Edited by Lucy Peltz. Text by Louise Stewart, Simon Callow, Peter Funnell, Marina Warner, Kate Williams.
Exploring the changing face of love, from the 16th century to the present, through masterpieces of portraiture
Drawing on recent scholarship, Love Stories explores changing ideas of love, and gives readers the opportunity to discover love stories both tragic and transcendent.
The stories cover a variety of topics: the muse, scandal, tragedy, literature, the shared studio and life lived in front of the camera. These themes are illustrated through the stories of such well-known names as the Bloomsbury Group, Oscar Wilde, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Lee Miller and Man Ray, and many more.
Love Stories is brought to life through the perspective of various authors, using material from the sitters’ own letters, diaries and poetry, while highlighting their connection to and influence on some of the greatest masterpieces of art.
This June 2, 1943, Dorothy Wilding portrait of Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, and Prince Edward, Duke of Windsor, captures that ineffable thing about one of the greatest and perhaps most tragic loves of the twentieth century. Taken seven years after the Duke abdicated the throne rather than "discharge my duties as King as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love," it is not only a portrait of passion, but of monumental sacrifice and exile, reproduced from Love Stories: Art, Passion & Tragedy, our Valentine's Day Staff Pick. "While they remained loyal to one another until their deaths," Constantia Nicolaides writes, "questions abound about Edward’s real motivations for abdicating, and whether Wallis truly loved Edward or intended for their relationship to progress so far. Indeed, she reportedly remarked: ‘You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.'" continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 7.75 x 9.75 in. / 224 pgs / 150 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $39.95 LIST PRICE: CANADA $55.95 ISBN: 9781855147034 PUBLISHER: National Portrait Gallery, London AVAILABLE: 10/20/2020 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Published by National Portrait Gallery, London. Edited by Lucy Peltz. Text by Louise Stewart, Simon Callow, Peter Funnell, Marina Warner, Kate Williams.
Exploring the changing face of love, from the 16th century to the present, through masterpieces of portraiture
Drawing on recent scholarship, Love Stories explores changing ideas of love, and gives readers the opportunity to discover love stories both tragic and transcendent.
The stories cover a variety of topics: the muse, scandal, tragedy, literature, the shared studio and life lived in front of the camera. These themes are illustrated through the stories of such well-known names as the Bloomsbury Group, Oscar Wilde, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, Lee Miller and Man Ray, and many more.
Love Stories is brought to life through the perspective of various authors, using material from the sitters’ own letters, diaries and poetry, while highlighting their connection to and influence on some of the greatest masterpieces of art.