European Clocks in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

Among the finest examples of European craftsmanship are the clocks produced for the luxury trade in the eighteenth century. The J. Paul Getty Museum is fortunate to have in its decorative arts collection twenty clocks dating from around 1680 to 1798: eighteen produced in France and two in Germany. They demonstrate the extraordinary workmanship that went into both the design and execution of the cases and the intricate movements by which the clocks operated. In this handsome volume, each clock is pictured and discussed in detail, and each movement diagrammed and described. In addition, biographies of the clockmakers and enamelers are included, as are indexes of the names of the makers, previous owners, and locations.




French Rococo Ébénisterie in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

The first comprehensive catalogue of the Getty Museum’s significant collection of French Rococo ébénisterie furniture. This catalogue focuses on French ébénisterie furniture in the Rococo style dating from 1735 to 1760. These splendid objects directly reflect the tastes of the Museum’s founder, J. Paul Getty, who started collecting in this area in 1938 and continued until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection is particularly rich in examples created by the most talented cabinet masters then active in Paris, including Bernard van Risenburgh II (after 1696–ca. 1766), Jacques Dubois (1694–1763), and Jean-François Oeben (1721–1763). Working for members of the French royal family and aristocracy, these craftsmen excelled at producing veneered and marquetried pieces of furniture (tables, cabinets, and chests of drawers) fashionable for their lavish surfaces, refined gilt-bronze mounts, and elaborate design. These objects were renowned throughout Europe at a time when Paris was considered the capital of good taste. The entry on each work comprises both a curatorial section, with description and commentary, and a conservation report, with construction diagrams. An introduction by Anne-Lise Desmas traces the collection’s acquisition history, and two technical essays by Arlen Heginbotham present methodologies and findings on the analysis of gilt-bronze mounts and lacquer. The free online edition of this open-access publication is available at www.getty.edu/publications/rococo/ and includes zoomable, high-resolution photography. Also available are free PDF, EPUB, and Kindle/MOBI downloads of the book, and JPG downloads of the main catalogue images.




The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal


Book Description

The J. Paul Getty Museum Journal has been published annually since 1974. It contains scholarly articles and shorter notes pertaining to objects in the Museum’s seven curatorial departments: Antiquities, Manuscripts, Paintings, Drawings, Decorative Arts, Sculpture and Works of Art, and Photographs. The Journal also contains an illustrated checklist of the Museum’s acquisitions for the previous year, a staff listing, and a statement by the Museum’s Director outlining the year’s most important activities. Volume 19 of the J. Paul Getty Museum Journal includes articles by Nicholas Penny, Ariane van Suchtelen, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann and Virginia Roehrig Kaufmann, Frits Scholten, David Harris Cohen, and Dawson W. Carr.




The Collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art


Book Description

"This extraordinary book is the first in a projected series of specialized catalogues documenting the permanent collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri. The collection of Italian paintings, a total of sixty works, is a representative one for the years 1300-1800 with significant examples from all major schools." "Each catalogue entry, written by Eliot W. Rowlands, includes a thorough and lively biography on the artist; complete technical notes and a detailed description; a fully documented commentary with a discussion of attribution, date, subject, and function; an exacting list of references that also summarizes the critical history of each work; and a full account of exhibition history and provenance. All the Italian paintings in the Nelson-Atkins collection are reproduced in full color, and there are over 200 black-and-white comparative illustrations."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Pastiches Et Melanges by Marcel Proust


Book Description

This is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century. The Melody beneath the Words is the first translation into English in its entirety of Marcel Proust's Pastiches et Mélanges, published by Gaston Gallimard in 1919. The first part, Pastiches, contains nine literary parodies about a fraudster, Henri Lemoine, who claimed to be able to manufacture diamonds. The pastiches are in the manner of Balzac, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Henri de Régnier, Michelet, Émile Faguet, Renan and the Goncourt brothers. The second part, Mélanges, consists of four sections: the destruction of cathedrals in the First World War, the separation of church and state, a drama about madness, and Proust's love of reading. Proust is best known for writing À la recherche du temps perdu (variously translated as Remembrance of Things Past and In Search of Lost Time), widely considered to be the greatest novel of the twentieth century.




Selections from the Decorative Arts in the J. Paul Getty Museum


Book Description

J. Paul Getty began to collect French decorative arts in the 1930s and continued to do so until his death in 1976. The Museum’s collection has continued to grow since then at a rapid pace and contains over three hundred individual pieces at the time this book is published. This volume illustrates fifty of them. The selection represents a cross section of the collection, which covers the period from approximately 1660 to 1800. In the eighteenth century it became fashionable in Parisian society to decorate the interiors of houses with Far Eastern materials such as lacquer and porcelain. This taste was catered to by the marchands-merciers, members of a guild who combined the functions of the modern interior decorator, the antique dealer, and the picture dealer. These men devised highly ingenious settings for Far Eastern porcelains to adapt their exotic character to the French interiors of the period. Information about them and their clientele has been used in cataloguing the Getty Museum’s collection of mounted oriental porcelain, which is large and of high quality. This book is not a catalogue, nor is it a mere picture book or checklist. Each piece has been chosen because it represents a particular aspect of the crafts involved in the production of objects that were made by Parisian craftsmen for the crown, the nobility, and the rich bourgeoisie. The pieces are arranged in chronological order. Translations of the French archival extracts, an index, and a concise bibliography have been provided.




Sèvres Porcelain


Book Description




Before We Visit the Goddess


Book Description

"A new novel from the author of Oleander Girl, a novel in stories, built around crucial moments in the lives of 3 generations of women in an Indian/Indian-American Family"--




Tyssot De Patot and His Work 1655 – 1738


Book Description

Although the novel, V oyages el avantures de] aques Masse, caused some thing of a stir during the first half of the eighteenth century, its author, Simon Tyssot de Patot (1655-1738), remained largely unknown in his lifetime, and it is only in this century that he has been recognized as one of the countless soldiers in the vast army of philosophes that assaulted the bastions of religious, political and sodallife in Europe of the late seven 1 teenth and early eighteenth centuries. Tyssot was a Huguenot who lived most of his life in Holland where he pursued a career as professor of mathematics in the sodal and cultural 1 Tyssot and his work seem to have been first brought to the attention of modem writers by the German critics during their investigation of the type of desert island or robinsonade literature that preceded and followed Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. The earliest reference I have found occurs in A. Kippenberg, Robinson in Deutschland bis zur Insel Felsenburg (1713-43), Hanover, 1892, pp. 66-67. Tyssot's name and work appear to have been first linked with the development of socialism in A. Lichtenberger, Le Socialisme au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1895, p. 44. Tyssot's Voyages et avantures de]aques Masse was discussed for its literary merits in A. LeBreton, Le Roman au dix huitieme siecle, Paris, 1898. LeBreton did not know that Tyssot was the author.