Collections Management Assistant Tara Keny uses Edward Penfield's Aetna Dynamite poster to explore the role of dynamite in the anarchist movement in Europe and the United States throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

"In the palace of art there are many chambers, and that of which Mr. Burne-Jones holds the key is a wondrous museum. His imagination, his fertility of invention, his exquisiteness of work, his remarkable gifts as a colourist—all these things constitute a brilliant distinction." With these words the American critic and novelist Henry James, in 1877, sang the praises of Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), the British painter and designer whose work was creating a sensation at the recently opened Grosvenor Gallery in London. A pupil of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a protégé of John Ruskin, Burne-Jones belonged to the second generation of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, creating a narrative style of romantic symbolism steeped in medieval legend and fused with the influence of Italian Renaissance masters that was to have widespread influence on both British and European art. Within the sophisticated culture of the late Victorian period Burne-Jones's star rose rapidly, and by the 1880s he had become the establishment artist par excellence, one of the most admired and sought-after painters in Europe. By the 1890s, however, Burne-Jones was ceding popularity to the growing taste for abstraction, and until recently he was all but ignored. Today, one hundred years after his death, in what John Christian, the leading authority on the artist, in this volume terms a "critical somersault," Burne-Jones is once again considered the greatest British painter of the nineteenth century—after only Turner and perhaps Constable. Edward Burne-Jones, Victorian Artist-Dreamer is the catalogue for the first exhibition in the United States devoted to this painter. The works in the exhibition, organized under the auspices of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, England, and the Réunion des musées nationaux, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, were selected by Stephen Wildman, Curator of the Ruskin Library at Lancaster University, England. A prodigiously productive artist, Burne-Jones, in addition to being a successful and innovative painter, was also an important force in the Arts and Crafts movement, working closely with his lifelong friend William Morris in the production of such decorative arts as ceramic tiles, stained glass, large-scale tapestries, and illustrated books to be printed at Morris's renowned Kelmscott Press. Examples of works in all these media are presented in the exhibition, with full-color and black-and-white reproductions of each of the 173 works included in the catalogue. Arranged chronologically, the volume is divided into eight sections, each introduced by a vibrant and broadly informative text by John Christian, followed by catalogue entries written by Mr. Wildman and Mr. Christian. An essay by the British scholar Alan Crawford explores Burne-Jones's contribution as a decorative artist, and an essay by Laurence des Cars, Curator at the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, deals with the artist's reputation and influence in France and Belgium.

In Self-Portrait: Between the Clock and the Bed, the elderly Edvard Munch stands like a sentinel in his bedroom/studio surrounded by the works that constitute his artistic legacy. A powerful meditation on art, mortality, and the ravages of time, this haunting painting conjures up the Norwegian master’s entire career. It also calls into question certain long-held myths surrounding Munch—that his work declined in quality after his nervous breakdown in 1908–9, that he was a commercially naive social outsider, and that he had only a limited role in the development of European modernism. The present volume aims to rebut such misconceptions by freshly examining this enigmatic artist. In the preface, the renowned novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard considers Munch as a fellow creative artist and seeks to illuminate the source of his distinctive talent. The four groundbreaking essays that follow present numerous surprising insights on matters ranging from Munch’s radical approach to self-portraiture to his role in promoting his own career. They also reveal that Munch has been an abiding inspiration to fellow painters, both during his lifetime and up to the present; artists as varied as Jasper Johns, Bridget Riley, Asger Jorn, and Georg Baselitz have acknowledged his influence. More than sixty of Munch’s paintings, dating from the beginning of his career in the early 1880s to his death in 1944, are accompanied by a generous selection of comparative illustrations and a chronology of the artist’s life. The result is an intimate, provocative study that casts new light on Munch’s unique oeuvre—an oeuvre that Knausgaard describes as having gone “where only a painting can go, to that which is beyond words, but which is still part of our reality.”

