Book review – art history
Through the looking-glass
On Monday 21 April 1760 Joshua Reynolds had a busy day. Through the morning and the afternoon he had a…
Pussy’s in the well
During the second world war, when not only food, but paper and artists’ materials were scarce, Peggy Angus made a…
Brushes with fame
Philip Hensher on the precarious fortunes of even the most gifted 19th-century artists
All that the British countryside has to offer
The Yale Center for British Art holds the largest collection of British art outside the UK. An impressive collection it…
The poetry of pottery
For Edmund de Waal a ceramic pot has a ‘real life’ that goes beyond functionalism.This handsome book (designed by Atelier…
‘Draw lines, young man’
Lucian Freud once said that ‘being able to draw well is the hardest thing — far harder than painting, as…
Shadows on the wall
‘Take away, utterly extinct and destroy all shrines … pictures, paintings and all other monuments of feigned miracles, pilgrimages, idolatry…
They do it with mirrors
If ever there was a time to write a book about self-portraits, this must be it. ‘Past interest in the…
A Herculean achievement
Early on in this dazzling new biography, Martin Gayford compares Michelangelo, with his daunting artistic tasks, to Hercules, the subject…
