A lavishly illustrated art compendium and biography of Arthur Barbosa, the artist who, over more than 60 years, provided dust jackets for some of the 20th century's most famous authors of fiction, including Georgette Heyer, Doris Leslie, C. S. Forester, Patrick O'Brian, Joanna Trollope, Graham Greene, Sax Rohmer, Jules Verne, Anthony Powell, Lytton Strachey and, of course, George MacDonald Fraser. Born in Liverpool, he moved to London at the end of the 1920s where he became a noted and respected illustrator and commercial artist. A lifelong friend of Rex Harrison, he also numbered among his friends and acquaintances Cecil Beaton, Frederick Ashton, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Living in London during the Jazz Age and WWII, he grew old in a small Kentish village. He married three times and moved with the movers and shakers in '30s London. An accomplished interior designer, he was also an expert in the esoterica of military uniforms which shows in his splendid colourful artworks, posters for example Scott & Bailey 1922 Diamond Jubilee, murals and adverts as well as prized book jackets for romances and children's books, diversions of young and old on cycling, duelling, Brighton Regent's Resort and page after page of glamorously decorated military men and more recently on bottles of port and sherry from Tescos! Heavyweight tome, 23 x 30cm packed with colour illus. and hundreds of line artworks and engravings on glossy paper. Collector's item. 350 pages.
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A vivid and revealing book focused on the fascinating European journeys of British artist Frances Hodgkins. The much overlooked New Zealand-born Frances Hodgkins (1869-1947) arrived in London in 1901 and, by the 1920s, had become a leading British modernist, exhibiting frequently with avant-garde artists such as Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. This book explores Hodgkins as a traveller across cultures and landscapes - teaching and discovering the cubists in Paris, absorbing the landscape and light of Ibiza and Morocco, and exhibiting with the progressive Seven & Five Society in London. See dreamy watercolours of fishermen, a summer garden, Belgian refugees, a hilltown landscape, Cornwall, Pembrokeshire countryside and dozens of intriguing still lifes. Complete with a rich visual chronology of the artist's encounters abroad, alongside over 100 of Hodgkins' key paintings and drawings, the book is an illuminating journey that moves us from place to place through the writings of a number of distinguished national and international art historians, curators and critics: Frances Spalding (University of Cambridge, England), Alexa Johnston (Auckland-based writer and curator), Elena Taylor (University of New South Wales, Australia), Antoni Ribas Tur (Ara newspaper, Spain in the 1930s), and Julia Waite on St Ives, Sarah Hillary on material and technique, Catherine Hammond and Mary Kisler (Auckland Art Gallery Toi oTamaki, New Zealand). 23.5 x 28.5cm, 268 pages. Thames & Hudson, 202 stunning full page colour illus, ephemera and photos.

Gallop around the cosmos with Captain James T. Kirk, Spock, Uhura, Sulu, Doctor McCoy and the USS Enterprise. This celebration of the legacy of the most iconic and beloved sci-fi franchise Star Trek dares to boldly go where no man has gone before. This official poster collection includes 32 removable posters measuring a huge 27.94 x 35.56cm. They include promotional posters for Star Trek the Motion Picture, a stylised 1960s poster of William Shatner's face shouting in black and white with the slogans Star Trek, Obsession, Shatner; Spock making the Vulcan salute hand gesture, the Enterprise orbiting a spectacular mustard and yellow-coloured planet, Kirk in the Captain's Chair looking pensive, and a posed photograph with his crew among the images from the TV series and film franchise. Huge softback.

Art detective Debra Mancoff reveals cryptic symbols used by Leonardo da Vinci, Vermeer and Caravaggio, uncovers layers of meaning in paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso and Dalí, and provides insight into works by Frida Kahlo, Kara Walker and Marina Abramovic. In fact, the latter currently has an exhibition in London where two naked people stand in a doorway and the viewer is invited to walk between them sideways. It is pictured here in the book from its first performance. We shall peer through layers of paint to chart an artist's change of mind or to bring to light another hand's alterations. We shall untangle the bewildering effects of optical illusion and search for hidden identities. We shall consider the results of censorship, read secret symbols and decode the decorum of dress. We shall look at works that were never finished, or were broken or lost, to see if the part can tell us the story of the whole. We see with new eyes Courbet's Man with a Leather Belt, Jasper Johns' White Flag, Velázquez's Las Meninas, Masaccio's Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Edward Burne-Jones's Phyllis and Demophoon, William Holman Hunt's The Awakening Conscience, Jan van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait and Banksy's Love is in the Bin (originally Girl with Balloon) among the chosen pieces of art and photography such as Cindy Sherman's Sultry Woman in a Black Dress (gazing at something outside the frame). The reflection in the mirror reveals a martini coupe on a table and a jacket hanging on the back of a chair. 240 large pages, hundreds of colour and other illus.
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Sub-titled 'Writers, Artists and a Peculiarly British Tradition', the book explores three fascinating examples of relationships between artists and writers - the illustrations of Paradise Lost and Pilgrim's Progress, Hogarth and Fielding; a writer and artist dealing with common material; Wordsworth and Thomas Bewick, a poet and engraver working separately but imbued with the spirit of their age. A brief coda turns to a fourth kind of relationship, the writers and artists who collaborate from the start, beginning with Dickens and Phiz and Lewis Carroll and Tenniel. All were great innovators who shared common aims and this is a book for all with an interest in the poetry, novel writing, painting, engraving or cartooning of the period, a rewarding and generally illustrated book. Includes colour plates, several of Thomas Bewick's birds and Hogarth's The Shrimp Girl and Blake's The Temptation of Eve. 162pp, softback.