"These days, Degas abandons himself entirely to his new passion for photography," wrote an artist friend in autumn 1895, the moment of the great Impressionist painter's most intense exploration of photography. Degas's major surviving photographs little known even among devotees of the artist's paintings and pastels, are insightfully analyzed and richly reproduced for the first time in this volume, which accompanies an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Bibliothéque Nationale de France. Degas's photographic figure studies, portraits of friends and family, and self-portraits—especially those in which lamp-lit figures emerge from darkness—are imbued with a Symbolist spirit evocative of realms more psychological than physical. Most were made in the evenings, when Degas transformed dinner parties into photographic soirees, requisitioning the living rooms of his friends, arranging oil lamps, and directing the poses of dinner guests enlisted as models. "He went back and forth ... running from one end of the room to the other with an expression of infinite happiness," wrote Daniel Halévy, the son of Degas's close friends Ludovic and Louise Halévy, describing one such evening. "At half-past eleven everybody left; Degas, surrounded by three laughing girls, carried his camera as proudly as a child carrying a rifle." Lively eyewitness accounts of Degas's photographic activity from the journals of Daniel Halévy and Julie Manet, as well as from Degas's own letters, are included in Malcolm Daniel's essay, "The Atmosphere of Lamps or Moonlight" which presents a fascinating account of Degas's brief but passionate embrace of photography. Daniel explores the psychological connection between events in the aging artist's life and his decision to take up the camera and demonstrates the aesthetic connections between Degas's photographs and his work in other media. Eugenia Parry's essay, "Edgar Degas's Photographic Theater," illuminates the fertile interplay between painting, posing, theatrical direction, and photography in Degas's work, and Theodore Reff, in "Degas Chez Tasset," sheds light on the hitherto barely known Guillaume Tasset and his daughter Delphine, from whom Degas sought photographic supplies, advice, and services. Finally, this volume includes a scholarly catalogue raisonné and census of prints, an essential tool for further study of Degas's photographs.

Edward C. Moore (1827–1891) was the creative leader who brought Tiffany & Co. to unparalleled originality and success during the late nineteenth century. A silversmith, designer, and prodigious collector, Moore sought out exceptional objects from around the world, which he then used as inspiration for Tiffany’s innovative silver designs. This informative, richly illustrated volume, the first study of Moore’s life, collection, and influence, presents more than 170 examples from his vast collection, ranging from Greek and Roman glass to Spanish vases, Islamic metalwork, and Japanese textiles. These are juxtaposed with sixty magnificent silver objects created by the designers and artisans at Tiffany who were inspired by Moore’s acquisitions. Included among them are the world-famous Bryant Vase drawing upon Greek examples, a love cup featuring ornate “Saracenic” decoration, and a chocolate pot incorporating novel techniques influenced by Japanese ceramics and lacquerware. The illuminating texts have been enriched by groundbreaking research into contemporary sources such as newspapers and periodicals, the Tiffany & Co. Archives, and a newly identified technical manual and supervisor’s diaries, all of which provide an intimate look at the firm’s design processes and Moore’s role in shaping them. A valuable contribution to the history of American decorative arts, Collecting Inspiration illuminates both the legendary Tiffany aesthetic and the legacy of a significant collector, designer, and entrepreneur of the Gilded Age.

Edward C. Moore (1827–1891)—the creative force who led Tiffany & Co. to unparalleled originality and success during the second half of the 19th century—amassed a vast collection of decorative arts of exceptional quality and in various media, from G…

