16
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588396223

What was it like to visit one of the most magnificent courts of Europe? Based on a wealth of contemporary documents and surviving works of art, this lavish book explores the experiences of those who swarmed the palace and grounds of Versailles when it was the seat of the French monarchy. Engaging essays describe methods of transportation, the elaborate codes of dress and etiquette, precious diplomatic gifts, royal audiences, and tours of the palace and gardens. Also presented are the many types of visitors and guests who eagerly made their way to this center of power and culture, including day-trippers and Grand Tourists, European diplomats, overseas ambassadors, incognito travelers, and Americans. Through paintings and portraits, furniture, costumes and uniforms, arms and armor, guidebooks, and other works of art, Visitors to Versailles illuminates what travelers encountered at court and what impressions, gifts, and souvenirs they took home with them. In bringing to life their experiences, this sumptuously illustrated volume reminds us why Versailles has enchanted generations of visitors from the ancien régime to the present day.

Romantic Geography

Romantic Geography
Author: Yi-Fu Tuan
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Pres
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0299296830

Geography is useful, indeed necessary, to survival. Everyone must know where to find food, water, and a place of rest, and, in the modern world, all must make an effort to make the Earth -- our home -- habitable. But much present-day geography lacks drama, with its maps and statistics, descriptions and analysis, but no acts of chivalry, no sense of quest. Not long ago, however, geography was romantic. Heroic explorers ventured to forbidding environments -- oceans, mountains, forests, caves, deserts, polar ice caps -- to test their power of endurance for reasons they couldn't fully articulate. Why climb Everest? "Because it is there." In this book, the author considers the human tendency -- stronger in some cultures than in others -- to veer away from the middle ground of common sense to embrace the polarized values of light and darkness, high and low, chaos and form, mind and body. In so doing, venturesome humans can find salvation in geographies that cater not so much to survival needs (or even to good, comfortable living) as to the passionate and romantic aspirations of their nature

Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons
Author: Harold Koda
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2006
Genre: Clothing and dress
ISBN: 0300107145

An alluring look at the relationship of clothing and interior design in 18th-century France

European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art

European Furniture in The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Author: Daniëlle O. Kisluk-Grosheide,
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 300
Release: 2006-05-30
Genre: Design
ISBN: 0300104847

This beautifully produced volume is the first to survey the Metropolitan Museum's world-renowned collection of European furniture. One hundred and three superb examples from the Museum's vast holdings are featured. They originated in workshops in England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia, or Spain and date from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century. A number of them belonged to such important historical figures as Pope Urban VIII, Louis XIV, Madame de Pompadour, and Napoleon. The selection includes chairs, tables, beds, cabinets, commodes, settees and sofas, bookcases and standing shelves, desks, fire screens, athéniennes, coffers, chests, mirrors and frames, showcases, and lighting equipment. There is also one purely decorative piece, a superb vase made for a Russian noble family who, according to one awestruck viewer, "owned all the malachite mines in the world." The makers of some of the objects are unknown, but most of the pieces can be identified by label, documentation, or style as the work of an outstanding European designer-craftsman, such as André-Charles Boulle, Thomas Chippendale, David Roentgen, or Karl Friedrich Schinkel.