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A choice of art books

David Ekserdjian

Tuesday, 11th December 2007

Literary critics of a certain stripe may have been exulting over the death of the author for decades, but happily, in the world of art publishing, monographic studies of the careers and works of individual artists are still alive and kicking. Indeed, almost half of my festive selections fall into that category this year.

First, and by no means simply by virtue of its weight, is Judy Egerton’s George Stubbs, Painter: Catalogue Raisonné (Yale, £95), which effortlessly combines awesome scholarly authority with what in academic circles is, alas, a far rarer commodity — wit. Seen whole and supported by such eloquent advocacy, Stubbs emerges as a truly great artist, who has been held back by his Britishness and his subject matter. As Judy Egerton rightly observes, it was the subject of the Fitzwilliam’s ‘Gimcrack’ — a racehorse with jockey up — ‘whose seeming triviality had long caused more nervous art historians to twitch their petticoats’.

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Chalk and cheese

Raymond Carr

The British in France: Visitors and Residents since the Revolution, by Peter Thorold

Gruff Justice

Roger Lewis

James Robertson Justice: What’s the Bleeding Time? by James Hogg, with Robert Sellers and Howard Watson

The spice of danger

David Crane

From the Front Line: Family Letters & Diaries, 1900 to the Falklands & Afghanistan, by Hew Pike

Stars bright and dim

Philip Hensher

State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America, edited by Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey

How to write a wrong

Allan Massie

‘When young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of Hate, Suspicion and Despair, all the Love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge.’