Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Known for his expressive portraits and London landscapes, draftsman, printmaker, and painter Leon Kossoff (b. 1926) is one of the most significant British artists of the past fifty years. A member of the School of London--a group of loosely representational painters including Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, and Lucian Freud--Kossoff views drawing as fundamental to the artistic process and has turned to art history for inspiration throughout his career.
This handsome book features a selection of drawings and prints made over thirty years after paintings by such artists as Poussin, Rubens, Vel#65533;zquez, Degas, C#65533;zanne, and Goya. Absorbing essays discuss how Kossoff has used this body of drawings to inform his original paintings and analyze how the particular influence of Old Masters has been incorporated into his work.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

There have been about 20 other exhibit catalogs published on the work of Kossoff, starting in the early 1970s. Each of them includes drawings, since drawing is a major part of Kossoff's work. There is very little in this catalog that was not in either the 2004 catalog from the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art; the 2002 catalog from Pillsbury and Peters Fine Art, Dallas; the 2001 catalog from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; or the 2000 catalogs from the Los Angeles County Museum, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art. This one is organized around the essays "Drawing from Spain" (Velasquez and Goya), "Drawing from Poussin," and a chapter titled "From Paintings" that includes drawings inspired by paintings of Titian, Veronese, Poussin, Rembrandt, Goya, Constable, and Degas. Chapters are written by Wiggins (National Gallery, London), Wilson-Bareau (writer), and Conisbee (curator, National Gallery, Washington, DC). Notes and references are brief, followed by a one-page biography of Kossoff and a one-page bibliography. The writing is good, but the brief research appendixes, though helpful, provide little that would argue in favor of adding this to a collection that already has recent material on Kossoff. Summing Up: Optional. General readers; lower-division undergraduates through faculty. C. Stroh Western Michigan University

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Colin Wiggins , deputy head of education at the National Gallery, London, has contributed to many books, including John Virtue: London Paintings , Ron Mueck , and Kitaj: In the Aura of C#65533;zanne and Other Masters , all published by Yale. Philip Conisbee , senior curator of European paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, is author of C#65533;zanne in Provence (Yale), among other titles. Juliet Wilson-Bareau is an independent art historian and writer who has published widely on Spanish painting, Manet, and Goya.