Revised and updated paperback edition of this acclaimed biography of a unique couple who were hugely influential across the spheres of art, gardening and cookery.

"When Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines opened The East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, Essex, in 1937 they were both established artists with international reputations...Their idea was to set up an art school which would provide an alternative to the formal courses offered by the art schools in the metropolis. The aim, as expressed in the school's brochure, was to provide 'an environment where students can work together with more experienced artists in a common endeavour to produce sincere painting.' The emphasis was on encouraging freedom of invention, enthusiasm, and enjoyment, with the assumption that the student 'believes himself to have a clear idea of creative work and requires help only in its production'...The extracts which form the text of this book are based largely on conversations with our contributors which took place during the years 1998 and 1999. Articles, extracts from an autobiography and a diary are also included. They comprise the affectionate memories of a few of those who knew and loved Benton End and its two gifted and hospitable hosts." -- from the Introduction.

A story of a forgotten friendship explored through personal diaries and archive writings.

Drawing on archive material and extensively illustrated with the work of Morris and contemporary artists, this book explores Morris's roots in Wales, follows his travels in Europe and beyond in the 1920s, and evokes the singular camaraderie of the East Anglian School.

Forbidden Lives explores and uncovers the hidden LGBT history of Wales through portraits of significant LGBT figures and the charting of key social and cultural moments in that history. Norena Shopland, a longstanding researcher and activist, has written an accessible and important first guide to the field which will be widely welcomed.

Thomas Gainsborough's (1727-88) London years, from 1774 to 1788, were the pinnacle and conclusion of his career. They coincided with the establishment of the Royal Academy, of which Gainsborough was a founding member, and the city's ascendance as a center for the arts. This is a meticulously researched and readable account of how Gainsborough designed his home and studio and maintained a growing schedule of influential patrons, making a place for himself in the art world of late-18th-century London. New material about Gainsborough's technique is based on examinations of his pictures and firsthand accounts by studio visitors. His fractious relationship with the Royal Academy and its exhibition culture is reexamined through the works he sent to its annual shows. The full range of Gainsborough's art, from fashionable portraits to landscapes and fancy pictures, is addressed in this major contribution, not just to the study of a great artist, but to 18th-century studies in general.

A National Book Critics Circle finalist • One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York “The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen Frankenthaler in Fierce Poise is that it reads like one of Helen's paintings. His poetic descriptions of her work and his rich insights into the years when Helen made her first artistic breakthroughs are both light and lush, seemingly easy and yet profound. His book is an ode to a truly great artist who, some seventy years after this story begins, we are only now beginning to understand.” ―Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew―and left her mark on―the city in which she had been raised in privilege as the daughter of a judge, even as she left the security of that world to pursue her artistic ambitions. Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, these defining moments--from her first awed encounter with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to her first solo gallery show to her tumultuous breakup with eminent art critic Clement Greenberg―comprise a portrait as bold and distinctive as the painter herself. Inspired by Pollock and the other male titans of abstract expressionism but committed to charting her own course, Frankenthaler was an artist whose talent was matched only by her unapologetic determination to distinguish herself in a man's world. Fierce Poise is an exhilarating ride through New York's 1950s art scene and a brilliant portrait of a young artist through the moments that shaped her.

This lavish book presents painter Revees' (b. England, has lived and worked in Mexico since 1985) diary texts and paintings created while living in the town Xilitla, San Luis Potosí and downtown Mexico City. An extraordinary collection of vivid mosaic of colors from the markets and streets along with portraits of the fashionable, religious, and anonymous figures that populate the streets, convents, and towns in Mexico. The book was published within the context of the XXI Festival de México en el Centro Histórico.