Michaelina Wautier is one of the most compelling rediscoveries in Baroque painting. Working in 17th-century Brussels, she tackled subjects usually reserved for men, producing still lifes, portraits an

Francesca Tancini Walter Crane Books in colour 856pp (two volumes). Yale University Press. £250 (US $325). “Nothing is dearer to the heart of a commercial age than a label”, Walter Crane declared towa

Train Landscape , 1940, watercolour on paper, 17¼in ...

Best books… Roy Foster The emeritus professor of ...

The sale of a Fabergé imperial egg and a 15th-century triptych made headlines last year, but one of the most powerful pieces was a painting by Richard Parkes Bonington showing what he could have become, had he not died so young

When a young Russian singer suggested to Tchaikovsky in 1877 that he compose an opera based on Eugene Onegin, Alexander Pushkin’s famous novel-in-verse, he dismissed it as a “crazy” idea. “Then, durin