Sanford Robinson Gifford was a leading Hudson River School artist. His love of nature first surfaced as a youth growing up in Hudson, New York, and, together with his admiration for the works of Thomas Cole, inspired him to become a landscape painter. Influenced as well by J.M.W. Turner and by trips to Europe in the 1850s, Gifford's art was termed "air painting", for he made the ambient light of each scene - colour-saturated and atmospherically enriched - the key to its expression. Gifford was a founder of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. At the time of his death, he was so esteemed by the New York art world that the Museum mounted an exhibition of his work - its first accorded an American artist - and published a Memorial Catalogue that for nearly a century remained the principal source on the artist. This volume features essays examining Gifford's position in the Hudson River School, his Catskill and Adirondack subjects, his patrons, and his adventures as a traveller both at home and abroad. More than 70 of the artist's best-known sketches and paintings are discussed and reproduced in colour.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art began acquiring American drawings in 1880 and has since amassed a spectacular collection of more than 1,400 works in watercolor, pastel, ink, graphite, chalk, and charcoal. This beautifully produced catalogue, the first volume in a series devoted to the museum's rich holdings, presents works by artists born before 1835, including such great American artists as John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, George Inness, and James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

In his introduction, Kevin J. Avery describes the acquisitions history of American drawings at the Metropolitan from 1880 to the present day. Marjorie Shelley writes on the materials and techniques used by American draftsmen from the eighteenth century until about 1875. The catalogue section of the book features 106 of the Museum's choicest drawings and watercolors, discussed in detail and reproduced in color. A checklist follows of the museum's complete collection of early works on paper, with black-and-white illustrations of 430 additional works and brief artist biographies.


The Year One

by Elizabeth J. Milleker and etc.

Published 10 September 2000
Two thousand years ago, widely diverse cultures in the Roman Empire, Egypt, the Near east, Asia and the Americas had rich artistic lives and created magnificent works of art. This volume presents more than 140 of these objects, and includes discussion of the cultures that produced them.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

by Nadine M. Orenstein, etc., and Et Al

Published 11 August 2001
Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525/30-1569) was a remarkable draftsman and designer of prints as well as a great painter. His independent drawings and designs for engravings and etchings, which were carried out by the leading printmakers of his day, have fascinated scholars and the general public alike since they were created. They have recently been the subject of research that has given rise to a reevaluation of the parameters of Bruegel's oeuvre. The new scholarship has been brought to bear in the texts of the present volume, which accompanies a major exhibition of 140 of Bruegel's prints and drawings to be shown at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, from May to August 2001 and at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, from September to December 2001. An international group of experts discusses the new Bruegel who has emerged from recent studies, in essays on the artist's life, his contributions as a draftsman and as a printmaker, the survival of his art, and his relationship to the humanism of his day. They also illuminate his genius in entries on all the works in the exhibition. Every work is illustrated and rich comparative illustrations are included.
Provenances and references for every work, a bibliography, and an index are supplied.

La Divine Comtesse

by Pierre Apraxine, etc., and Et Al

Published 10 September 2000
Symbol of the Second Empire, that dazzling and artificial epoch, the mysterious Countess de Castiglione dedicated her life to a cult of personal beauty and made sensational appearances at various stages of her life, great moments that she recreated for the camera. These photographs contributed to her legend during her lifetime and were prized by collectors after her death. This book presents an extraordinary collection of the most remarkable of these photographs.The portraits, which number around 400 and are now scattered in public and private collections around the world, are here itemized and analyzed for the first time. The authors take great care to place them in their social and cultural context.

Art and the Empire City

by Dell Upton, etc., John K. Howat, and Et Al

Published 10 September 2000
Psychoanalytic psychotherapy faces multiple challenges in the new millennium. How can it organize, teach and offer therapy in ways that are relevant to the diverse complex and social and cultural groups of people who seek psychological help? How should it adapt to demands for accountability and evidence? How can it cope in a climate of competition and market share? Should it cleave to medicine or abandon it? Define itself as a science or an art or an ethical practice?

A handbook on the conservation of works of art in a museum environment.

In 1999, the Metropolitan Museum’s renowned collection of ancient Greek sculpture was reinstalled in dramatic new galleries. This book features specially commissioned photographs of these monumental marble sculptures in their new setting, which is beautifully enhanced by natural light.

An informative essay serves as an introduction to the Greek sculpture collection and complements these exquisite photographs, which feature details as well as overall views of sculptural groups. The images are in black and white, sepia, and color. An illustrated checklist provides informative descriptions of the sculptures from the author’s personal perspective.


Published in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art

From Leonardo's drawings of grotesque heads to contemporary prints lampooning American politicians, The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a vast but largely unknown collection of caricatures and other satirical works. This handsome book offers 165 examples, dating from about 1500 to the present, that reflect the age-old tradition of using exaggeration and humor to convey personal, social, or political meaning. The selection of images is notably broad, ranging from the elevated to the rudely humorous: renowned writers and decidedly unhygienic cooks; elegantly dressed noblemen and victims of outrageous fashion fads; Napoleon as a tidy Lilliputian and Boss Tweed as a bloated Roman emperor. Stressing the continuity of certain artistic approaches, Infinite Jest examines the development of the genre across centuries and cultures. The essential visual components of caricature are discussed and illustrated, as are recurring motifs, including exaggerated faces and bodies, people depicted as animals or objects, and processions of bizarre figures.
One section is devoted to social satire (eating and drinking, gambling, fashion, several of the Seven Deadly Sins), another to various aspects of political life (British, French, Mexican, and American). Artists as diverse as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gian Lorenzo Bernini, William Hogarth, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Rowlandson, Eugene Delacroix, Honore Daumier, and Al Hirschfeld contribute their distinctive talents to this fascinating, informative, and very amusing volume.