Richard R. Brettell (1949–2020)

This is a catalogue of an collection of art works made by Nathan Cummings, the founder of the Sarah Lee business. Clearly, Nathan made a lot of money and this collection of paintings reflects both a good eye (maybe good advice too) but also pretty deep pockets. He seems to have started collecting around 1945...I guess, just after WWII and the majority of the collection is probably directed at art from around 1900...but also includes later works by the likes of Henry Moore. As an art book and show more a catalogue, it is very well done. Each individual work is illustrated by both an overview picture but also by one or more close-ups...which I find really interesting....especially in terms of seeing how the artist applied the paint...the brush strokes etc. Or, in the case of sculpture, the finish and the patina on the works.
Each work is also accompanied by a rather erudite essay which gives some background to the piece and also to the artist and sometimes to the way in which it was acquired by Nathan Cummings. These essays are really quite masterful. I guess the text was supplied by Richard R Brettell, who is listed as the consulting curator for the Sara Lee Collection.
The Sarah Lee corporation made a millennium gift of these art works to a number of significant museums around the world ....truly a magnanimous gesture because they are all works of considerable significance...despite the fact that Nathan was supposed to have just bought what he liked..
An interesting and beautifully illustrated book. I'm tossing up whether to keep it (with my limited shelf space) or donate it to Charity. I give it 4.5 stars. show less

This wonderful book is a catalogue of an exhibition organised by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Art Institute of Chicago and the Reunion des Musees Nationaux, Paris. The artists represented include Monet, Cezanne, Renoir, Seurat, Gauguin, Manet, Signac and Pissarro.
But this book is not merely a catalogue - it stands alone as an excellent and readable book about the artistic and social worlds of the artists. The essays are interesting and mercifully free of inaccessible jargon, so show more the generalist really can learn something about the context of the Impressionist movement, the paintings themselves and the artists.
An example: the opening of the essay `The Impressionist Landscape and the Image of France: " When the Impressionists began to paint the French landscape in the 1860s, they were not alone. Several satirical writers had already counted more landscape painters than tourists or peasants in their travels through the French countryside, and the official Salon exhibitions held annually in Paris were all but dominated by French landscapes. Books and manuals about landscape painting for both amateur and professional artists abounded, and if there was a national genre in French art, it was surely landscape. The painters were joined by a legion of printmakers, draftsmen, and popular illustrators in an almost frantic collective attempt to record the national physiognamy."

The essays are:
`Impressionism in Context' - includes information on the conception of the exhibition, the grouping of paintings etc; `The Impressionist Landscape and the Image of France' (extract above) which includes reference to contemporaneous politics, writing, national movements such as rejection of historical France, the concept of nature of the Impressionsts etc; `The French Landscape Sensibility'; `The Cradle of Impressionism' - about the Seine landscape and villages; `The Urban Landscape' - Paris; ` Rivers, Roads and Trains'; `Pissarro, Cezanne and the School of Pontoise'; `Private and Public Gardens'; `The Fields of France' (lots of haystacks!); `Impressionism and the Sea'; `The Retreat from Paris'; `Impressionism and the Popular Imagination'. An appendix essay is `The Landscape in French Nineteenth-Century Photography'. The paintings are grouped under each of the themes represented by the essays.

Another standout feature of the book is the amount of contextual detail accompanying each work of art. So, for example, the first work presented is Beach at Honfleur by Claude Monet. The colour reproduction is good quality, and takes a full page. The accompanying text on the facing page explains what Monet was doing , how the painting came to be painted.

A marvellous book, a valuable addition to any personal library. I would place it in the `must have' category for an art collection in a secondary school or college library where Art is a course of study, and public libraries - because of its simultaneous accessibility and depth of information - it goes so much further than a book merely of reproductions. show less

Richard R. Brettell's innovative and beautifully-illustrated account, the latest addition to the acclaimed Oxford History of Art series, explores the works of artists such as Monet, Gauguin, Picasso, and Dali--as well as lesser-known figures--in relation to expansion, colonialism, nationalism and internationalism, and the rise of the museum. Beginning with The Great Exhibition of 1851 in London, Brettell follows the development of the major European avant-garde groups: the Realists, show more Impressionists, Post-Impressionists, Symbolists, Cubists, and Surrealists. Giving attention to the changing social, economic, and political climate, the book focuses on conditions for the development of modern art such as urban capitalism, modernity, and the accessible image made possible by art museums, temporary exhibitions, lithography, and photography. Brettell examines artists' responses to modernism, including changes in representation, vision, and "the art of seeing." Combining the most recent scholarship with 140 illustrations--75 in full color--the book chronicles the change in art and image itself, from the iconology of new representations of the nude human form to the anti-iconography of "art without 'subject'": landscape painting, text and image, and abstraction.

Tracing common themes of representation, imagination, perception, and sexuality across works in a wide range of different media, and offering profuse illustration to bring the changing art forms vividly to life, Modern Art 1851-1929 presents a fresh approach to the fine art and photography of this remarkable era.Show More
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The exhibition catalogue from one of the first art exhibits I ever visited. It's a beautiful book; I enjoy the impressionists, even if they're not my absolute favorite artistic movement.