The Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer turns his eye to the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age

Twenty years ago, Benjamin Moser followed a love affair to an ancient Dutch town. In order to make sense of this new place, he threw himself into the Dutch museums. Soon, he found himself unearthing the strange, inspiring and sometimes terrifying stories of the artists who shaped one of the most luminous moments in the history of human creativity, the Dutch Golden Age.

As he explored the hidden world of the Dutch Masters (and one Mistress), Moser met a crowd of fascinating personalities: the stormy Rembrandt, the intimate Ter Borch, the mysterious Vermeer. Through their art, he got to know their country, too: from Pieter Saenredam's translucent churches to Paulus Potter's muddy barnyards, and from Pieter de Hooch's cozy hearths to Jacob van Ruisdael's tragic trees. Over the years, Moser found himself on increasingly intimate terms with these centuries-dead artists, and found that they, too, were struggling with the same questions he was. Why do we make art? What is art, anyway - and what is an artist? What does it mean to succeed as an artist, and what does it mean to fail?

The Upside-Down World is an invitation to ask these questions, and to turn them on their heads: to look, and then to look again. It is a brilliant, colourful and learned book for anyone, whether lifelong scholar or curious tourist, who has ever felt the lure of the Dutch galleries. It shows us art, and artists, as we have never seen them before.

A beautiful companion set to the award-winning and internationally beloved phenomena, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells, adults and children alike will love receiving, sending and displaying The Wild Cards

'Breathtaking and magical. Jackie Morris has created something that you could spend all day looking at' New Statesman

'Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris have made a thing of astonishing beauty' Observer

Discover and share the wonders of the wild world as seen in The Lost Words and The Lost Spells...

This collection of 100 postcards features artwork and words from two beloved modern classics, in which Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane celebrate the creatures, trees and plants of nearby nature, from Acorn to Wren, by way of Curlew and Kingfisher, Silver Birch and Snow Hare, Goldfinch and Gorse.

The front of each card bears one of Morris's Greenaway Medal-winning paintings; on the reverse, you will find an accompanying quotation from one of the spell-poems in the Lost books, as well as an identification of the species shown on the card. The remaining space is left blank for you to fill in these wild cards with pen, pencil or paint - and then send them out into the world to make and renew connections.

'Extraordinary. An intellectual feast as well as a visual one'
Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

The world comes to us in colour. But colour lives as much in our imaginations as it does in our surroundings, as this scintillating book reveals. Each chapter immerses the reader in a single colour, drawing together stories from the histories of art and humanity to illuminate the meanings it has been given over the eras and around the globe. Showing how artists, scientists, writers, philosophers, explorers and inventors have both shaped and been shaped by these wonderfully myriad meanings, James Fox reveals how, through colour, we can better understand their cultures, as well as our own. Each colour offers a fresh perspective on a different epoch, and together they form a vivid, exhilarating history of the world. 'We have projected our hopes, anxieties and obsessions onto colour for thousands of years,' Fox writes. 'The history of colour, therefore, is also a history of humanity.'

"I believe that at present we must paint nature's rich and magnificent aspects; we need good cheer and happiness, hope and love." — Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh's letters to his brother Theo form what is perhaps the most frank and unique body of artists' correspondence ever written—one that offers a rare insight into Van Gogh’s mental turmoil and artistic motivations. His descriptions of everyday concerns are interspersed with highly intense passages, beautiful sentences, and wise words on subjects such as ambition, love, loneliness, and his battle with mental illness. These surprising, melancholy, and sometimes funny comments continue to inspire and console many people today, some 130 years after he wrote them.

This selection of Van Gogh's most beautiful quotations unites his exceptional and touching words with reproductions of his much-loved artworks. They convey the same kind of recognition and emotion that he sought to achieve with his art. He was eager to reach other people and to mean something to them—but he could never have suspected that through his immense talent for capturing personal experiences, ideas, and feelings in evocative and appealing language, that he had genuine life lessons to offer us. "There are so many people . . . who imagine that words are nothing. On the contrary, don't you think, it's as interesting and as difficult to say a thing well as to paint a thing. There’s the art of lines and colors, but there's the art of words that will last just the same."

‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way.’ – William Blake

Full of life and beauty, trees are one of the most enduring and beloved subjects of art and have provided a rich source of inspiration for some of the most important artists of the recent past. From cave art and historical landscape painting to land art and contemporary environmental interventions, artists have used trees to communicate ideas that extend beyond the natural world and reflect on broader issues facing humanity. Indeed, in our advanced moment of climate crisis, the tree has taken on potent significance as a symbol for the natural environment. Trees have also provided the material for a range of artistic practices: wood for sculptures, bark and paper as a support for drawings and paintings.

Showcasing a wide range of works from around the globe and across time, this gift book will explore the tree as seen through the eyes of modern and contemporary artists. It will address the ways twentieth and twenty-first century artists have depicted trees and their cultural significance and explore how these imaginings have reflected changing attitudes towards ecology and environmentalism.