The iridescent designs of the 1920s and the style of Art Deco is celebrated in this magnificent volume together with publicity material and an abundance of black and white archive photographs reproduced in full page like the modernist looking ferryboat MV Kalakala or an American Streamliner train, the Chrysler Building in New York and beautifully designed hotels, restaurants, movie theatres, galleries, civic buildings. There are plush interiors for luxurious bathroom, decorative ceilings and cornices, extraordinary furniture like leather-sided day beds of inlaid dressing tables, ornate backed chairs, sumptuous rooms whether in Parisian apartments, bedrooms or home offices, beautifully decorated vases and glassware, perfume spray bottles, sculptures, figurine bottles and of course the graphic art, be it posters, designs from Relais in the 1930s and dozens of examples from George Barbier, posters and book illustrations. The book begins with jewellery and Art Deco and Nouveau clothing following a short introduction by the ethnologist and art historian Franziska Bolz. Short captions, hundreds of colour examples which are full page covering all forms of Art Deco design - art, geometry as a motif, sculpture, furnishings and furniture, oceans, mural painting, glassware, ceramics, transport and Art Deco in America in this magnificently illustrated panorama of this ornamental aesthetic in all materials as luxurious as lacquer or stingray. 21.08 x 24.13cm. 280 page paperback, full page colour photos.
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Naked and semi-draped ladies attended by a black servant in a luxurious Turkish Baths with mosaics and carpet adorns the front cover. This assembly of numerous works by Orientalist painters constitutes a sublime testimony to an imagined fantasy Orient, located between eroticism and sensuality. The masterworks include Harem by Francesco Netti with a bare-breasted dancing white lady, musicians, The Odalesques, richly decorated rooms within palaces, fountains and courtyards of concubines, veiled girls relaxing on a sunny terrace, gardens, flowers, bathing in groups, an Algerian and her Slave with tapestry clothing and rich jewellery being fanned, to the exquisite composition Leila by Frank Dicksee (1853-1928). In the wake of Bonaparte's Egyptian Campaign, artists of the 19th century became fascinated by the Orient and, most particularly, the harems which were so remote from western culture. These places rapidly provided a pretext for drawing the languid bodies of naked women, whose depiction in any other context would have been intolerable! Large softback, 280 pages, hundreds of delicious colour plates most full page.

European, French, early Netherlandish, Flemish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, German and British painting are wonderfully represented in this lavish art gallery of a book without ever having to leave our armchairs or to travel to Russia. Beautifully reproduced are such masterworks as Casper David Friedrich's Moonrise by the Sea, Schönfeld's The Rape of the Sabines in all its drama and horror, Christ and the Adulterous Woman by Lucas Cranach with the most intriguing faces crowded into the painting, many religious paintings by Tintoretto and Veronese, landscapes, portraits, still life, mythological masterpieces like Rubens' The Union of Fire and Water or the simple almost monochrome lines of Cézanne's Girls at the Piano or Corot's Landscape with Lake opposite the colour and pageantry of the Heraldic Hall in the Winter Palace and portraits of nobility. There is also a look at archaeology and the applied arts, and a history of the Hermitage complex and the influence of Catherine the Great. The precious collection of paintings has established the Hermitage's reputation in St. Petersburg as one of the most important museums in the world, but the architectural ensemble on the banks of the Neva is also a masterpiece of world architecture. Softback, 320 pages. 21 x 24cm or 8½" x 9½". Hundreds of colour illustrations. Multi language edition from Könemann.

What is more inviting that a sunny garden, full of wonderful colours and the scent of flowers and who captured this better than the Impressionists with their canvasses full of colour and light? This warm Konemann publication explores the rich history and striking evolution of Impressionist garden paintings. By the 1860s, gardens were highly popular in France; the introduction and cross-breeding of new plant and flower species and the opening to the public of the former royal parks had stimulated a great horticultural movement. With their delight in colour, plein-air effects and modern-life themes, the Impressionists and their followers naturally turned to gardens for artistic inspiration. This book follows the spread of the Impressionist garden in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and illustrates not only masterpieces of Impressionism by Monet, Manet, Rousseau, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Morisot, Hanna Pauli, Caillebotte, Cezanne and others, but also works by such forebears as Delacroix, Corot, Courbet and later figures like Van Gogh, Gauguin, Klimt and Sargent and Max Liebermann and Seurat. Plus dappled and inviting tea parties by Pompeo Mariani, pointillism in the Orchard by Theo van Rysselberghe, the lady in red leaning on a lamppost by Jean-Louis Forain. Spectacular illustrations and accessible, engaging text, for the art lover or gardening enthusiast. 28.96 x 26.92cm. Hundreds of colour illustrations, many double page. 260 heavyweight with colour pages, amazing value for money for a glorious art book.
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Lovers of Spanish art will know all about this famous museum. If you cannot travel to Madrid, this is the very next best thing. The Museo del Prado not only houses the largest collection of Spanish painting spanning the 15th to the 19th century, but also represents an entire history of the classical art of Western Europe and treasures from the royal collections, featuring a wide variety of Masters, regions, styles and genres with its 8,000 paintings, 5,000 drawings, 2,000 prints, 700 sculptures and 2,000 other works of art. The Monastery of El Escorial under Philip II collected 1,150 mostly religious paintings and the El Pardo 'Hunting Lodge' 117 paintings, mainly portraits. Blonde plaited hair, Doña Margarita of Austria in long black silk hooded robe is pictured in oil on canvas, 1665, and the Emperor Charles V with a dog on the following page, and portraits by Goya, Velázquez and Anguissola (1530-1626). Spanish painting from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the Golden Age, Neo-Classicism to Modernity, Northern European painting and Italian painting are selected and expertly covered in this exquisitely produced gallery. 280pp in large softback, colour plates on every page plus photos and introduction. 8¼" x 9½".