Catalogues and Collection GuidesTitles listed below represent a selection of the Walters Art Museums publications from the last thirty years, including collection catalogues, guides to the collections, and exhibition catalogues. Please contact the Museum Store for information on prices and availability.
The Collections and Their History
The Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore Buy it Long heralded as one of the finest privately assembled museums in the United States, the Walters Art Museum (formerly the Walters Art Gallery) houses the extraordinary collections of art acquired by William T. Walters of Baltimore and his son, Henry, between the 1850s and 1920s. The combined interests of father and son were culturally wide-ranging, and their discerning tastes resulted in the acquisition of works of the highest aesthetic appeal and quality. When Henry Walters died in 1931, he left the city of Baltimore over 20,000 works representing virtually the full history of world civilization from 3500 BC through the early twentieth century. The 170 works of art featured here represent a sample of the museum’s rich holdings. The Walters Art Gallery and Scala Publishers William and Henry Walters, The Reticent Collectors Buy it William R. Johnston In the mid-19th century, Baltimore businessman William T. Walters began to patronize the artists of Maryland. Today, the museum that bears his name – the Walters Art Museum – excels in fields as diverse as Egyptian bronzes, Byzantine silver, illuminated manuscripts, medieval carved ivories, early Renaissance paintings, Sèvres porcelain, Islamic metalwork, and Japanese ceramics. With this book, William R. Johnston, senior curator of 18th- and 19th-century art at the Walters, restores William Walters and his son, Henry, to their rightful place among America’s great art collectors. Drawing upon the knowledge of the early museum staff and gathering valuable information from the few other available sources, Johnston has painstakingly re-created the collectors’ life and world. The Johns Hopkins University Press, in association with the Walters Art Gallery Bedazzled: 5,000 Years of Jewelry Buy it Sabine Albersmeier This exquisitely illustrated book presents a selection of jewelry dating from the 2nd millennium BC to the turn of the 20th century from the Walters Art Museum’s outstanding collection. Fifty key items of jewelry are presented, each illustrated in color, showing an enormous range of artistic and stylistic development. The Walters Art Museum and D. Giles Limited, London
The Medieval World
Sacred Arts and City Life: Edited by Yevgenia Petrova, with essays by Edward L. Keenan, Valentin Yanin and Elena Rybina, Simon Franklin, Tatyana Rozhdestvenskaya, Valentin A. Bulkin, Nadezhda Pivovarova, George P. Majestka, Engelina S. Smirnova, and Olga Klyukanova and Svetlana Novakovskaya-Bukhman; volume editor: C. Griffith Mann This catalogue, accompanying a 2005/2006 exhibition at the Walters drawn from the collections of the State Russian Museum, Saint Petersburg, and the Novgorod State Museum, features nearly 300 objects, including 35 icons, that trace the material and artistic culture of the city of Novgorod from the 9th century through its apogee in the 14th, to its eclipse by Moscow in the 16th century. The material culture of this remarkable city is represented by items such as carved wood and bone objects, leather goods, jewelry, musical instruments, and birch bark documents; precious ecclesiastical objects – icons, metalwork, and textiles – from the city’s numerous churches and monasteries highlight the cultural achievements of Novgorod’s Golden Age. The Walters Art Museum / Palace Editions, Saint Petersburg A Lost Art Rediscovered: The Architectural Ceramics of Byzantium Buy it Sharon E.J. Gerstel and Julie A. Lauffenburger, with contributions by Jeffrey Anderson, Anne Bouquillon, Anthony Cutler, Elizabeth Ettinghausen, Cyril Mango, William Tronzo, and Christine Vogt During the 10th and 11th centuries, luxurious Byzantine buildings were enriched by colorful tiles decorated with an impressive range of figural and ornamental designs. Despite their widespread use, traces of this important decorative medium have for the most part disappeared. A Lost Art Rediscovered includes a fully illustrated catalogue of all known tiles produced in the region of Constantinople, including the substantial collection owned by the Walters Art Museum, as well as those belonging to museums and private collections throughout the world. Some tiles included in the collection are now lost; the discovery of others is reported here for the first time. A series of scholarly essays give the ceramics their rightful place in the study of Byzantine art and treats aspects of patronage, manufacture, function, ornament, and cultural significance. The Walters Art Museum and Penn State University Press Ethiopian Art: The Walters Art Museum Buy it Essays by Kelly M. Holbert, Getatchew Haile, and Jacques Mercier; catalogue and catalogue essays by C. Griffith Mann Historically, Ethiopia was a Christian kingdom with strong ties in both trade and religion to the cultures located around the Mediterranean. Ethiopia's Christian tradition dates back to the 4th century, when the king of the Aksumite kingdom converted to Christianity; by the 15th century, this African nation had developed a tradition of icon painting that rivaled that of the Orthodox empires of Byzantium and Russia as well as the famed panel paintings of Renaissance Italy. The collection of Ethiopian Art at the Walters Art Museum, exhibited with those of Byzantium and Russia in a permanent gallery devoted to the art of the Orthodox world, is now the largest outside of Ethiopia itself. This book celebrates Ethiopian art and reveals a vibrant world of color, ritual, and spirituality. The Walters Art Museum / Third Millennium Publishing Renaissance and Baroque Art
Italian Paintings: The Walters Art Museum Buy it Morten Hansen and Joaneath Spicer, with contributions by Martina Bagnoli, Kim E. Butler, Cathleen A. Fleck, Maia Gahtan, Eik Kahng, C. Griffith Mann, Shilpa Prasad, Tanya Tiffany, and Jane Van Deuren The volume presents fifty highlights from one of the great collections of Italian art in North America, including major works from the 12th through the 18th century. Introductions to each chronological section situate individual works of art within the artistic and stylistic developments of the period. A bibliography provides both standard reference sources and a selection of the most important recent books and articles on each work and artist featured in the book. The Walters Art Museum, in association with D. Giles Limited, London 18th- and 19th-Century Art
The Essence of Line: French Drawings from Ingres to Degas Buy it Jay M. Fisher, William R. Johnston, Kimberly Schenck, and Cheryl K. Snay Accompanying a landmark exhibition jointly sponsored by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum, The Essence of Line features 100 drawings and watercolors by some of the most influential French artists of the 19th century, including Eugène Delacroix, Honoré Daumier, Paul Cézanne, and Edgar Degas. From revealing preparatory sketches to beautiful finished watercolors, these works illuminate the range of French art over the course of a century of innovation.
