Odilon Redon is a genre-breaking artist. A contemporary of the Impressionists, his oeuvre found its source not in reality but in his own dreams. His work has two sides, which appear to be almost opposite ends: one is daunting and grim, the other one, colourful and lively, they nevertheless merge into a kind of Symbolist magic. Odilon Redon (1840-1916) is without doubt one of the artists who was the most ahead of his time. Indifferent to Naturalism and Impressionism, he drew inspiration fro...

One of the most expressive artists of the Symbolism movement, Odilon (1840–1916) led a quiet life. Withdrawn in manner, conventional in dress, and virtually unknown for the first half of his career, the French painter and graphic artist drew upon his own startlingly complex and fantastic inner world to create haunting works that reveal an existence beyond that of everyday vision. He transformed common subjects and models into strange, eerie images and exhibited a predilection for spiders a...

Victor Hugo spent years in political exile off the coast of Normandy. While there, he produced his masterpiece, Les Misérables—but that wasn’t all: he also wrote a book-length poem, La Fin de Satan, left unfinished and not published until after his death.Satan and his Daughter, the Angel Liberty, drawn from this larger poem, tells the story of Satan and his daughter, the angel created by God from a feather left behind following his banishment. Hugo detail...

A founder of French Impressionist painting and the most prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, Claude Monet created a large body of works, developing his own method of producing repeated studies of the same motif in a series, whilst changing canvases with the shift in light. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing readers to explore the works of great artists in comprehensive ...

A visit to an art gallery can be a baffling experience - a bewildering parade of paintings, sculptures, artists and movements with little perspective on how they all fit together. 50 Art Ideas you Really Need to Know is here to help. For all those who don't know their Degas from Dali or their Monet from their Mondrian, this informative and insightful guide discusses 50 of the most important and influential concepts in art from the Ancient Greeks to the present.Taking in the definin...

From Holbein to Hockney, from Norman Rockwell to Pablo Picasso, from sixteenth-century Rome to 1980s SoHo, Robert Hughes looks with love, loathing, warmth, wit and authority at a wide range of art and artists, good, bad, past and present.As art critic for Time magazine, internationally acclaimed for his study of modern art, The Shock of the New, he is perhaps America’s most widely read and admired writer on art. In this book: nearly a hundred of his finest essays o...

Reading was so important to Marcel Proust that it sometimes seems he was unable to create a personage without a book in hand. Everybody in his work reads: servants and masters, children and parents, artists and physicians. The more sophisticated characters find it natural to speak in quotations. Proust made literary taste a means of defining personalities and gave literature an actual role to play in his novels.In this wonderfully entertaining book, scholar and biographer Anka Muhls...

“A rich and lovely exploration of art history” from the world-renowned art critic behind Ways of Seeing (Slate)!A diverse cast of artists comes to life in this jargon-free study Zadie Smith hails as “among the greatest books on art I’ve ever read.”One of the world’s most celebrated art writers takes us through centuries of drawing and painting, revealing his lifelong fascination with a diverse cast of artists. Berger groun...

Silence is not simply the absence of noise. It is within us, in the inner citadel that great writers, thinkers, scholars and people of faith have cultivated over the centuries.It characterizes our most intimate and sacred spaces, from private bedrooms to grand cathedrals – those vast reservoirs of silence. Philosophers and novelists have long sought solitude and inspiration in mountains and forests. Yet despite the centrality of silence to some of our most intense experiences, the ...

The prominent Impressionist artist Edgar Degas is widely celebrated for his images of Parisian life and sublime depictions of ballet dancers. He was a superb draftsman and masterly in his portrayal of movement, while his portraits are notable for their psychological complexity. Delphi’s Masters of Art Series presents the world’s first digital e-Art books, allowing readers to explore the works of great artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents Degas’ complete works in be...

William Bouguereau was a follower of classical art and had no wish for everything like novelty or the avant-garde. His sense of idealism was his guiding principle, regarding the ugly as worthless for representation. A skilled craftsman and master of human anatomy, he utilized a delicate palette and glorious light to sensitively capture nuances of personality and mood, vibrantly bringing the soul and spirit of his subjects to life. Bouguereau has left a large number of works and he is undou...

The innovative works of the Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne laid the foundations of a new and radically different form of art in the twentieth century. Challenging the conventional values of art in his time, Cézanne’s insistence on personal expression and the integrity of the painting itself, regardless of subject matter, have since earned him universal praise among his fellow artists, with Matisse and Picasso calling him "the father of us all." Delphi’s Masters of Art Se...