Published to accompany a major exhibition at The Queen's Galleries in London and Edinburgh, this book provides new insights into George IV as a collector. Although George led a life bounded by convention, he was a genuine connoisseur who was able to form an unrivalled collection of paintings, porcelain and furniture. These he presented and displayed in a series of architecturally adventurous spaces. His acquisitions continue to form the backdrop to royal ceremony, a legacy that is one of the principal pillars of today's magnificent Royal Collection.
Discover the story of colour through the significant scientific discoveries and key artist's works over 400 years. From Isaac Newton's investigations through to Olafur Eliasson's experiential creations, this stunning book documents the fascinating story of colour with an extraordinary collection of original colour material that includes charts, wheels, artists' palettes, swatches and schemes. "In 1704, the scientist Isaac Newton published Opticks, the result of many years of researching light and colour. By splitting white light, Newton identified the visible range of colours, or the rainbow spectrum. In Opticks, he built a colour system around his findings, and he visualised this system in a circular shape, making it one of the first printed colour wheels. The influence of Newton and his followers, combined with the invention of many new pigments as well as watercolours in moist cake form, had made painting with colour an exciting occupation not just for serious artists but also for a much wider audience. The colour revolution had begun." Contents Introduction 1. Unravelling the Rainbow: The Eighteenth-Century Colour Revolution 2. Romantic Ideas & New Technologies: The Early Nineteenth Century 3. Industrialism to Impressionism: The Later Nineteenth Century 4. Colour for Colour's Sake: Colour into the Future: Glossary Bibliography Index
"In Designing the Seaside Fred Gray provides a history of seaside architecture from the 18th century to the present day, investigating leisure, entertainment, taste, fashion and gender, and shows how the seaside even became a hotbed for moral and sexual issues - from the early use of bathing machines to twentieth-century beauty pageants and naturist groups. He relates the evolution of resort architecture to sweeping changes in how seaside nature was experienced and used by holidaymakers. The book also traces the history of the coastal resort, with examples ranging from Regency Sidmouth to Victorian Scarborough and early 20th-century Morecambe, as well as assessing seaside developments in the USA and Continental Europe, from Coney Island and Santa Barbara to Nice and Trouville." "Featuring many colourful, informative and often entertaining photographs, drawings, guidebook illustrations, postcards and publicity posters from resorts around the world, Designing the Seaside is a thoroughly readables as well as a visually fascinating account of changing attitudes to holidaymaking and its setting."--BOOK JACKET.
This lively history of Europe’s royal families through the 18th and early 19th centuries reveals the decadence and danger of court life. As the glittering Hanoverian court gives birth to the British Georgian era, a golden age of royalty dawns in Europe. Houses rise and fall, births, marriages and scandals change the course of history. Meanwhile, in France, Revolution stalks the land. Life in the Georgian Court pulls back the curtain on the opulent court of the doomed Bourbons, the absolutist powerhouse of Romanov Russia, and the epoch-defining royal family whose kings gave their name to the era, the House of Hanover. Beneath the powdered wigs and robes of state were real people living lives of romance, tragedy, intrigue and eccentricity. Historian Catherine Curzon reveals the private lives of these very public figures, vividly recounting the arranged marriages that turned to love or hate and the scandals that rocked polite society. Here the former wife of a king spends three decades in lonely captivity, King George IV makes scandalous eyes at the toast of the London stage, and Marie Antoinette begins her final journey through Paris as her son sits alone in a forgotten prison cell. Life in the Georgian Court is a privileged peek into the glamorous, tragic and iconic courts of the Georgian world, where even a king could take nothing for granted.
Brilliantly researched and written, this is the definitive history of the city of Brighton. Divided into five sections – Fishermen and Farmers, Princes and Palaces, Late Georgian, Victorian Marvels and Mysteries, Battle Scene and Transformation – it shows how Brighton grew from a small fishing village. For almost thirty years Clifford Musgrave was the director of the Royal Pavilion, the Brighton Library, Art Gallery and Museum. In 1962 Faber and Faber commissioned him to write a comprehensive history of the town. It was published in 1970 to much acclaim. This new edition, published forty years after the original publication, includes a double introduction by the late Clifford Musgrave's son, Stephen Musgrave, and the editor of Victoria County History for Brighton and author of Georgian Brighton, Sue Berry. Two letters from Graham Greene to the author are also featured.
The Royal Pavilion, Brighton, is one of the most famous and opulent royal extravaganzas in existence. This book reproduces all the important surviving designs, used and unused, for the exterior and interior of the Pavilion. It reveals the great variety of brilliant exotic schemes devised for its construction and decoration. It was first built in 1787 for the Prince of Wales as a neo-classical marine villa, and by the time the Prince became king in 1820 it had grown into the extraordinary Indian/Chinese Fantasy it is today. The projects for the exterior include the pretty but chaste designs of Henry Holland and the wilder Indian and Chinese fantasies of William Porden and Humphry Repton. The interior designs, executed mainly by the Crace firm of decorators and Robert Jones (all firmly controlled by the king) are always splendid and often astonishing; they include schemes for whole rooms as well as for individual details such as windows, skylights, doorways, carpets and curtains. The range includes the 'barbaric' chinoiserie of the 1802-04 period, the enchanting 'rococo' chinoiserie of 1815-17, and the opulent richness of the final scheme. The techniques used include illusionistic painting, marbling, faux graining, faux skies - often in a vein of high fantasy. The 308 illustrations, of which 111 are reproduced in colour, capture all the variety, magnificence and exotic luxury of the extraordinary building.
