Love Stories: Art, Passion & Tragedy Hardcover
Edited by Lucy Peltz & Louise Stewart.
Featuring stories of passion and romance, scandal and tragedy, creative commitment and eventual heartbreak, this book explores some of the greatest works of art and the most powerful love stories in history. Highlighting the changing ideas of love from the sixteenth century to the present day, the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, illustrates portraiture's role in the creation, celebration and memorialisation of love, relationships and desire, across a spectrum of diversity and difference.
Format: 197 x 248 mm
Illustrations: Over 150
Extent: 224 pages
Binding: Hardback
Category: Art/Art History/History/Photography
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The National Portrait Gallery’s collections hold numerous portraits of creative partnerships. This book looks at the extensive collection of the Gallery and explores the role of love and the people featured both as sitters and artists. Drawing on recent scholarship, the exhibition will explore changing ideas of love, and give readers the opportunity to discover love stories both tragic and transcendent. The stories cover a variety of topics including: the role of the muse, featuring stories such as George Romney, Lady Emma Hamilton and Nelson, and the Bloomsbury group; scandal and tragedy, exploring the relationships of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson,and John Lennon and Yoko Ono; literary love, highlighting the tales of Mary and Percy Shelley, and Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; a shared studio, featuring the stories of artists Lee Miller and Man Ray, and Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson; and love and the lens, which explores the stories of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, and Mick and Bianca Jagger.
