Pat Steir

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Roberto Longhi

This book tells the story of Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca (1411/13-1492) by focusing on four paintings he created over the span of his career. It also provides the first study of his small-scale devotional paintings, including the exquisite 'Saint Jerome and a Donor'. One of today's most prominent scholars narrates the painting's mysterious history and uncovers new insights gleaned during its recent study and restoration. The author explores the relationship between this painting and other works made by Piero for private devotion, including one of his last and most striking paintings, the magnificent 'Madonna di Senigallia'. New research describes the complex relationships between Piero and his patrons and other contemporaries. This book brims with revelatory details about Piero's work that will intrigue both casual readers and devoted fans of the artist, and will form a gateway to a larger analysis of Piero's overall body of work.0Exhibition: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (13.1.-30.3.2014).

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Sally Yard

Willem de Kooning arrived in the United Sates in 1926 as a twenty-two-year-old stowaway from Holland, soon to become a leading figure in the emergence of abstract expressionist painting in New York. This volume presents over 100 illustrations of every phase of de Kooning's artistic evolution, and explains the personal and art historical background behind his groundbreaking work and its critical reception. Author Sally Yard details the progress of de Kooning's career, from his brief stint as a WPA painter, to his first one-person exhibition of abstract work in 1948. Five years later, an exhibition of women painted in aggressive, lashing gestures stunned contemporaries, not only for the vehemence of the artist's attack, but also for the reversal of direction from abstraction to figuration. The alternation and intertwining of these two genres remained fundamental to de Kooning's work over six decades.

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Jacob Bean

This volume describes and reproduces 379 drawings by Italian artists of the seventeenth century in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most brilliant draughtsmen of this period--Annibale Carracci, G. B. Castiglione, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Carlo Maratti, and Salvator Rosa--are well represented in the Museum's collection, and the book offers a survey of Italian baroque draughtsmanship. It includes innovative work by Carracci, as well as drawings by such late baroque masters as Sebastiano Ricci and Francesco Solimena. Four hundred five illustrations are contained in this inventory. Entries for the drawings provide essential bibliographical references, provenance, and a discussion of the purpose of the drawing when known. -- Inside jacket flap.

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[by Wallace Nutting

Wallace Nutting (1861 - 1941) was a U.S. minister, photographer, artist, and antiquarian, who is most famous for his pictures. He also was an accomplished author, lecturer, furniture maker some of whose reproductions pass as antiques antiques expert and collector. His atmospheric photographs helped spur the Colonial Revival style. He was born in Rockbottom, Massachusetts, on Sunday, November 17, 1861. He was descended from John Nutting, who came from England in 1639 and was killed by Indians during a raid against Groton, Massachusetts. The Indians severed John Nutting's head and put it on a pole to discourage others from settling in the area. Wallace Nutting studied at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard University, Hartford Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary. He graduated from Harvard with the class of 1887. On June 5, 1888 he married Mariet Griswold in Buckland, Massachusetts. They had no children. Wallace Nutting started taking pictures in 1899 while on long bicycle rides in the countryside. In 1904 he opened the Wallace Nutting Art Prints Studio on East 23rd Street in New York. After a year he moved his business to a farm in Southbury, Connecticut. He called this place "Nuttinghame". In 1912 he moved the photography studio to Framingham, Massachusetts, in a home he called "Nuttingholme". Nutting authored several books about the scenic beauties of New England, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. In the peak of his business he employed about two-hundred colorists. By his own account, Wallace Nutting sold ten million pictures. Wallace Nutting's colorists painted the photographs which he took. These colorists would sometimes sign Wallace Nutting's name on the photos which is why the signatures vary. An interesting fact about Nutting's photography is that he was more prolific with pastoral scenes, consequently his interiors are more valuable. Wallace Nutting died at his home at 24 Vernon St., Framingham, Massachusetts on Saturday, July 19, 1941, at age 79. The body was taken to Augusta, Maine for burial.