Belinda Rathbone - Böcker

A captivating memoir of one woman’s relationship with a man and his mansion.When Belinda Rathbone, a New York art historian, met eccentric Anglo-Scots bachelor John Ouchterlony it was the start of a story of clashing cultures and crumbling houses. After a whirlwind romance she married the man – and his 400 acre estate and decrepit mansion in Scotland. In her charming and moving account of their time together she reveals her many discoveries about this strange world – not just the persistence of lino, and family history ancient and recent, but the value of dead elms, the art of the Aga, yoga with the aristocracy, and the vitally important business of producing an heir…

This is the riveling story of a museum director caught in a web of local and international intrigue while secretly pursuing a forgotten Renaissance pointing. On the eve of its centennial celebrations in December 1969, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts announced the acquisition of an unknown and uncatalogued painting attributed to Raphael. Boston's coup made headlines around the world. Soon afterward, an Italian art sleuth began investigating the details of the painting's export from Italy, challenging the museum's right to ownership. Simultaneously, experts on both sides of the Atlantic lined up to debate its very authenticity. While these contests played themselves out on the international stage, the crisis deepened within the museum as its charismatic director, Perry Rathbone, faced the most challenging crossroads of his 30-year career. In her quest for the true story behind this pivotal event in her father's life, Belinda Rathbone delves into the background of the affair as it was reported in the popular press, both questioning the inevitability of its outcome and revealing the power struggle within the museum that led to his resignation.She draws almost entirely from primary source material in various archival collections and over a hundred contemporary and personal interviews. It is lavishly illustrated with full-colour plates and many previously unpublished photographs.

A woman from New England falls for a charming Scottish landowner only to discover she’s also in a complex relationship with his family’s 400-year-old ancestral estate, The Guynd. Funny and heartwarming, this is the story of a house, a place, and a marriage.Guynd (rhymes with “wind“) is Gaelic for “a high, marshy place.” It’s there that Belinda Rathbone’s memoir takes place after her unlikely marriage and move to pastoral Scotland. There she learns to cope with a grand but crumbling mansion still recovering from the effects of two world wars, an overgrown landscape, a derelict garden, troublesome tenants, local aristocracy, Scottish rituals, and a husband who loathes change.Alternating between enchantment and near despair, Rathbone digs into family and local history in an effort to understand her new surroundings and the ties that bind us through generations. “The book lifts and excels,” wrote The New York Times, “Rathbone nails down a little bit of the Scottish soul in all its stark splendor.”The perfect book for anyone who loves a fish-out-of-water romance and a touching story of home.

The full, inside story of how the discovery of a previously unknown painting by Raphael, the Italian Renaissance master, went from media sensation to career-destroying scandal.On the eve of its centennial celebrations in December, 1969, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts announced the acquisition of an unknown and uncatalogued painting attributed to Raphael. Boston’s coup made headlines around the world. Soon afterward, an Italian art sleuth began investigating the details of the painting’s export from Italy, challenged the museum’s right to ownership. Simultaneously, experts on both sides of the Atlantic lined up to debate the artwork’s very authenticity.While these contests played themselves out on the international stage, the crisis deepened within the museum as its charismatic director, Perry T. Rathbone, faced the most challenging crossroads of his thirty-year career. The facts about the forces that converged on the museum, and how they led to Rathbone’s resignation as director, is only now fully revealed in this compelling, behind-the-scenes story that reveals how the art world, media, and museums work. This is for anyone who relishes stories of the business of art.

The first biography of George Rickey, one of the greatest kinetic sculptors of the 20th century. His moving blades, squares, triangles, and circles can be found in museums and public spaces around the world, from bucolic landscapes to the streets of New York City. Now, here is the story of his life, his times, and his vision of balance that created something new―sculpture that is defined by movement.Before his death in 2002, George Rickey created more than 3,000 moving sculptures, including hundreds of major outdoor installations. His “useless machines,” as he called them, achieved complete rotation, used multiple variations of the pendulum, and delighted viewers with the joyride effects of conical movement.George Rickey: A Life in Balance follows the life of a renowned artist―first a painter, then a sculptor―who found inspiration all around him―as a child visiting the Singer Sewing Machine factory managed by his father, in his adventurous youth in the London and Paris art studios of the 1920s, as an engineer in the Army Air Corps during World War II, and later as a pioneer in academic art programs around the United States when he embarked on the sculpture he became famous for.But this is not only the story of a single artist’s creativity and achievement but of Rickey’s life in the larger context of the twentieth century: from Depression-era America to the upheaval of World War II, from the rise of New York as the world’s art capital at mid-century to the tumultuous 1960s, when Rickey emerged as an international figure rubbing elbows with Alexander Calder, David Smith, Christo, and many others. It is also the story of an exceptional marriage and of Rickey’s charismatic, devoted wife, Edith Leighton, who managed her husband’s career and reputation in the high-powered art circles of New York, Berlin, and Los Angeles.Belinda Rathbone (author of The Boston Raphael and Walker Evans: A Biography) has captured the spirit of an artist and his world in this deeply researched and engrossing biography. George Rickey: A Life in Balance is for any reader fascinated by the lives of artists, the creation of enduring art, or twentieth century modernism. Includes 30 photographs that document Rickey’s life and work.