Books by Emile Michel

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) has long been considered one of the greatest artists in European history. His paintings have launched a thousand imitations and homages, including best-selling novels, a recent TV series, and even a handful of popular films. Now, for the first time,... this lovely text by emile Michel is paired with carefully curated selections from Rembrandt's portfolio to illuminate the history and work of this celebrated master of light.
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Longtemps considere comme la simple toile de fond d'une oeuvre, le paysage a depasse la peinture religieuse et la peinture d'histoire pour devenir un genre a part entiere. Si, pour les artistes, la nature a longtemps servi d'exercice et de decors aux sujets, elle a finalement ete... etudiee et integree dans leurs oeuvres comme un temoignage de l'etude eclairee et scientifique du monde. Qu'il soit classique, romantique, impressionniste, post-impressionniste ou postmoderne, ce genre pictural ne cesse d'attirer les artistes qui y trouvent une source intarissable d'inspiration. Giorgione, les Bruegel, Le Lorrain, Poussin, Turner ou encore Constable, pour ne citer que les plus grands, sont autant de peintres paysagistes qui laisserent une trace indelebile dans l'histoire de l'art. A travers cette etude, Emile Michel nous offre un panorama exceptionnel, du XVe siecle a nos jours, sur l'art et la maniere de peindre le monde dans toute sa splendeur.
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Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial or tragic incidents of his unfortunate life; his penchant for ostentatious living ...forced him to declare bankruptcy. His misfortunes are not entirely explicable, and his oeuvre reflects disturbing notions and contradictory impulses emerging from the depths of his being, like the light and shade of his pictures. In spite of this, nothing perhaps in the history of art gives a more profound impression of unity than his paintings, composed though they are of such different elements, full of complex significations. One feels as if his intellect, that genial, great, free mind, bold and ignorant of all servitude and which led him to the loftiest meditations and the most sublime reveries, derived from the same source as his emotions. From this comes the tragic element he imprinted on everything he painted, irrespective of subject; there was inequality in his work as well as the sublime, which may be seen as the inevitable consequence of such a tumultuous existence. It seems as though this singular, strange, attractive and almost enigmatic personality was slow in developing, or at least in attaining its complete expansion. Rembrandt showed talent and an original vision of the world early, as evidenced in his youthful etchings and his first self-portraits of about 1630. In painting, however, he did not immediately find the method he needed to express the still incomprehensible things he had to say, that audacious, broad and personal method which we admire in the masterpieces of his maturity and old age. In spite of its subtlety, it was adjudged brutal in his day and certainly contributed to alienate his public. From the time of his beginnings and of his successes, however, lighting played a major part in his conception of painting and he made it the principal instrument of his in
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Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) has long been considered one of the greatest artists in European history. His paintings have launched imitations and homages, including best-selling novels, a recent TV series, and even a handful of popular films. Now, for the first time, this lovel...y text by Emile Michel is paired with carefully curated selections from Rembrandt's portfolio to illuminate the history and work of this celebrated master of light.
Read more

Longtemps considere comme la simple toile de fond d'une oeuvre, le paysage a depasse la peinture religieuse et la peinture d'histoire pour devenir un genre a part entiere. Si, pour les artistes, la nature a longtemps servi d'exercice et de decors aux sujets, elle a finalement ete... etudiee et integree dans leurs oeuvres comme un temoignage de l'etude eclairee et scientifique du monde. Qu'il soit classique, romantique, impressionniste, post-impressionniste ou postmoderne, ce genre pictural ne cesse d'attirer les artistes qui y trouvent une source intarissable d'inspiration. Giorgione, les Bruegel, Le Lorrain, Poussin, Turner ou encore Constable, pour ne citer que les plus grands, sont autant de peintres paysagistes qui laisserent une trace indelebile dans l'histoire de l'art. A travers cette etude, Emile Michel nous offre un panorama exceptionnel, du XVe siecle a nos jours, sur l'art et la maniere de peindre le monde dans toute sa splendeur.
Read more