Award winning photographer Art Wolfe has worked in hundreds of locations and this is THE book of his career recording with great sensitivity a rapidly vanishing natural world. He has taken an estimated two million images in his lifetime and travels nearly nine months out of the year photographing new projects and giving inspirational presentations to educational, conservation and spiritual groups. In 1978 he published his first book 'Indian Baskets of the Northwest Coast' and worked for the world's top magazines such as National Geographic, Smithsonian, Audubon, GEO and Terre Sauvage. Magazines all over the world publish his photographs and stories and he is known for having the broadest range of excellence of any nature photographer. His wildlife portraits show cormorants sitting being petted by Chinese men on a gaslit raft at night, the Milky Way in spectacular colour behind two boulders and the colourful beads and rainbow colours of the costumes worn by the Maasai Mara tribespeople. An adult male lion stares vacantly into his camera, a plains zebra amidst white bearded wildebeest, greater and lesser flamingos pictured in Kenya and gemsbok African elephant, springbok and zebras all pictured together in the Etosha National Park, Namibia. There are colourful carpets, Dogon hunters and a spectacular series of gatefold pages including Moroccan architecture and women husking corn, landscapes of unbelievable beauty such as the Antarctic Peninsula, blue glaciers in Iceland, colourful wild flowers and snowy owlets in Alaska, a penguin stranded on a small iceberg, Arctic wolves in Canada, polar bears and cubs in Manitoba Canada. The book is organised by Mountain, Polar and Subpolar, Desert and Savannah, Ocean and Island and Tropical and Subtropical. Wolfe's images take us through the world's ecosystems and geographical regions in a vivid display of the fragility and interconnectivity of life on Earth and the book is undeniably breathtaking, an elegantly crafted masterpiece that will thrill collectors of nature photography. 396 enormous pages with dozens of gatefold pullouts, 28 x 3.8 x 35.5cm, spectacular colour.
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At the end of the First World War, the German doctor Hans Prinzhorn began collecting the paintings, drawings and sculpture of schizophrenic patients that would astonish and delight the world. The Prinzhorn collection as it was called inspired a new generation of artists, including Paul Klee, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. What the doctor could not have known however was that these works would later be used to prepare the ground for mass-murder. Adolf Hitler soon perceived Modernism's interest in madness as a threat - a Jewish-Bolshevik plot aimed at degrading the Aryan soul. Hitler was a failed artist of the old school and he stripped modernist works from German galleries and shamed them in exhibitions of 'Degenerate Art' alongside the 'insane' material of Prinzhorn's collection. He ridiculed the avant-garde and destroyed the cream of Germany's modern art collections. This action was mere preparation in Hitler's onslaught against so-called 'degenerate' people, and Prinzhorn's artists were caught up in both. By 1941, Hitler's regime had killed 70,000 psychiatric patients. It was an extermination campaign that served as the prototype for the Final Solution. Bringing together inspirational art history, genius and madness, and the wanton cruelty of the fanatical 'artist-Führer', this astonishing story lays bare the culture war that paved the way for Hitler's first extermination programme, the psychiatric Holocaust. 16 pages of colour and black and white photos and four pages of maps and list of names of the principal artists. 304pp in large softback.

French flower painter Pierre-Joseph Redouté (1759-1840) devoted himself exclusively to capturing the diversity of flowering plants in watercolour paintings which were then published as copper engravings, with careful botanical descriptions. The darling of wealthy Parisian patrons including Napoleon's wife Josephine, he was dubbed "the Raphael of flowers," and is regarded to this day as a master of botanical illustration. His illustrations of the Botanical Alphabets of D. N. Guillamain were a landmark in flower painting and he was an innovator in the techniques of printing including 'stipple-engraving'. This glorious and completely faithful reproduction includes Roses from 1817-1824 following The Lilies 1802-1816 and Selection of the Most Beautiful Flowers, each exquisite botanical illustration afforded one full page in colour. Quality heavyweight paper, stitched binding, one for all lovers of nature and art. Beautiful colour artworks, new from Taschen, superheavyweight luxury hardback. This collection brings Taschen's best-selling XL-sized edition to a smaller, more convenient format, still gathering some of the finest colour engravings from Redouté's illustrations of Roses, Lilies, and Choix des plus belles fleurs et quelques branches des plus beaux fruits (Selection of the Most Beautiful Blooms and Branches with the Finest Fruits). Offering a vibrant overview of Redouté's mixture of accuracy and beauty, it is also a privileged glimpse into the magnificent gardens and greenhouses of a bygone Paris. Text in English, Italian and Spanish. 16 x 22cm, rich with colour, 512 pages. New from Taschen.

