FRANCES SPALDING

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Bloomsbury Group transformed British culture with their innovative approach to art, design and society. In this book Frances Spalding presents over twenty fascinating biographies, all of which are illustrated with paintings and intimate photographs created by members of the group.

The Times and Sunday Times Art Book of the Year Superb Spalding is a lucid and revealing guide who wears her scholarship lightly Sunday Times Spalding s prose is as clear as a Ravilious greenhouse her thoughts as orderly as a Ben Nicholson white relief The Times A fresh look at a period of English art that has surged in interest and popularity in recent years authored by one of Britain s leading art historians and critics The 21st century has seen a surge of interest in English art of the interwar years Women artists such as Winifred Knights Frances Hodgkins and Evelyn Dunbar have come to the fore while familiar names Paul Nash Eric Ravilious and Stanley Spencer have reached new audiences High profile exhibitions have attracted recordbreaking visitor numbers and challenged received opinion In The Real and the Romantic Frances Spalding one of Britain s leading art historians and critics takes a fresh and timely look at this rich period in English art The devastation of the First World War left the art world decentred and directionless This book is about its recovery Spalding explores how exciting new ideas co existed with a desire for continuity and a renewed interest in the past We see the challenge to English artists represented by Cezann

Whistler An introduction to the work of James McNeill Whistler.Frances Spalding One of a series of introductory books on the great masters and movements in art This volume on Whistler contains an extensive essay, 48 full-page colour plates, and is accompanied by extensive notes and comparative illustrations Provides incomparable value Highly regarded for its insight and authority James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was one of the most original artists of the late nineteenth century. Flamboyant dandy and ebullient publicist, friend of Oscar Wilde, Whistler was also a meticulous craftsman dedicated to the perfection of his art. Whistler was born in America but trained in Paris. He began as a realist painter but gradually developed a startlingly original method of composition, refining his technique to the barest essentials. He was one of the first to argue that the abstract ingredients of a painting - the lines, shapes, colours and tones - could in themselves be the subject; he entitled the portrait of his mother Arrangement in Grey and Black. This book provides a wide survey of carefully selected works, illustrated with 48 full-page colour plates and accompanying notes, making it an ideal introduction to Whistler's art.

Confident and very readable . . . one of Frances Spaldings achievements in this book is to display Stevie Smiths frailties without destroying her dignity Victoria Glendinning, Literary ReviewA careful, informative and worthwhile book Hermione Lee, The ObserverIt is a biography of inner life. It is also a hymn to tenebrous suburbia, a book full of English oddness, and a lovely loamish read. The TimesStevie Smith had a unique literary voice: her idiosyncratic, wonderfully funny and poignant poems established her as one of the most individual of English modern poets. She claimed her own life was precious dull, but Frances Spaldings acclaimed biography reveals a far from conventional woman.While she lived in suburbia with her beloved Lion Aunt, Stevie Smith was from the early 1930s a vibrant figure on Londons intellectual and literary scene, mixing with artists and writers, among them Olivia Manning, Rosamond Lehmann and George Orwell. She was noted for her wit often maliciously directed at friends and occasional public tantrums. Her use of real people in her writing angered many of her friends and brought the threat of libel.Always feeling herself out of step with the world, she was haunted by her fathers absence during her childhood and her mothers early death; she longed for love yet was sexually ambivalent. In exploring the intimate relationship between Stevie Smiths life and work, Frances Spalding gives a new insight into a writer who always saw death as a friend, yet was also one of the great celebrators of life, whether commonplace or extraordinary.