James A. Ganz – författare

Accompanying a major retrospective of Anders Zorn’s work, this is the first volume in English to explore the Swedish Impressionist’s entire career in depth. Anders Zorn (1860–1920) is one of Sweden’s most accomplished and beloved artists. Renowned for his light, expressive watercolors, he attained mastery of the genre at an early age and later applied his techniques to oil painting. Zorn is often compared with the artists John Singer Sargent and Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, contemporaries who also were known for their portraits of high-society figures. Taking up residence in London and then in Paris, Zorn established himself as an international portrait painter, depicting fashionable clients in a style both elegant and relaxed. He became a favorite among wealthy American collectors, bankers, and industrialists who sat for him, including art collector Isabella Stewart Gardner and three U.S. presidents. Although perhaps best known for his portraits, Zorn brought equal skill to painting genre scenes and views of nature. This handsome volume provides a thorough introduction to the artist and his works, from portraiture to landscapes and his famous nudes. Four illustrated essays are accompanied by a chronology, selected bibliography, an exhibition checklist, and an index.

Claude Monet (1840–1926) is one of the best-known and most beloved painters in the history of art, with myriad publications and exhibitions devoted to his oeuvre. And yet there remains a previously undiscovered aspect of his career: his surprisingly significant role as a draftsman. This book is the first to focus on Monet’s pastels, drawings, and sketchbooks, offering a revolutionary new interpretation of the artist’s life and work.Monet has long been seen as an anti-draftsman, an artist who painted his subjects directly and whose rarely seen graphic works were marginal to his artistic process. In an effort to develop his public image, Monet denied the role of drawing in his working method. In actuality, Monet began his career as a caricaturist and as a teenager developed a passion for drawing that was never extinguished. He went on to master the medium of pastel and included seven in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.Citing recently discovered, unpublished documents that overturn the accepted image of the artist, The Unknown Monet reveals an extensive group of graphic works created over the course of the artist’s career, many of which are unknown to the general public and to scholars: beautiful pastels, stunning black chalk drawings, and fascinating sketchbooks, which include pencil studies that relate to many of his paintings. The book also shows how Monet exploited the print media to promote his art.The most important publication on Monet to appear in a generation, this illuminating volume is essential to anyone interested in his work, Impressionism, and nineteenth-century French culture.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MassachusettsExhibition Schedule:Royal Academy of Arts, London (March 17 – June 10, 2007)Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (June 24 – September 16, 2007)