Observer Best Art Book 2021, it is an illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and the sea from the award-winning author of Leviathan. Albrecht Dürer changed the way we saw nature through art. From his prints in 1498 of the plague-ridden Apocalypse, the first works mass produced by any artist, to his hyper-real images of animals and plants, Dürer's art was a revelation. It not only showed us who we are, but also foresaw our future, a vision that remains startingly powerful and seductive today. Philip Hoare encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare and traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan and the artist pursued. 'In another scene, from Eden, other animals slipped out of the forest, the humans as naked and content as them, until then. The scene receded, three-dimensionally, in layers. In the distance, a goat teetered on a cliff. Maybe this is where the world began... Then in another picture I saw an angel... Another sleepy dog dozed at the hem of their robes, a comet burst over the distant sea.' We can appreciate the many famous artworks through the eyes of a dreamer and wonderfully descriptive writer. 'Dürer gave you more ink per square inch. Peter Ursem, a Dutch artist, tells me that woodcuts differed from wood engravings... They're fossils, or contour maps of the seabed. In their gullies and crevices, agony collects. Dürer turned these blocks in his inky fingers, before the next run. Adam and Eve are chased from Eden; an archangel wields a sword; Christ dies, over and over again.' In 1515 Dürer created his Man of Sorrows, the first metal etching known to western history. If his woodcuts are astounding, his engravings are almost uncanny. Very well illustrated and with a series of colour plates at the end of this fine 4th Estate publication with its witty accounts and delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world. 304pp.

Large, glamorous art publication by Philip Wilson Publishers of Bloomsbury, the topic is William Powell Frith (1819-1909), one of the most successful painters of the Victorian age, celebrated for his highly original depictions of modern life subjects in the 1850s and 1860s. He was virtually a household name due to the widespread dissemination of reproductive engravings which made his images familiar throughout the world. His three great panoramas of the contemporary world, Life at the Seaside (Ramsgate Sands), The Derby Day and The Railway Station depicted Victorians at leisure and are scrutinised in depth. Similarly covered is Frith's later and more exclusive panorama reconstructing the Private View of 1881 at the Royal Academy, where Oscar Wilde has centre stage. Essays explore important and hitherto neglected areas of his personal life and professional activity, of significant biographical interest are studies of his connections with Yorkshire, the county of his birth and also his first wife Isabelle's, and his friendships with the contemporary writers notably the sensation novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon, and his historical genre pictures focussing on the early success of 'An English Merry-Making, A Hundred Years Ago.' An intriguing angle is the recreation of certain of his famous compositions as Tableaux on the London Stage, yet another fresh topic in this presentation of 'The People's Painter'. So lifelike are the eyes and skin in page after page of gorgeous colour images on these heavy glossy white pages - Poor Maria, The Beautiful Grisette, Vanessa who was a longtime lover and correspondent of Jonathan Swift. It was well known that Frith was a friend as well as a devotee of Charles Dickens and his paintings are brimming with life and incident such as Alexander Pope's vain declaration of love to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. The courtyard of Millbank Prison provides a unique view of life in disgrace wearing shaming uniform dotted with arrow motifs. Another favourite of ours is Frith being buttonholed by a flower seller as they stand against a backdrop of the Bay of Naples. 192 glamorous pages, 22.9 x 27.6cm.
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Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) received enormous success with his illustrations for Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle (1905) which led him to illustrating another 45 major works including such classics as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Aesop's Fables and various works by Shakespeare. His imaginative and distinctive characters as well as his command of watercolours and Indian ink made his work not only unique, but dreamlike when he rendered fantastical creatures like fairies and goblins and recreated classic scenes in works like The Night Before Christmas. Here is his The Hare and the Tortoise, Jack and the Beanstalk, the story of The Three Bears, Who Stole the Tarts?, The Fairies are Exquisite Dancers, The Duke's Oak, Tom Make My Small Elves Coats from A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the hookah-smoking caterpillar from Alice, all reproduced in this huge softback. Printed on high quality paper, the 45 vibrant illustrations for you to colour in each has a suggestion of how to start colouring as well as key information such as title and date. You can use a wide variety of pens from gel and pencil to pigment and crayons, ballpoint and rollerball to highlighters, although it is best to avoid very heavy felt pens. Each page is perforated near the spine so you can tear out the artwork and frame it. 96pp, softback, 25.4cm squared.

