Books

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Pots are for plebs: why vases were cheap in Ancient Greece

A mistaken attempt to raise the status of vase painting

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A brilliant impersonator of himself: Terry Eagleton on Oscar Wilde

Eagleton looks at a critic who was 'piously dedicated to his own pleasure'

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The most beautiful palette in France: on Eugène Delacroix

The extraordinary influence of Delacroix is tackled in a new exhibition and accompanying catalogue

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Seven tips from the top: essential job advice from US museum directors

In a new book out this month, industry leaders open up about role models, wrong turns and hard-won lessons

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Face time: Kelly Grovier on the reinvention of portraiture since 1989

Technological and cultural changes since the fall of the Berlin Wall have forced artists to paint the face anew

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Monuments to absence: Gregory Gilbert on a new book about Charles Ray

The artist's excessive emphasis on production eclipses everything else

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An unconventional pastoralist: on Samuel Palmer

The charm of Samuel Palmer’s work is its refusal to submit to analysis

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A uniquely British phenomenon: how museums sprang up in the UK

From the 1860s, a network of museums were founded nationwide

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Short, sharp—and funny: Bernhard Schulz on Adolph Menzel

To mark the 200th anniversary of his birth, a book celebrates Adolph Menzel as the “painter of modern life”

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My father and music: how Mark Rothko’s love of Mozart made his paintings sing

In an extract from his new book, Christopher Rothko explains how the master of abstraction absorbed the stylistic principles and emotional contradictions of the 18th-century genius

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Charles I’s other portrait painter

The Anglo-Dutch artist Cornelius Johnson emerges from the shadow of Van Dyck

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My favourite poems, by the very English Rex Whistler

His biographers have published his commonplace book in facsimile

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Brian Sewell's tribute to the Rolls Royce

The art critic, who died earlier this year, loved art, dogs and great cars

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A ‘heroic’ era, but for whom? on Brutalist architecture

The voices of owners, occupants and users of British Modernist architecture are unheard in this admiring—and admirable—history

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A chicken tikka masala of snakes and crocodiles

The Imperial Roman construction of ancient Egypt

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Romney triumphant

The artist now seems more original than Reynolds or Gainsborough

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A substantial but overlooked artist

Georg Pencz comes into his own at last. By David Ekserdjian

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How and why works change

A book for non-specialists on painting conservation. By Will Shank

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A man of many parts

A fitting tribute to the scholar David Bindman

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Put not your trust in princes

The story of Daniel Nijs, who impoverished himself selling Italian art to King Charles I

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Monks’ marriage of poverty and riches

How Italian Renaissance mendicant orders struggled to reconcile their ideals and their wealth. By Christopher Colven

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Bluestockings and botany

Horticultural art of the 18th century owes much to the aristocratic female garden-makers who were at the centre of Georgian society

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The least studied aspect of a closet liberal: Jonathan Brown on Goya

Set in the context of their times, Goya’s portraits finally get the attention they deserve, says the art historian