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From the middle of the eighteenth century, with the growth of travel at home and abroad and the increase in leisure for the wealthier classes, the arts became the subject of more widespread appreciation and discussion. The rapid expansion of book and periodical publishing in this area both reflected and encouraged interest in art and art history among the wider reading public. This series throws light on the development of visual culture and aesthetics. It covers topics from the Grand Tour to the great exhibitions of the nineteenth century, and includes art criticism and biography.

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131 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Art and Architecture

Page 2 of 7

The Science of Gems, Jewels, Coins and Medals, Ancient and Modern
  • Archibald Billing
  • Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    02 October 2014
    First published in:
    1867
  • In addition to his medical practice, lecturing and teaching at the London Hospital, and his publishing of several medical works, the Irish physician Archibald Billing (1791–1881) was also an amateur artist and antiquarian. This illustrated book on gemmology was first published in 1867. Beginning with the works of ancient Greece, for him the highest pinnacle of civilization, Billing discusses the use of engraved gems, putting cameos and intaglios in the context of contemporary monumental sculpture, and tracing the history of carving in miniature back to the seal-stones of the Egyptians and Assyrians. He also considers the types and qualities of mineral used in making jewellery, from semi-precious pebbles through to diamonds, and he describes the techniques of cutting precious stones. The work concludes with a translation of the autobiography of the Italian engraver Benedetto Pistrucci (1784–1855), who became chief medallist at the Royal Mint.

The Life and Letters of Washington Allston
  • With Reproductions from Allston's Pictures
  • Jared Bradley Flagg
  • Published online:
    05 April 2015
    Print publication:
    11 December 2014
    First published in:
    1893
  • Washington Allston (1779–1843) was considered by many at the time to be the greatest painter yet produced by the United States. After four years at Harvard, where he made an impression with his poetry, he went to London and became a pupil of the artist Benjamin West. On a tour of the continent, he met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Rome, painted his portrait and became his firm friend. After a period at home, during which he married, Allston returned to London, and through Coleridge met Wordsworth, Southey, and the earl of Egremont, the great patron of artists, especially J. W. M. Turner. In this environment of intellectual and artistic experiment, Allston created paintings on religious, literary and historical topics, with an emphasis on landscape and contrasts of light and dark. This 1893 biography by his nephew and pupil Jared Bradley Flagg (1820–99) throws light on the artist, his works, and his milieu.

Memoirs of Dr Richard Gilpin, of Scaleby Castle in Cumberland
  • And of his Posterity in the Two Succeeding Generations
  • William Gilpin
  • Edited by William Jackson
  • Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
  • A physician and nonconformist minister who was active in the north of England, Richard Gilpin (1625–1700) was a popular preacher, leading large congregations, yet he faced opposition from Quakers and was ultimately unable to unite various dissenting factions. Including details about his descendants, the present work sets his story within the wider context of the Gilpin family history. First published in 1879, it was written in 1791 by fellow clergyman William Gilpin (1724–1804), an enlightened schoolmaster and writer on aesthetics. As well as covering his ancestors, William appends here his own life story, discussing his career as a teacher and his literary calling. He touches on his journeys during summer vacations when, with notebook and sketching materials, he would explore picturesque features of the British landscape. His volumes of Observations, based on these travels, are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection.

The Genuine Works of William Hogarth
  • Illustrated with Biographical Anecdotes, a Chronological Catalogue, and Commentary
  • Volume 3
  • John Nichols, George Steevens
  • Published online:
    05 January 2015
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1817
  • This illustrated three-volume catalogue of the works of painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764) was the result of 'Hogarthomania', the enthusiasm for all his productions which arose soon after his death. The publisher and author John Nichols (1745–1826), assisted by the collector and literary critic George Steevens, published a life of Hogarth and a list of his works in 1781, and as disputes increasingly arose over the genuineness of some of the prints attributed to him, enlarged versions appeared in 1782 and 1785. This work, published between 1808 and 1817, is the last in the sequence of Nichols' works on Hogarth, and remains a useful source for art historians and anyone interested in the cultural life of the eighteenth century. Volume 3, published seven years after Volume 2, contains further plates, critical essays, and a 'key' to the scenes in Hogarth's prints allegedly derived from classical sources.