A National Gallery publication which looks at the revolutionary achievement of the youthful Titian which was made possible by his interaction with four great artists at the start of his career. Schooled by Bellini, associated with Giorgione, competed with Sebastiano del Piombo, he came into early contact with the work of Dürer. Here Antonio Mazzotta provides a fresh view of this brief and extraordinary episode in the history of art, focussing on Titian's great 'Flight into Egypt' and related paintings in the National Gallery. Titian is acknowledged as the greatest of the 16th century Venetian painters, best known for his portraits, mythological pictures and religious subjects, yet by studying the work of Dürer's paintings of plants, animals and landscape, Titian caused a sensation in Venice in the first decade of the 16th century. This is a beautiful and now rare 88 page large square softback art exhibition catalogue from 2012 which we have been lucky enough to discover in the USA and import. Rich with colour throughout with images of the Madonna and child on a donkey, foxes, wolves, a pastoral concert, archangel plus examples from Dürer et al.

LEGO Minifigures are hugely popular with their tiny expressive faces and arms and props and this one is special because it belongs to the magical wizarding world of Hogwarts, Beauxbatons and Durmstrang where students learn how to cast spells, brew potions and battle monsters that live in secret underground dungeons. Find out which witch is one-quarter Veela and which wizards drive a magical bus. Find out about some of the students Harry Potter meets like the Muggle-born witch Hermione Grainger and how in their sixth year, Harry and Ron Weasley are on the Gryffindor Quidditch team together. All the characters and creatures and dark wizards are here like Helga Hufflepuff, Cornelius Fudge and Dobby in this laugh-out-loud funny guidebook packed with fun facts from the films. Includes one Voldemort minifigure with a cheeky grinning face, white body and flexible arms, wizard wands and a long green snake. 128 page softback, packed with colour plus minifigure box set, suit ages 7+ and CE safety approved.

Great Britain and Ireland are particularly well endowed with cathedrals and abbeys and it is estimated that there were almost 1,000 built during the Middle Ages. When Cromwell closed the majority of them during the dissolution of the monasteries, many were left in ruins, plundered or survived because their local communities adopted them as parish churches. The outstanding example is St Albans which begins this beautifully illustrated collection. We go to Bath Abbey, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Canterbury, Chelmsford, Chester, Chichester, Coventry, St Davids, Durham, Ely, Exeter, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Glastonbury, Gloucester, Hereford, Leicester, Lincoln, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Oxford, St Patrick's Dublin, St Paul's, Peterborough, Rochester, Salisbury, Southwark, Southwell Minster, Tewkesbury Abbey, Truro, Wells, Westminster Abbey, Winchester, Worcester to York Minster with a bolt of lightning and walls of glass and it rebellious Yorkshireman. Discover tales of an English pope, a martyred archbishop, secrets and troublesome spies, stained glass wonders and castle-cathedrals, famous memorials and spectacular architectural feats in a rich heritage and fascinating collection. New full price, 144 well illustrated pages.

This impressive guidebook to techniques for an aspiring fantasy artist, covering traditional and digital media, features ideas for writing, graphics and movies. Many of the best fantasy paintings imply a narrative, with inspiration coming from childhood memories, dreams, books, movies, mythology, or other works of art, for instance the symbolism of pre-Raphaelite painters such as Burne Jones or mystics like William Blake. The important thing is to open your mind. Tools and techniques are many and varied, including pencil, charcoal, ink, markers, watercolour, acrylics, oils, digital tools and software. Many fantasy artists start in a traditional medium then scan the picture to be developed digitally. Among the examples is a Wizard created in ballpoint, watercolour, and gouache. A Fallen Angel starts with a photo, then a drawing and finally sophisticated digital refinement. Techniques made possible by software are dodge and burn, the brush smudge, hue brightness, and the use of different brush widths. Concepts include the creation of a humanoid starting with a life drawing, then using exaggeration and distortion, but stopping short of caricature. Anthropomorphism is often very effective, for instance a tree with face in the work of Arthur Rackham. Other popular motifs are swords and sorcery, dragons, enchantment, charms, and cliffs. People can be beautiful but the context, lighting and style might indicate whether they are to be trusted. 192pp, ringbound hard cover, colour illustrations on every page.