Xavier Bray – författare

Untangles the extraordinary history of Asante regalia at the Wallace Collection.The Wallace Collection is famed for its Old Master paintings, French decorative arts, and arms and armour. Among these works, however, lies a small group of gold regalia that is of profound spiritual, cultural and artistic importance to Asante, today in Ghana. Taken as part of an indemnity imposed on the kingdom by British forces during the Third Anglo-Asante War in 1874, they were later sold by the crown jeweller Garrard & Co. to London society, including Sir Richard Wallace. This richly illustrated book, written in collaboration with Manhyia Palace Museum, is the first to fully explore the significance of these objects to the Asante people, as well as their history, from Kumasi to a British national museum.

This is a wonderful overview of the remarkable range of dog portraits--there are no human sitters--produced over the last 250 years. It features well-known works such as Rosa Bonheur's Brizo, (one of the best-loved portraits in The Wallace Collection), George Stubbs' Turk, Thomas Gainsborough's portrait of his two dogs Tristram and Fox, Lucian Freud's oil painting of Pluto, his pet whippet, and David Hockney's dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie.Over 50 works, arranged by theme, are drawn from major British collections, including the Royal Collection, the V & A, Tate Britain, the British Museum, and a wealth of regional museums and private collections. In addition memorabilia and souvenirs-bronzes, photos, brooches, and Faberge works, many relating to the British royals, especially Queen Victoria and her children- all evoke the sense of a cabinet of curiosities. This is a must-have for dog lovers.

Pedro de Mena y Medrano (1628–1688) is nowadays the most highly regarded master of Spanish Baroque sculpture, on a par with his contemporaries, the great seventeenth-century painters Velázquez, Zurbarán and Murillo. Mena’s contributions to Spanish Baroque sculpture are unsurpassed in both technical skill and expressiveness of his religious subjects. His ability to sculpt the human body was remarkable, and he excelled in creating figures and scenes for contemplation. This first monograph of Pedro de Mena shows a lot of details and remarkable images of his hyper-realistic sculptures, full of Spanish passion. Apart from the article by curator Xavier Bray, it also features important contributions by José Luis Romeo Torres, curator of the monographic exhibition Pedro de Mena, to be held in Málaga in 2019.