Astonishing Things: The Drawings of Victor Hugo

by Gérard Audinet, Thomas Cazentre, Sarah Lea, and Rose Thompson

0 ratings • 0 reviews • 0 shelved
Book cover for Astonishing Things

Bookhype may earn a small commission from qualifying purchases. Full disclosure.

Novelist, poet and politician, Victor Hugo (1802–1885) was a towering figure in French 19th-century public life. The author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame became a symbol of the French Republic’s ideals of equality and freedom during his long exile in the Channel Islands. His ink-and-wash visions of imaginary castles, monsters and seascapes may be less well known than his writings, but they inspired Romantic and Symbolist poets, and many artists including the Surrealists; Vincent van Gogh compared them to ‘astonishing things’.

This handsome book – the catalogue of an exhibition organised by the Royal Academy of Arts in collaboration with Paris Musées – Maison de Victor Hugo and the Bibliothèque nationale de France – includes new texts by leading authorities on Hugo and reproductions of many of his finest works on paper, from early caricatures and travel drawings to dramatic landscapes and experiments in abstraction.

  • ISBN10 1915815118
  • ISBN13 9781915815118
  • Publish Date 10 March 2025
  • Publish Status Forthcoming
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint Royal Academy of Arts
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 176
  • Language English