Victoria Charles

C?zanne transformed a teacup into something alive, raising still-life to the point that it ceased to be inanimate. Wassily Kandinsky said about the French artist: “He painted these things as human beings because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything.” In addition to those of C?zanne, this book is devoted to still-life paintings by artists such as Van Gogh, Matisse, ...

Flowers are the centerpiece in the majority of pictorial still-lifes. By painting their colours and forms, artists from Brueghel to O’Keeffe have created symbols for both life and mortality. Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Monet’s water lilies and Matisse’s bouquets are, of course, unforgotten. Most of the works contained in Flowers are true masterpieces, which have often marked whole epochs and styles.

Universally celebrated for his rosy and concupiscent nudes, Peter Paul Rubens was an artist whose first concern was sensuality in all its forms. This Baroque master devoted himself to a lifelong celebration of the joys and wonders of the physical realm. He felt that the human body was as lovely and natural as the many natural landscapes he painted as a young man.

Featuring 1,000 internationally recognised paintings, this collection spans the history of art from the 13th century to the present, from the early stirrings of the Renaissance movement in Italy to the boundary-pushing experiments of the Abstract Expressionists in post-World War II America. These cultural treasures are presented in historical context, along with extended captions and biographies o...

At the end of the 19th century Alphonse Mucha created a sensation throughout the streets of Paris with his posters representing the French actress Sarah Bernhardt. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris, Art Nouveau. This brought fame and reputation to the poster artist. However, Mucha’s talent was never confined to lithography. ...

Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that developed all across Europe for more than 200 years. Leaving Roman roundish forms behind, the architects started using flying buttress and pointed arches to open cathedrals to the daylight. Period of great economic and social changes, the gothic period also saw the devel...

In art history, the term Romanesque art distinguishes the period between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. This era showed a great diversity of regional schools each with their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by its raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work reclaims the importance of this art which is today ...

Van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to distinguish the two. While observing his paintings we see a panorama of his life story-a story that is now considered a legend. Van Gogh is the incarnation of the suffering, misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the unconventional artist.

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 frequ...

Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The entrance to his world is not barricaded with technical difficulties. He proved that if a man has the capacity to live and multiply his experiences, to fight and work, he can produce great art without class...