When Edgar Degas died in 1917, his enormous art collection, consisting of several thousand paintings, drawings, and prints, came to light. This remarkable assemblage included great numbers of works by the French nineteenth-century masters whom Degas revered—Delacroix, Ingres, and Daumier—and at the same time demonstrated Degas's profound interest in the art of certain of his contemporaries, particularly Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Mary Cassatt. Dispersed when it was sold at auction in 1918 during the bombardment of Paris, the collection is now the subject of both an illuminating exhibition and this accompanying catalogue. In a series of essays, some previously published and some written for this book, major scholars discuss, from various perspectives, Degas's collection and its relation to his own art. Ann Dumas vividly describes Degas's passionate appreciation and compulsive acquisition of works of art, his musings about founding a museum, and the nineteenth-century world of art collecting in which he moved. Gary Tinterow reveals the staggering quantity and quality of his own works that Degas kept until his death—not the ballet dancers of his middle years, but stunning early portraits and mysterious narrative paintings, boldly composed late works that explode with color, and examples of his consummate draftsmanship. Degas's own artistic thinking was significantly influenced by the artists he admired, and this subject is explored by several authors. Theodore Reff's classic essay on Ingres, Delacroix, and Daumier demonstrates the complex ways Degas comprehended the genius of each master and in some way made it his own. Degas's personal and artistic relationship with Manet is investigated by Mari Kálmán Meller and Juliet Wilson-Bareau, and his protective encouragement of Gauguin is described by Françoise Cachin. Richard Kendall points out the intriguing parallels and divergences between Degas's and Cézanne's artistic achievements. The history of a printmaking endeavor in which Degas collaborated with Mary Cassatt and other artists is presented by Barbara Stern Shapiro. Colta Ives explicates how Degas assimilated the lessons he derived from Japanese prints. The dramatic revelation and then the auctioning off of Degas's collection constitute still another story. Caroline Durand-Ruel Godfroy conveys a sense of the frantic behind-the-scenes activity at the Durand-Ruel gallery, which inventoried the collection and managed its sale. Susan Alyson Stein narrates the chain of events by which the Metropolitan Museum, despite wartime difficulties, ultimately succeeded in acquiring masterworks from Degas's collection and studio. Rebecca A. Rabinow describes the animated press coverage of the sales on both sides of the Atlantic and provides a compilation of the actual writings. A second, companion volume is an illustrated summary catalogue of the entire collection. Richly illustrated with hundreds of works from Degas's collection, this comprehensive study of a great artist's artistic passions is a book of exceptional interest.

The art collection assembled by Edgar Degas was remarkable not only for its quality, size, and depth but also for its revelation of Degas's artistic affinities. He acquired great numbers of works by the nineteenth-century French masters Ingres, Delacroix, and Daumier; he bought (or bartered his own pictures for) art by many of his contemporaries, particularly Manet, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Cassatt; and he acquired works by a wide range of other artists, from eminent to little known. The extent of Degas's holdings was not recognized until after his death, when the collection came up for auction in Paris in 1918 and, in what was called the sale of the century, was widely dispersed. Extensive research has made it possible to "reassemble" that collection in book form. This summary catalogue contains information on the more than five thousand works owned by Degas. For each work catalogued the entry includes, to the extent possible: a description with medium and dimensions; provenance information about Degas's acquisition and ownership of the work; information pertaining to the sale of the work in 1918 (or its disposal earlier), including the purchaser, purchase price, and other data; the current location; selected references; and an illustration. In a concordance, collection sale lot numbers are listed with their corresponding summary catalogue numbers. Previously, knowledge was fragmentary about the contents of Degas's collection and the whereabouts of those works. The authors of the summary catalogue accomplished their task by combing through a variety of sources, including annotated sale catalogues Degas's handwritten manuscript containing his own partial inventory, dealers' records, archives, and the contents of print and drawing study rooms, as well as by addressing inquiries to dealers, collectors, and curators, and by consulting important earlier scholarly work. While gaps remain that will surely be addressed by art historians in the future, this summary catalogue, with its wealth of new findings and its comprehensive organization, makes an invaluable contribution to scholarship on the subject, as well as to our understanding of this exceptional artist's collection.

Elaborately decorated arms and armor were essential to the grandeur of Versailles. Armorer and Conservator Edward Hunter highlights some of these ceremonial weapons.