Devon Cox – författare

‘Entertaining, compelling, revelatory – this is the must-read biography of the year' GYLES BRANDRETH 'A masterpiece. Devon Cox's stunning biography reads like a thriller. His writing and research are without equal' JOANNA LUMLEY The first major biography of Florence-born American artist John Singer Sargent written for fifty years, published to mark the hundredth anniversary of his death. John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) is one of the most famous American artists of all time, yet his personal life and character have remained elusive more than a century after his death. Today, as Sargent's reputation reaches new heights, the man—restless, deceptively daring, and shrouded in secrecy—is ripe for reappraisal.Beyond Beauty delves into Sargent’s guarded inner-life, illuminating his contradictions and complexity: an outsider born and raised in Europe; a reserved gentleman with latent passions: a celebrated painter of the rich and famous who was drawn to unconventional rule-breakers.Devon Cox explores Sargent’s visionary talent that challenged artistic and social strictures on both sides of the Atlantic, from his scandalous portrait of Madame X in Paris to his depictions of the Black bellman Thomas McKeller in Boston. Cox also reveals how Sargent’s sumptuous portraits exposed the secret, inner lives of his subjects while his sensual landscapes and dramatic murals provided clues to his own rebellious spirit and repressed desires.Drawing on new research and unpublished memoirs and letters, Cox also sheds light on Sargent’s sexuality and intimate relationships, from his letters to and sketches of artist Albert de Belleroche, to his connection with a soldier he met while serving as an official war artist. Capturing the glamour and intrigue of the Gilded Age, Beyond Beauty is a fresh, unvarnished portrait of a legendary, enigmatic artist for the twenty-first century.

A beautifully illustrated art history and cultural biography, The Street of Wonderful Possibilities focuses on one of the most influential artistic quarters in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – London’ s Tite Street, where a staggering amount of talent thrived, including James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent.  For Wilde, the street was full of ‘ wonderful possibilities’ , while for Whistler it was ‘ the birthplace of art’ , where a new brand of aestheticism was nurtured in his controversial White House. Modern masterpieces in art and literature flowed from the studios and houses of Tite Street, but this bohemian enclave had a dark side as well. Here Whistler was bankrupted, Frank Miles was sent to an asylum, Wilde was imprisoned, and Peter Warlock was gassed to death.Throughout its turbulent existence, Tite Street mirrored the world around it. From the Aesthetic movement and its challenge to Victorian values, through the Edwardian struggle for women’ s suffrage, to the bombs of the Blitz in the 1940s, it remained home to innumerable artists and writers, socialites and suffragettes, musicians and madmen. The Street of Wonderful Possibilities reveals this complex history, tying together private and professional lives to form a colourful tapestry of art and intrigue, illuminating their relationships to each other, to Tite Street and to a rapidly modernising London at the fin de siè cle.

From long-haired ‘Fleshly Poets’ to intense, ‘ultra pre-Raphaelite’ artists, few stylistic movements in the history of art and literature have provoked the imagination and indignation of British playwrights as much as the Aesthetic Movement.During an intense and short-lived period from 1877 to 1881, the London stage saw fierce competition as playwrights and theatre managers raced to capture the zeitgeist, capitalizing on the unorthodox, eccentric and highly theatrical proponents of the Aesthetic Movement. The ‘quite too utterly utter’ Apostles of this new school were satirized to such an extent that the Illustrated London News (1881) complained that the London stage was ‘thickly sown over with a crop of lilies and sunflowers’, with ‘aesthetes in every burlesque and comic opera produced’.This edited volume brings the four key plays satirizing the Aesthetic Movement together for the first time in an easily accessible format, allowing scholars and students to discover their secrets:The Grasshopper by John Hollingshead (Gaiety Theatre, 1877)Where’s The Cat? by James Albery (Criterion, 1880)The Colonel by F.C. Burnand (Prince of Wales’s Theatre, 1881) Patience by W.S. Gilbert (Opera Comique/Savoy, 1881)Including a brief introduction by Dr. Devon Cox, providing background and context to the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the British stage, and complete with biographical notes and an introduction to each play, Aesthetic Movement Satire: A Dramatic Anthology shines a light on this explosive flashpoint in British Theatre

From long-haired ‘Fleshly Poets’ to intense, ‘ultra pre-Raphaelite’ artists, few stylistic movements in the history of art and literature have provoked the imagination and indignation of British playwrights as much as the Aesthetic Movement.During an intense and short-lived period from 1877 to 1881, the London stage saw fierce competition as playwrights and theatre managers raced to capture the zeitgeist, capitalizing on the unorthodox, eccentric and highly theatrical proponents of the Aesthetic Movement. The ‘quite too utterly utter’ Apostles of this new school were satirized to such an extent that the Illustrated London News (1881) complained that the London stage was ‘thickly sown over with a crop of lilies and sunflowers’, with ‘aesthetes in every burlesque and comic opera produced’.This edited volume brings the four key plays satirizing the Aesthetic Movement together for the first time in an easily accessible format, allowing scholars and students to discover their secrets:The Grasshopper by John Hollingshead (Gaiety Theatre, 1877)Where’s The Cat? by James Albery (Criterion, 1880)The Colonel by F.C. Burnand (Prince of Wales’s Theatre, 1881) Patience by W.S. Gilbert (Opera Comique/Savoy, 1881)Including a brief introduction by Dr. Devon Cox, providing background and context to the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the British stage, and complete with biographical notes and an introduction to each play, Aesthetic Movement Satire: A Dramatic Anthology shines a light on this explosive flashpoint in British Theatre

From long-haired ''Fleshly Poets'' to intense, ''ultra pre-Raphaelite'' artists, few stylistic movements in the history of art and literature have provoked the imagination and indignation of British playwrights as much as the Aesthetic Movement.During an intense and short-lived period from 1877 to 1881, the London stage saw fierce competition as playwrights and theatre managers raced to capture the zeitgeist, capitalizing on the unorthodox, eccentric and highly theatrical proponents of the Aesthetic Movement. The ''quite too utterly utter'' Apostles of this new school were satirized to such an extent that the Illustrated London News (1881) complained that the London stage was ''thickly sown over with a crop of lilies and sunflowers'', with ''aesthetes in every burlesque and comic opera produced''. This edited volume brings the four key plays satirizing the Aesthetic Movement together for the first time in an easily accessible format, allowing scholars and students to discover their secrets:The Grasshopper by John Hollingshead (Gaiety Theatre, 1877)Where''s The Cat? by James Albery (Criterion, 1880)The Colonel by F.C. Burnand (Prince of Wales''s Theatre, 1881) Patience by W.S. Gilbert (Opera Comique/Savoy, 1881)Including a brief introduction by Dr. Devon Cox, providing background and context to the dynamic, symbiotic relationship between the Aesthetic Movement and the British stage, and complete with biographical notes and an introduction to each play, Aesthetic Movement Satire: A Dramatic Anthology shines a light on this explosive flashpoint in British Theatre