Bernard Denvir Libri

Covers painters, critics, patrons, and collectors, and describes the cultural background of the time.

The richness and diversity of Italy's art heritage is unparalleled in the world and for centuries it has attracted thousands of travellers anxious to study Western art at its most vigorous source. This volume surveys the brilliance and range of the masterpieces housed in Italy's major collections.

Examines the major influences on the life and work of the famous French artist

Always on the move - he was brought up in Lima and worked in Paris and Brittany - Paul Gauguin left France for good in 1891 to settle in Tahiti. The canvases he sent back were to have a profound influence on 20th-century art; their revolutionary use of brilliant pure colour and rejection of naturalism were an inspiration to a generation of younger artists, from Matisse to Picasso. Indispensible to an understanding of this complex man and the artistic, commercial and personal pressures that drove him, are his own letters and other writings, which contain explanations of pictures that meant a great deal to him and what he was trying to achieve in his work, and evocative descriptions of Tahitian life. This is a collection of extracts from Gauguin's correspondence - to his wife in Denmark, his agent in Paris and his friends, including Strindberg and Van Gogh - and from his journals "Noa Noa" and "Avant et Apres". The extracts are juxtaposed with illustrations of his oil paintings, watercolours and letter sketches.

When Monet falls and injures his leg, young Frdddric Bazille entertains the sufferer by painting his portrait in bed; when Monet is penniless and his mistress pregnant, Bazille buys a painting out of charity. But Bazille dies in the Franco-Prussian War, while Monet lives on to become a great master and to enjoy a productive old age lasting well into the 20th century.