Art Catalogue

Art Books covered a variety of topics including paintings, watercolors, drawings, prints, decorative arts, antiquorum, ceramics, porcelain, photography, netsuke, sculpture, fashions, architectural and ornament drawings.
From ancient times to the present day a large collection of 558 volumes.

In 1893 a poster advertising the April issue of Harper's Monthly Magazine appeared in newsstands and bookshops throughout the United States. The subject matter was unlike that of French posters of the period; this poster was modest and the style restrained. It was unlike other American posters because the product advertised was not so much commercial as it was intellectual. Despite this quiet beginning, the Harper's poster started a revolution in the history of American poster-making. …

In 711 an army of Arabs and Berbers from North Africa, united by their faith in Islam, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and arrived on the Iberian Peninsula. In less than a decade the Muslims brought most of the peninsula under their domination; they called the Iberian lands they controlled al-Andalus. Although the borders of al-Andalus shifted over the centuries, the Muslims remained a powerful force on the peninsula for almost eight hundred years, until 1492, when they were expelled by Ferdinand and Isabella. …

The first centuries of the Christian Era were ones of extraordinary upheaval: the great traditions of the classical world were transformed by dramatic changes in the political and social structure, by continual warfare against invaders, and by the growing influence of the nascent religion Christianity. The trend of this period has been interpreted by some historians as the decline of civilization, but it is represented by its art as a time of cultural experimentation. …