The Walters Art Museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Penn State University Press. The Fabergé Menagerie Buy it William R. Johnston, Marilyn Pfeifer Swezey, and Marianna B. Chistyakova This exquisite exhibition catalogue brings together over a hundred of Carl Fabergé’s most beautiful creations, combining hardstones and other precious materials. The volume presents the history of the renowned jewelers work using the rich mineral resources of Russia, from celebrated imperial Easter eggs to delicate animal sculptures. These detailed masterpieces, many rarely exhibited, have been gathered from museums and private collections throughout the world. The intricacy of these minute pieces has a universal appeal that has charmed both Fabergé’s elite clientele and the public for over a century The Walters Art Museum / Philip Wilson Publishers Nineteenth-Century Art: From Romanticism to Art Nouveau Buy it William R. Johnston William T. Walters and his son, Henry, were unusual collectors in their extensive purchase of the art of their own time, as well as works from many key artistic periods. The result today is a collection that reflects the interests of its founders and provides a unique opportunity to trace the development of 19th-century art within a historical context. This book presents the highlights of the Walters collection, including a series of paintings by the foremost masters of the Romantic era, J-A.-D. Ingres and Eugène Delacroix, landscapes by painters associated with the Barbizon school, Academic painting, and impressionist works by Edouard Manet, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Alfred Sisley, as well as masterpieces of sculpture and decorative arts. The Walters Art Gallery / Scala Publishers Manuscripts
The Book of Kings: William Noel and Daniel Weiss, with contributions by Cathleen Fleck, Stephen Fliegel, Kelly M. Holbert, William Chester Jordan, C. Griffith Mann, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Marianna Shreve Simpson, and Roger S. Wiek. The 13th-century Morgan Picture Bible was designed to bring to life a selection of Old Testament stories by placing biblical heroes in contemporary settings. The first multidisciplinary study of one of the most important surviving illuminated manuscripts, The Book of Kings offers unique insights into the politics, religion, and culture of medieval France. This milestone exhibition catalogue, evoking the color and richness of the original, marks the first time this manuscript has been presented to the public unbound. The Walters Art Museum in association with Third Millennium Publishing Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life Buy it Roger S. Wiek, with essays by L.R. Roos, V. Reinburg, and J. Plummer The Book of Hours was the most popular type of book produced in western Europe from the late 13th to the early 16th century, containing some of the most exquisite examples of medieval and Renaissance book illumination. This study offers a comprehensive analysis of the pictures that appear in Books of Hours, the various texts or prayers they accompany, and the relationship between text and image. The survey focuses on a representative group of over a hundred examples, drawn mostly from the Walters Art Museum, and supplemented with examples from the manuscript collections at Harvard University and Yale University, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Philadelphia Free Library, and the Library of Congress. Published with George Braziller Asian Art
Asian Art in the Walters Art Gallery: A Selection Buy it Hiram D. Woodward Jr. This guide to the collection presents fifty works in a variety of media, ranging from the 12th century BC to the early twentieth century AD and spanning present-day India, Pakistan, Tibet, Thailand, China, and Japan. Illustrated in full color, Asian Art in the Walters Gallery includes a discussion of the remarkable collection's history. The Walters Art Gallery Desire and Devotion: Pratpaditya Pal, with an essay by Hiram W. Woodward Jr. The collection of John and Berthe Ford represents one of the most important private holdings of Indian and Himalayan art in the world. This catalogue brings together works that demonstrate the depth and range of the collection, providing an extraordinary overview of 2,000 years of history and illustrating enduring themes in the art of Southeast Asia with outstanding works. The Walters Art Museum / Philip Wilson Publishers Pearl of the Parrot of India: John Seyller Amir Khusraw Dihlawi (1253-1325) was one of the most famous Mughal poets of the Indian subcontinent and the self-styled "parrot of India". His "pearls" of poetry are sumptuously seen here in his Khamsa (Quintet of Tales) one of the most admired texts in the Islamic world. The writing of the Walters’ Khamsa fell to the most highly esteemed calligrapher of the day: Muhammad Jusayn al-Kashmiri, then at the zenith of his career, and this magnificent copy, made in the 1590s, marks the culmination of the development of the deluxe Mughal manuscript. 2000 [vol. 58 of the Journal of the Walters Art Museum], 176 pp. 31 color pls. The Sacred Sculpture of Thailand: Hiram W. Woodward Jr., with contributions by Terry Drayman-Weisser, Donna K. Strahan, Julie A. Lauffenburger, Chandra L. Reedy, and Richard Newman. The sculpture of Thailand includes some of Asia's most beautiful and significant works, but it is among the least studied and the least understood areas of Asian art. This lavishly illustrated, path-breaking book tells the story of this sculpture over a period of a thousand years (7th-18th century CE), based on studies of the most important and comprehensive collection outside of Thailand, including thermoluminscence, clay core, and petrographic analysis. Comparative illustrations, maps, a chronology, and glossary make this work an indispensable reference. The Walters Art Gallery
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