Sarah Whitfield

A new monograph brings together 30 important paintings by Pierre Bonnard (1867 1947) on loan from museums and private collections, including still lifes, nudes, interior scenes, and landscapes, many never seen together before and published here for the first time. The book reveals how Bonnard s modern compositions transformed paintings in the first half of the twentieth century, while celebrating his unparalleled ability to capture fleeting moments, memories, and emotions on canvas. Rather than focus on a particular time period or subject, Bonnard: The Experience of Seeing aims to present Bonnard s modernity and concentrate on his influence on contemporary painters working today. The book draws attention to how Bonnard translated the experience of perception with his shifting spaces, camouflaged and dissolving figures going in and out of focus, and forms hidden at the periphery and how we as viewers experience his paintings, with his works slowly revealing themselves to us over time.

The third instalment in the Bacon Estate’s groundbreaking series discloses the most exciting new research and information to emerge in many years on this elusive artist. Three of the essays, by Francesca Pipe, Sophie Pretorius and Martin Harrison, are based on archives recently added to the collection of the Estate of Francis Bacon. Very little is known about Bacon’s early career, and the diaries of his two first patrons provide a far deeper understanding of his formative years than has been accessible hitherto. Especially revelatory are the extensive records kept over a long period by Bacon’s doctor, Paul Brass: what they reveal will revolutionise thinking on Bacon. Sarah Whitfield sheds new light on both Bonnard and Bacon; she has identified concerns the two artists shared that will surprise as well as enlighten. Joyce Townsend draws on her scientific and technical investigations into Tate’s most important Bacon paintings to advance significant new information about Bacon’s methods. Christopher Bucklow is an expert on Japanese art, which forms an important, if unexpected, aspect of his rethinking of the metaphor system in Bacon’s paintings.

"One more dawn! One more day! One day more!"Did Les Misérables make you miserable? Or did it inspire you? When Sarah Whitfield was a teenager, her Dad frequently embarrassed her with his love of this musical above all others. So, after he was diagnosed with late stage cancer, Whitfield set out to find out why this musical meant so much to him and to its worldwide following.In this new book, she asked her Dad and 350 other people how they felt about this musical, exploring people’s personal connections with the show. In the middle of some of the hardest moments in family life, Whitfield explores how the musical might help us deal with some of our most difficult experiences and give us hope for when ‘tomorrow comes’.

The inaugural title in the reformatted British Artists series, William Scott is a comprehensive introduction to the life and work of the important British abstract painter. After studying at Belfast College of Art and the Royal Academy schools in London, Scott began his painting career in 1946 whilst teaching at Bath Academy of Art, concentrating on still-lifes of pots and saucepans, eggs, fishes and bottles on a bare kitchen table. He chose these objects simply because they provided contrasting shapes that he could arrange against simple backgrounds, often to elegant effect. By 1951 however, the forms had begun to take on a life of their own, sometimes as metaphors of erotic encounters between male and female. Some of his works of 1952 - 4 became completely abstract. This phase of Scott's work came to an end partly as a result of a visit in 1953 to the USA, where he met Pollock, Rothko and Kline. He felt that he belonged to the European tradition of Chardin, Cezanne and Bonnard, and this led to a return to a more representational style. Gradually, however, he moved again towards abstraction but continuing to use still-life subjects as the starting point for otherwise self-sufficient formal relationships. Of international renown, Scott represented Britain in the 1958 Venice Biennale, and has been the subject of many shows all around the world, including a major retrospective at Tate in 1972.

Les Fauves (the wild beasts) was the nickname given in 1905 to a group of painters led by Henri Matisse. Today, their paintings are among the most popular of all twentieth-century art. Yet when Matisse and his friends - Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, Dufy and Braque among them - first exhibited their work, the reaction of public and critics was astonishment and often hostility. Using strong, even strident, colours, applied in a manner deriving from Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, the Fauves took painting back to its basic principles, inspired by primitive art, popular prints and children's paintings, and paved the way to Cubism. The artists, their work, their relationship, their achievements and the critical and commercial response to their work are all discussed in this absorbing book.