Recollections of the British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom
  • With Some Account of the Means Employed for that Purpose; and Biographical Notices of Artists who Have Received Premiums, 1805–1859
  • Thomas Smith
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
    First published in:
    1860
  • The British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom was founded as a private art gallery in 1805, and took over the lease of publisher John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, London. Its rich and noble subscribers (including the Prince of Wales, later George IV) patronised exhibitions of contemporary works, and also lent items for shows of Old Masters. The Institution also took in art students, and was a very popular public attraction in London: Jane Austen was among the many visitors from around the country. This 1860 book by Thomas Smith, a London historian, describes the founding and development of the Institution, with notices of its regular exhibitions and of special events such as the memorial dinner for Sir Joshua Reynolds. This is a fascinating account of a popular gallery in the first half of the nineteenth century, and of the tastes of its patrons and visitors.

Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter
  • From his Autobiography and Journals
  • Volume 2
  • Benjamin Robert Haydon
  • Edited by Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
  • Before the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) committed suicide, he had left instructions that an account of his life should be published, using his autobiography up to 1820 and his letters and journals for the rest. The writer and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80) took on the editing, and the three-volume work was published in 1853. (The slightly enlarged second edition, also of 1853, is reissued here.) Haydon was a history painter at a time when that genre was perceived as the greatest form of the art, and his friends included Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, he was constantly in financial difficulties, and in later life a sense of failure seems to have turned into outright paranoia. Volume 2 uses Haydon's journals to continue the account to 1834. His two-volume Conversations and Table-Talk, edited by his son, is also reissued is this series.

Autobiographical Recollections
  • With a Prefatory Essay on Leslie as an Artist, and Selections from his Correspondence
  • Volume 2
  • Charles Robert Leslie
  • Edited by Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1860
  • The Royal Academician Charles Leslie (1794–1859) also wrote biographies of fellow painters. His life of John Constable and a two-volume work on Sir Joshua Reynolds are also reissued in this series. On his death, the Reynolds work was completed by the journalist and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80), who also edited Leslie's two-volume autobiography, published in 1860. Though born in London, Leslie was an American, a child prodigy in drawing, who returned to Britain in 1811 to study painting with Benjamin West and Washington Allston. He had enormous admiration for the paintings of his contemporaries and of the previous generation, and his reminiscences are intended to preserve 'some recollections of those chiefly whom I could praise'. Volume 2 of this lively and self-deprecating work, full of good-humoured anecdotes, consists of extensive extracts from Leslie's letters and an appendix listing his paintings.

Companion to the Most Celebrated Private Galleries of Art in London
  • Containing Accurate Catalogues, Arranged Alphabetically, for Immediate Reference, Each Preceded by an Historical and Critical Introduction
  • Anna Jameson
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    17 July 2014
    First published in:
    1844
  • A professional author of art and literary criticism as well as travel writing, Anna Jameson (1794–1860) journeyed widely in Europe and North America, and moved in the literary circles which included the Brownings and Harriet Martineau. Many of her other works are also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection. In 1844, she published this book on the great private art collections of London. She begins with an essay on the formation of the collections, from the seventeenth-century earl of Arundel onwards, and then describes in turn the Queen's Gallery, the Bridgewater, Sutherland, Grosvenor and Lansdowne galleries, and the collections of Sir Robert Peel and of the poet Samuel Rogers. For each collection there is an introductory essay, a catalogue raisonnée and a note of the most important items in the collection. This work is a fascinating and valuable guide to mid-nineteenth-century taste and fashion in art.

The Genuine Works of William Hogarth
  • Illustrated with Biographical Anecdotes, a Chronological Catalogue, and Commentary
  • Volume 1
  • John Nichols, George Steevens
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1808
  • This illustrated three-volume catalogue of the works of painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764) was the result of 'Hogarthomania', the enthusiasm for all his productions which arose soon after his death. The publisher and author John Nichols (1745–1826), assisted by the collector and literary critic George Steevens, published a life of Hogarth and a list of his works in 1781, and as disputes increasingly arose over the genuineness of some of the prints attributed to him, enlarged versions appeared in 1782 and 1785. This work, published between 1808 and 1817, is the last in the sequence of Nichols' works on Hogarth, and remains a useful source for art historians and anyone interested in the cultural life of the eighteenth century. Volume 1 contains a biography of Hogarth and a short account of the continuing issues of his prints after his death.

Tour of a German Artist in England
  • With Notices of Private Galleries, and Remarks on the State of Art
  • Volume 1
  • Johann David Passavant
  • Translated by Elizabeth Rigby
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1836
  • The German artist Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) visited Britain in 1831 in order to examine works by Raphael in private and public galleries for a book he was preparing. He had not been able to find any helpful German accounts of British collections, and so decided to publish a narrative of his own travels and observations. The British writer and art critic Elizabeth Rigby (later Lady Eastlake) produced a two-volume translation in 1836, believing that English readers would benefit from Passavant's descriptions of little-known collections in their own country, as well as from his practitioner's response to the works themselves. Volume 1 covers the National Gallery, the Royal Academy and the royal collections at Buckingham and Kensington Palaces, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, as well as the private galleries of aristocrats and wealthy commoners in London and the home counties, ending with the colleges of Oxford.

