A Closer Look at Art | Mythological Painting
Learn more about key concepts in Western European art history and gain further insight into the paintings and artists showcased in the National Gallery,…
Art History
How to Decorate an 18th-century Pocket
In the summer of 2020, we ran a very special design competition to celebrate the release of the paperback version of The Pocket: A…
“The Pocket” Design Competition | Decorate Your Own 18th-century Pocket
The Pocket Design Competition 2020 Unlike the pockets found on women’s clothing today, pockets in the 18th-century were highly practical, large, and detachable. Such…
A Closer Look At Art | Portraiture
Learn more about key concepts in Western European art history and gain further insight into the paintings and artists showcased in the National Gallery,…
Conversations: To Describe a Life by Darby English
A quotation from the French philosopher and political activist Simone Weil is the first thing the reader encounters upon starting chapter one of To…
An A-Z of the World – E. H. Gombrich on: Leonardo da Vinci
As an aid to students, teachers and parents, we have constructed an A–Z of the World taken from E. H. Gombrich’s, A Little History…
The Making of Modern Art – An Introduction
How do you pack an illustrious writing career of over half a century into a single book? With great difficulty according to the eminent…
The Making of Modern Art – A Q&A with Michael Peppiatt
Chaotic, inventive, transgressive: Modernism is one of the most challenging yet exciting artistic movements in the history of Western art. In his new book,…
An Introduction to Art
Escape Into Art, Look Through the Lens of History, Seek Certainty in Science … To help us all keep on reading over the coming…
Yale Art Books – Looking Forward to 2020
For 2020 we look forward to a new list of beautiful, insightful art books from Yale University Press and our gallery partners. As well…
A Jane Austen Christmas
The month of December sees festivities held across the globe, but in 1775 a family in Steventon, England were celebrating for an entirely different…
The Gauguin Atlas
Art historian Dr Linda Goddard characterises the identity of Paul Gauguin as both ‘carefully self-constructed’ and ‘constantly shifting’ – placed awkwardly between the ‘primitive’…
Savage Tales: The Writings of Paul Gauguin
‘This is not a book,’ the artist Paul Gauguin declared in the opening words of his unconventional memoir Avant et aprés, ‘I am not…
The Elizabethan Image by Sir Roy Strong – An Extract
In November 1558, Elizabeth I ascended the throne and was confronted with a politically, socially, and culturally fractured country. The English Reformation had been…
Nazi Germany and Modernist art
Culture was integral to the smooth running of the Third Reich. During the war, the arts were closely tied to the Nazi propaganda machine…