Books by Richard Thomson
Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre
by Richard Thomson, Phillip Dennis Cate, Mary Weaver Chapin
Childhood illness and injuries steered Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) away from customary rural aristocratic avocations and toward a profession as an artist. He became a painter, draftsman, and lithographer whose work was immersed in famously hedonistic, fin-de-siècle Paris. In his hands, advertising posters were raised to a high art; he portrayed the nightlife of Montmartre-circuses, cafés, dance halls, and brothels-with clear, bold color and a certain seamy panache that is instantly recognizable as his. His much mythologized life has found its way into many biographies and into two feature-length movies called Moulin Rouge.
Lavishly illustrated with 370 color plates, Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre is the first major work to present the artist's oeuvre in the context of Montmartre's lively art scene from roughly 1885 to 1901. Accompanying an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery of Art and The Art Institute of Chicago, the book features the important paintings, drawings, prints, and posters Toulouse-Lautrec made on Montmartre subjects. It also includes masterpieces by contemporaries he inspired or who inspired him-Degas, Van Gogh, Picasso, and others-as well as rarely seen illustrations, lithographs, photographs, and ephemera of the era. And it discusses the artists, writers, actors, singers, and dancers who formed Toulouse-Lautrec's circle.
The book's gracefully written essays by Richard Thomson, Phillip Dennis Cate, and Mary Weaver Chapin, with Florence E. Coman, address these themes in light of the rise of the color poster, the proliferation of new forms of entertainment, and the emergence of a celebrity-oriented popular culture. Toulouse-Lautrec and Montmartre evokes a colorful, chaotic era, and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the art of Toulouse-Lautrec.
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Georges Seurat: The Drawings
by Richard Thomson, Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff
Once described as "the most beautiful painter's drawings in existence," Georges Seurat's mysterious and luminous works on paper played a crucial role in his short, vibrant career. This comprehensive publication surveys the artist's entire oeuvre, from his academic training and the emergence of his unique methods to the studies made for his monumental canvases. Accompanying the first exhibition in almost 25 years to focus exclusively on Seurat's drawings, this volume presents approximately 130 works, primarily the artist's incomparable conté drawings along with a small selection of oil sketches and paintings. In an effort to bridge the seemingly opposite goals of description and evocation, Seurat masses dark and light tones to abstract figures, exploits medium and paper to amplify radiating light, and engages with the Parisian metropolis, revealing urban types, the industrial suburbs and nineteenth-century entertainment. Though Seurat is perhaps best known as the inventor of Pointillism, this volume demonstrates his tremendous achievement as a draftsman and his fundamental importance to the art of the twentieth century. It includes carefully selected details of the work, as well as reproductions from pages of Seurat's sketchbooks, which have never before been published. Texts by Jodi Hauptman, Karl Buchberg, Hubert Damisch, Bridget Riley, Richard Shiff and Richard Thomson address specific aspects of Seurat's techniques, materials, and subject matter. They are rounded out by a chronology, a selected bibliography and a detailed checklist.
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Monet and Architecture
The first book to focus on Monet’s work through his representation of architecture
In an innovative approach, Richard Thomson considers Claude Monet’s paintings of buildings in their environment, offering a reappraisal of an artist more often associated with landscapes, seascapes, and gardens. Buildings fulfilled various roles in Monet’s canvases; some are chiefly compositional devices while others throw into sharp contrast the forms of man-made construction against the irregularity of nature, or suggest the absent presence of humans. The theme was both central and consistent over five decades of his 60-year career.
Written by a renowned expert on Impressionism, this book covers Monet’s representations of historical buildings, inner cities, beach resorts, railway bridges and stations, suburban housing, and busy harbors—subjects spanning northern France, the Mediterranean, and the cities of Rouen, London, and Venice. In addition to 75 great paintings by Monet, this thematic, picture-led book includes a wealth of comparative material, such as postcards, posters, original travel photography, and rarely seen aerial photography that sets Monet’s work firmly in its historical, cultural, and social framework.
Published by National Gallery Company/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition Schedule:
National Gallery, London
(04/09/18–07/29/18)
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Seurat's Circus Sideshow
The mystery, color, and magic of the circus was a subject of fascination for European artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French Post-Impressionist painter Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859–1891) explored this theme in a number of drawings and sketches, as well as in his 1888 Pointillist masterwork, Circus Sideshow. Drawing connections to Parisian street life, to the works of other artists, and to the broader complexities of modern life, this lively book establishes Circus Sideshow as a pioneering work in the genre of circus-themed art. Lush reproductions of the work are buttressed by images of Seurat’s preparatory drawings and ephemera from circuses and street performances of the time to offer a full understanding of the historical context.
Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press
Exhibition Schedule:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(02/15/17–05/29/17)
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