The Genuine Works of William Hogarth
  • Illustrated with Biographical Anecdotes, a Chronological Catalogue, and Commentary
  • Volume 2
  • John Nichols, George Steevens
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1810
  • This illustrated three-volume catalogue of the works of painter and engraver William Hogarth (1697–1764) was the result of 'Hogarthomania', the enthusiasm for all his productions which arose soon after his death. The publisher and author John Nichols (1745–1826), assisted by the collector and literary critic George Steevens, published a life of Hogarth and a list of his works in 1781, and as disputes increasingly arose over the genuineness of some of the prints attributed to him, enlarged versions appeared in 1782 and 1785. This work, published between 1808 and 1817, is the last in the sequence of Nichols' works on Hogarth, and remains a useful source for art historians and anyone interested in the cultural life of the eighteenth century. Volume 2 contains a catalogue of his works, an appendix of anecdotes about some of Hogarth's subjects, and his essay The Analysis of Beauty.

Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter
  • From his Autobiography and Journals
  • Volume 3
  • Benjamin Robert Haydon
  • Edited by Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
  • Before the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) committed suicide, he had left instructions that an account of his life should be published, using his autobiography up to 1820 and his letters and journals for the rest. The writer and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80) took on the editing, and the three-volume work was published in 1853. (The slightly enlarged second edition, also of 1853, is reissued here.) Haydon was a history painter at a time when that genre was perceived as the greatest form of the art, and his friends included Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, he was constantly in financial difficulties, and in later life a sense of failure seems to have turned into outright paranoia. Volume 3 uses Haydon's journals to continue the account up to the day of his death. His two-volume Conversations and Table-Talk, edited by his son, is also reissued is this series.

An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste
  • Richard Payne Knight
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    24 July 2014
  • Classical scholar, art collector and connoisseur Richard Payne Knight (1751–1824) took a keen interest in aesthetics and was a key figure in the debate on the picturesque. Of independent means, he journeyed across Europe, often in the company of artists. His home, Downton Castle in Herefordshire, set the fashion for crenellations. He sat in Parliament from 1780 to 1806, but beauty interested him more than politics. Following important works on aesthetics by such writers as Edmund Burke and Uvedale Price, Knight published his most successful work in 1805, cementing his reputation as an authority on matters of taste. Here he moves away from the ideas of Price and Burke, instead exploring the role of associations in the expression of aesthetic judgement. Knight's Analytical Essay on the Greek Alphabet (1791) and Inquiry into the Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology (1818) are also reissued in this series.

Tour of a German Artist in England
  • With Notices of Private Galleries, and Remarks on the State of Art
  • Johann David Passavant
  • Translated by Elizabeth Rigby
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1836
  • The German artist Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) visited Britain in 1831 in order to examine works by Raphael in private and public galleries for a book he was preparing. He had not been able to find any helpful German accounts of British collections, and so decided to publish a narrative of his own travels and observations. The British writer and art critic Elizabeth Rigby (later Lady Eastlake) produced a two-volume translation in 1836, believing that English readers would benefit from Passavant's descriptions of little-known collections in their own country, as well as from his practitioner's response to the works themselves. Volume 2 begins with the duke of Marlborough's collection at Blenheim, and continues to cover Chatsworth, Althorpe, Holkham, and other 'country seats', finishing in Cambridge. Passavant also provides a catalogue of drawings at Buckingham Palace, a list of the pictures discussed, and an overview of collections not visited.

Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon, Historical Painter
  • From his Autobiography and Journals
  • Volume 1
  • Benjamin Robert Haydon
  • Edited by Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
  • Before the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786–1846) committed suicide, he had left instructions that an account of his life should be published, using his autobiography up to 1820 and his letters and journals for the rest. The writer and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80) took on the editing, and the three-volume work was published in 1853. (The slightly enlarged second edition, also of 1853, is reissued here.) Haydon was a history painter at a time when that genre was perceived as the greatest form of the art, and his friends included Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Charles Lamb, Hazlitt and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, he was constantly in financial difficulties, and in later life a sense of failure seems to have turned into outright paranoia. Volume 1 reproduces Haydon's autobiographical writings up to 1820. His Conversations and Table-Talk, edited in two volumes by his son, is also reissued in this series.

