Juliet Carey – författare

Out of public sight for over a hundred years, the Livre de caricatures tant bonnes que mauvaises is a remarkable work. This collection of comic and satirical drawings was created by a Parisian luxury embroiderer, Charles-Germain de Saint-Aubin, at a time of rigid press censorship to entertain a small group of family and friends. For today’s reader the Livreprovides not only a series of richly imaginative and varied drawings, but also a fascinating and intriguing commentary on pre-Revolutionary Paris.In this first comprehensive study of the Livre de caricatures, which includes over 190 illustrations, an international team of scholars investigates the motivations and operations behind the making of the book, and the many facets of Parisian life that it illuminates. Embracing politics and religion, theatre, fashion and connoisseurship, and the court of Versailles and the Parisian streets, the scope of the Livre is immense. The work’s unique quality is evident in its humour – whimsical, fantastical, challengingly allusive, but not without a sharp political edge when targeting clerics, the court and Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour.Known within the Saint-Aubin family as the Livre de culs, the Livre delights in the transgression of social convention and the keen deflation of vanity and pretence. Contributors explore this irreverent image of eighteenth-century Paris in all its glory. In today’s world, the visual satire of the Livre de Caricatures continues to resonate, instruct and entertain.

'A magnificent work of scholarship' - Edmund de Waal'I learned something new on every beautifully illustrated page' - Neil MacGregor'A fascinating book about a long-forgotten world' - Hadley FreemanA Country Life Architectural Book of the YearThrough a series of striking case studies this revelatory book explores the world of Jewish country houses, their architecture and collections - and the lives of the extraordinary men and women who created, transformed and shaped them.Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses - properties that were owned, built, or renewed by Jews - tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others inspired the European avant-garde. A few are now museums of international importance, many more are hidden treasures, and all were beloved homes that bear witness to the remarkable achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe - and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.Beautifully illustrated with historical images and a new body of work by the celebrated photographer Hélène Binet, this book is the first to tell that story: from the playful historicism of the National Trust's Waddesdon Manor in Buckinghamshire to the modernist masterpiece that is the Villa Tugendhat in the Czech city of Brno - and across the Atlantic to the United States, where American Jews infused the European country house tradition with their own distinctive concerns and experiences. The book is part of the Jewish Country Houses research project at the University of Oxford.https://jch.history.ox.ac.uk/home

Most of the drawings gathered together for this exhibition have never been exhibited in public and most have not been published. There are works by major French draftsmen of the eighteenth century, including Francois Boucher, Jean-Honore Fragonard, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Nicolas Lancret, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin and Jean-Baptiste Le Prince. Other artists are less familiar, Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Moreau le jeune among them, and it is hoped that this exhibition will introduce the visitor to the verve and originality of their work. The selection reflects the diversity of the Rothschild Collection and the overlapping pre-occupations and unflagging curiosity of its creators. It encompasses observation and invention, academic learning and social comment, propaganda and reportage, and sheds light on the many different techniques and uses of drawing. It is hoped that scrutiny of these works outside their usual context will intrigue those that do not know Waddesdon, surprise those that do and give insight and pleasure to new audiences.

This book accompanies an exhibition at Waddesdon that will unite Chardin’s four paintings of a boy with a house of cards for the first time (loans come from the Musée du Louvre, Paris; National Gallery, London; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), allowing us to examine Chardin’s treatment of the subject in the context of his fascination with themes of play, childhood and adolescence.