"The Paston Treasure", a spectacular painting from the 1660s now held at Norwich Castle Museum, depicts a wealth of objects from the collection of a local landed family. This deeply researched volume uses the painting as a portal to the history of th...

Almost thirty years ago, W. J. T. Mitchell's "Iconology" helped launch the interdisciplinary study of visual media, now a central feature of the modern humanities. Along with his subsequent "Picture Theory" and "What Do Pictures Want?", Mitchell's no...

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the founder of French Impressionism and remains one of the world's best-known and most beloved painters. His works are on view in many of the finest museums, and details of his storied life are well documented. Less well...

Frederic Church (1826-1900), one of the leading painters of 19th-century America and the Hudson River School, also journeyed around the globe to find fresh inspiration for his highly detailed compositions. Among Church's lesser-known masterpieces are...

In the second half of the 19th century, Paris attracted an international gathering of women artists, drawn to the French capital by its academies and museums, studios and salons. Featuring thirty-six artists from eleven different countries, this beau...

Edgar Degas's (1834-1917) relentless experimentation with technical procedures is a hallmark of his lifelong desire to learn. The numerous iterations of compositions and poses suggest an intense self-discipline, as well as a refusal to accept any cre...

"The Mountains in Art History" is the first English-language work to focus on the mountains as subject matter and source of aesthetic and spiritual inspiration for painters. This collection of original essays is written entirely by Wesleyan Universit...

The remarkable story of the stylistic, cultural, and technical innovations that drove the surge of comics, caricature, and other print media in 19th-century Europe. Taking its title from the 1844 visionary graphic novel by J. J. Grandville, this gro...

Kokusai lived in a time of immense social, cultural and artistic change, and his work – and indeed his own person – captures its contradictions. The Edo period was ending, the last breath of feudal Japan, and the Meiji Restoration launched the new na...

This splendidly illustrated book explores the universal and multifaceted theme of nature as manifested in Western European art of the Middle Ages. Fascinating essays consider the concept in the context of medieval philosophy, theology, and poetry. Th...