An Historical Essay on Architecture
  • Volume 2
  • Thomas Hope
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    13 February 2014
  • With a fondness for classical antiquities and neoclassical design, the connoisseur Thomas Hope (1769–1831) sought to influence Georgian taste by promoting informed interior decoration, displaying his own considerable art collection, and writing with insight on aesthetic topics. This two-volume work, originally published posthumously in 1835, traces the evolution of Western architecture since antiquity. Hope was a keen traveller, and the examples he cites are drawn from buildings that he studied on journeys through Europe and beyond, notably in those countries bordering the Mediterranean. Volume 2 contains the precise line drawings that accompanied the first edition, showcasing many western European and ecclesiastical buildings and details. The work's analytical index, which appeared in 1836, is illustrated with wood engravings of features mentioned in the text and has been incorporated in this reissue.

Autobiographical Recollections
  • With a Prefatory Essay on Leslie as an Artist, and Selections from his Correspondence
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Robert Leslie
  • Edited by Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1860
  • The Royal Academician Charles Leslie (1794–1859) also wrote biographies of fellow painters. His life of John Constable and a two-volume work on Sir Joshua Reynolds are also reissued in this series. On his death, the Reynolds work was completed by the journalist and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80), who also edited Leslie's two-volume autobiography, published in 1860. Though born in London, Leslie was an American, a child prodigy in drawing, who returned to Britain in 1811 to study painting with Benjamin West and Washington Allston. He had enormous admiration for the paintings of his contemporaries and of the previous generation, and his reminiscences are intended to preserve 'some recollections of those chiefly whom I could praise'. Volume 1 of this lively and self-deprecating work, full of good-humoured anecdotes, is prefaced by an introductory essay by Taylor on Leslie and his art.

A Glossary of Terms Used in Grecian, Roman, Italian, and Gothic Architecture
  • Volume 2, A Companion, Containing Four Hundred Additional Examples
  • John Henry Parker
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    17 April 2014
    First published in:
    1841
  • The Oxford bookseller and publisher John Henry Parker (1806–84), a supporter of the Tractarian movement and a friend of Cardinal Newman, was also a historian of architecture, and first published this glossary in 1836. Reissued here is the enlarged third edition of 1840. The work is ordered alphabetically, and illustrated with 700 woodcuts by various artists. As stated in the first edition's preface, the book 'lays no claim to originality, its sole object being utility'. By 1837, 'the rapid sale of the first edition of this work clearly shews that something of the kind was required'. The third edition was followed in 1841 by a companion volume: the two books offered a useful guide for those travellers and others who were taking a keen interest in the built environment. The companion volume contains further line drawings and plates, an index to the plates in both volumes, and a chronology of the architectural developments and individual buildings being discussed.

Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds
  • With Notices of Some of his Cotemporaries
  • Volume 1
  • Charles Robert Leslie, Tom Taylor
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    27 March 2014
    First published in:
    1865
  • This two-volume life of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) was begun by the Royal Academician Charles Leslie (1794–1859), who had previously published a life of John Constable, also reissued in this series. On Leslie's death, the journalist and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80) completed the work, published in 1865. Leslie's motive was that he felt that Reynolds had been unfairly treated by an earlier biography. He aimed to show that Reynolds was 'the genial centre of a most various and brilliant society, as well as the transmitter of its chief figures to our time by his potent art'. One of the greatest artists of the eighteenth century, especially famous for his portraits, Reynolds was also instrumental in founding the Royal Academy, and was its first president. Volume 1 covers his early life and his progress as an artist until his fiftieth year.

The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds
  • Containing his Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland (Now First Published), and his Commentary on Du Fresnoy's 'Art of Painting'
  • Volume 2
  • Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone
  • Published online:
    05 November 2014
    Print publication:
    20 March 2014
    First published in:
    1797
  • This two-volume posthumous edition of the writings on art of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92), one of the greatest of eighteenth-century artists and the first president of the Royal Academy, was published in 1797. Volume 2 contains his previously unpublished Journey to Flanders and Holland, which describes and comments on the paintings Reynolds examined on a two-month tour in Europe in 1781. (He visited galleries in Düsseldorf, Cologne and Aachen as well as the Low Counties.) This is followed by a long Latin poem on the art of painting, by the French artist Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy (1611–68), together with a translation by William Mason, and extensive commentary by Reynolds. Appendices include essays by Pope and Dryden on du Fresnoy's poem, and chronological and alphabetical lists of painters and their genres from Cimabue to the late seventeenth century. The book is completed by an index covering both volumes.

Page 2 of 7