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Art — page 2
707 public-domain art books, summarised. Page 2 of 15.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843
Various
This mid-nineteenth-century literary collection blends high-minded cultural critique, political tension, and frontier narrative, offering a vivid window into the intellectual preoccupations and social anxieties of Victorian Britain.
The Louvre: Fifty Plates in Colour
Maurice W. Brockwell
A scholarly guide through the shifting tides of attribution and history, this work offers a disciplined examination of the Louvre’s masterworks. It serves as an essential companion for those who value critical rigor over traditional museum lore.
Love's Meinie: Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds
John Ruskin
This collection of lectures invites readers to look beyond dry scientific classification and rediscover the wonder of birds through the lenses of art, mythology, and direct observation. It serves as a gentle, idiosyncratic guide for those who seek a more intimate connection with the natural world.
A Treatise on Painting
da Vinci Leonardo
This rigorous collection of observations acts as a laboratory for the eye, transforming the act of painting from mere craft into a deep, scientific understanding of the natural world.
Chinese Painters: A Critical Study
Raphaël Petrucci
This critical study explores the expansive history of Chinese painting, tracing the evolution of its aesthetic philosophies from ancient traditions through the stylistic shifts of the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties. It offers a bridge between Eastern and Western artistic sensibilities, arguing for the profound unity of…
Vision and Design
Roger Fry
Art is not a mirror of nature, but a language of pure form designed to stir the spirit beyond the reach of everyday utility.
The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings: With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency
John Trusler
This collection acts as a moral and social mirror to eighteenth-century London, documenting the inevitable trajectories of virtue and vice through the sharp, satirical eye of an artist who captured both the high-minded and the grotesque.
Nietzsche and Art
Anthony M. (Anthony Mario) Ludovici
Great art is not a reflection of the world, but a command that shapes it; it is the necessary tonic for a civilization otherwise destined to drift into chaos.
Ivory, Apes and Peacocks
James Huneker
This collection of critical essays serves as a vibrant, multifaceted passport to the burgeoning modernism of the early twentieth century. It captures the spirit of an era in which traditional boundaries in art, music, and literature were being rapidly dismantled.
The Idler Magazine, Volume III, March 1893: An Illustrated Monthly
Various
This vintage monthly periodical captures the restless, observational energy of London at the turn of the century, blending behind-the-scenes theatrical reporting, light fiction, and lively philosophical debates.
Oscar Wilde, Art and Morality: A Defence of "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
Unknown
Art is a mirror, not a moral compass, yet the world often mistakes the reflection for the observer’s own soul. This collection examines the firestorm ignited by a single novel, tracing the collision between a writer’s uncompromising vision and a public’s hunger for censorship.
Magic, Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography
Albert A. (Albert Allis) Hopkins
The secrets of the stage are rarely found in the performance itself, but in the gears, mirrors, and hidden mechanisms that manufacture wonder for a captivated audience.
How to make rugs
Candace Wheeler
Elevating the modest farmhouse rag rug from a utilitarian necessity to an object of deliberate artistic expression, this guide provides a blueprint for finding purpose through traditional craft. It frames domestic production as both a source of individual creative fulfillment and a vital path toward regional…
Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D
Clara Erskine Clement Waters
This historical survey catalogs the lives and professional achievements of female painters and sculptors across centuries, documenting their struggles for recognition and their significant contributions to the fine arts.
The History of Modern Painting, Volume 1 (of 4): Revised edition continued by the author to the end of the XIX century
Richard Muther
A sweeping transformation unfolds as artists abandon the distant heroics of classicism to capture the pulse, light, and delicate realities of their own modern world.
English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century.: How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times
Graham Everitt
A panoramic tour of nineteenth-century British society, this volume examines how the sharp pens and etched plates of iconic graphic humorists captured the shifting political landscape, scandals, and eccentricities of a transformative era.
Michael Angelo Buonarroti: With Translations Of The Life Of The Master By His Scholar, Ascanio Condivi, And Three Dialogues From The Portugese By Francisco d'Ollanda
Charles Holroyd
A master artist navigates the demands of competing popes, the grueling demands of giant marble blocks, and the delicate balance between artistic vision and duty.
Luca Signorelli
Maud Cruttwell
To gaze upon the muscular, tempestuous figures of Luca Signorelli is to see the quiet, decorative traditions of early Italian art cast aside in favor of raw, kinetic power.
The Lighter Classics in Music: A Comprehensive Guide to Musical Masterworks in a Lighter Vein by 187 Composers
David Ewen
Melodic accessible compositions bridge the gap between heavy symphonic works and light popular entertainment.
Composition
Arthur W. (Arthur Wesley) Dow
Fine art arises not from the passive copying of nature, but from the deliberate, harmonic arrangement of line, mass, and color.
Selections From the Works of John Ruskin
John Ruskin
An artist’s vision must be bound to truth rather than idle beauty, for true creation springs only from reverence, moral duty, and honest labor.
Music: An Art and a Language
Walter Raymond Spalding
Deep musical understanding requires more than passive listening; it demands an active, analytical engagement with the structural grammar that gives sound its meaning.
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The final installment of a foundational aesthetic inquiry, this volume explores the summit of artistic expression, moving from the boundless interiority of poetry to the structured conflicts of the stage. It serves as a rigorous meditation on how the human spirit translates its highest truths into language and…
Thirteen Chapters of American History: represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen Historical Marine Paintings
Theodore Sutro
This chronicle of thirteen maritime masterworks maps the American experience from the dawn of discovery to the close of the nineteenth century, celebrating a nation’s growth through the lens of its most iconic naval moments.
