Harthan, John The History of the Illustrated Book : The Western Tradition , London: Thames & Hudson, 1981.

Illustrated by 465 Illustrations, 33 in Colour. First Edition. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 4to 0500233160 Dust jacket complete. Original cloth with gilt titling and illustration. No ownership inscription. 465 Illustrations, 33 in Colour. 288 pages clean and tight. Pomp and circumstance, epic fantasy, travel, romance, meditation, history, satire, erotic intrigue: books throughout history, from papyrus to paperback, have used images to reinforce words. In his new survey of the book as art, Jolul Harthan (formerly Keeper of the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London) stresses the artist's response to his text, as well as the visual quality of the page. Manuscripts and printed books have been illustrated in every Western artistic style, and the artists represented range from ancient Egypt to modern Manhattan, from the Master of the Leaping Figures to Henri Matisse. Among the byways of this vast artistic field are the fiery manuscript Apocalypses of the early Middle Ages; fable books and songbooks; the ornate records of baroque court life; and the seventeenth-century `emblem', an intellectual conundrum in which a picture delivers the message of a verse. Perhaps the artistic peak of printed book illustration was reached with the delicate engraving technique used in the eighteenth century to illustrate everything from technical books to lyric verse. After 1800, as book production became more and more industrialized, a division became apparent. Many illustrators continued to produce superb work for a wide readership, but others turned back to craft processes to recreate the medieval tradition of the book as a precious (though no longer a unique) object. Both the mass market and the minority of bibliophiles have survived into the twentieth century; and on many fronts, from plant-life to fiction, from poems to physiology, illustration is still a vital and developing art. (Book ref. 127691)  £22.50

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