Sacred and legendary art, volume 1 (of 2): Containing legends of the angels and archangels, the evangelists, the Apostles, the doctors of the church, and St. Mary magdalene, as represented in the fine arts
Mrs. (Anna) Jameson
This scholarly guide illuminates the hidden language of Christian art, transforming mysterious religious icons into legible stories of faith, history, and human expression. It acts as an essential bridge between the casual museum-goer and the deep, symbolic traditions of the past.
The Dance of Life
Havelock Ellis
The world is not a machine to be measured, but a performance to be lived. This inquiry reclaims the act of existence as an unfolding aesthetic experience, where life itself is the primary art.
Of the Just Shaping of Letters
Albrecht Dürer
This manual serves as a rigorous architectural blueprint for the alphabet, transforming the act of writing from a casual habit into a precise exercise in geometry and optical balance. It remains an essential meditation on how technical discipline anchors artistic beauty.
Child-life in Art
Estelle M. (Estelle May) Hurll
Children are timeless subjects for the artist, serving as vessels for innocence, divine grace, and the unfolding mysteries of human nature across centuries of creative expression.
Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7): The Age of the Despots
John Addington Symonds
The Italian Renaissance was not a gentle awakening, but a chaotic, bloody, and brilliant crucible where the modern world was forged in the fires of despotic ambition and religious fervor.
Printers' Marks: A Chapter in the History of Typography
W. (William) Roberts
Early printers rarely signed their work, leaving their identity to be traced through the intricate, symbolic woodcuts they stamped onto their title pages. This volume serves as an essential guide for navigating those forgotten visual signatures.
The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory
George Santayana
Beauty is not a mystical quality inherent in the world, but rather pleasure objectified. It is the silent, internal spark that turns a mundane sensation into a cherished experience.
Six Centuries of Painting
Randall Davies
This survey traces the evolution of European painting from the medieval transition to the rise of the Pre-Raphaelites. It examines how artists moved from rigid iconography toward the expressive realism that defines the Western canon.
A History of Caricature and Grotesque in Literature and Art
Thomas Wright
A comprehensive survey of the comic impulse, this volume traces the evolution of visual and literary satire from antiquity through the nineteenth century. It serves as a scholarly yet accessible roadmap for understanding how societies have used laughter and distortion to confront power, morality, and the absurd.
Rembrandt and His Works: Comprising a Short Account of His Life
John Burnet
The master of light and shadow, Rembrandt lives on through his etchings, a body of work that reveals the artist’s profound ability to find truth in both the grandest historical scenes and the simplest human gestures.
The History of Painting in Italy, Vol. 2 (of 6): From the Period of the Revival of the Fine Arts to the End of the Eighteenth Century
Luigi Lanzi
The Roman and Neapolitan schools emerge through a meticulous survey of artistic lineage, where the evolution of style is traced from the early masters to the refined, reasoned aesthetics of the late eighteenth century.
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects, Vol. 04 (of 10): Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo
Giorgio Vasari
The history of Renaissance art unfolds through the intimate, often dramatic accounts of the masters who defined it, transforming technical mastery into enduring legend.
Thoughts on Art and Life
da Vinci Leonardo
A restless mind seeks to bridge the chasm between the cold precision of scientific inquiry and the ethereal beauty of art.
The Life of John Ruskin
W. G. (William Gershom) Collingwood
A singular, restless intellect navigates the nineteenth century, moving from the crystalline observation of art and nature to the urgent, often misunderstood, moral reform of a rapidly industrializing society.
Illustrated History of Furniture: From the Earliest to the Present Time
Frederick Litchfield
A seat was once a heavy bench of stone or wood, carved with sacred beasts to mirror the authority of a ruler. Over centuries of shifting trade, politics, and taste, it transformed into an upholstered sanctuary of carved mahogany and gilded bronze.
Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering
Edward Johnston
A broad edge of cut quill meets smooth vellum, transforming raw mechanics into standard forms of structural beauty and enduring written grace.
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Art begins in a state of wonder, striving to give physical form to human thought. It moves through stages of symbolic search, reaches perfect harmony in classical sculpture, and finally dissolves into the internal, boundless world of the romantic spirit.
Unto This Last, and Other Essays on Political Economy
John Ruskin
An impassioned challenge to Victorian industrialism reclaims economic theory from cold mathematics, insisting that national wealth must be measured by human well-being, artistic integrity, and moral responsibility rather than mere financial accumulation.
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky
An urgent plea to rescue painting from mere mimicry, this text maps out a path toward pure abstraction by treating line and color as direct conduits to the human soul.
Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures
Henry Rankin Poore
To truly master picture-making, an artist must bridge the daunting chasm between copying a isolated model in an art class and harmonizing a subject within its complex background.
Needlework As Art
Alford, Marianne Margaret Compton Cust, Viscountess
A scholarly yet deeply felt vindication of textile needlework, arguing that stitchery is not mere domestic craft but a vital, fine art carrying human history.
The History of Modern Painting, Volume 3 (of 4): Revised edition continued by the author to the end of the XIX century
Richard Muther
The evolution of nineteenth-century European art is a relentless battle against theatrical conventions. Painters abandon stage-managed historical anecdotes to capture the raw emotional truth of peasants, the fleeting pulse of light, and serene architectural harmony.
Fictitious & Symbolic Creatures in Art: With Special Reference to Their Use in British Heraldry
John Vinycomb
From the soaring heights of winged angels to the aquatic depths of siren-haunted seas, human imagination has long peopled art and heraldry with wondrous, impossible beasts.
Hans Holbein the Younger, Volume 2 (of 2)
Arthur B. (Arthur Bensley) Chamberlain
A meticulous critical study tracks the final decade of a Renaissance master as he maneuvers through the Tudor court, capturing English monarchs, foreign merchants, and doomed queens with quiet, uncompromising precision.