Nineteenth-century Interiors: An Album of Watercolours [first edition]

In the nineteenth century, proud householders commissioned painters to record their dwellings, much as today's owners might take a photograph. These charming watercolors portrayed with faithful accuracy the shape of rooms, the organization of the furniture, the patterns of carpets, or the drape of window hangings. People of all kinds had their homes immortalized, from humble vicars and artists to the grandest families of Europe.Published to accompany an extraordinary exhibition of watercolor views at The Frick Collection in New York, this handsome volume includes illustrations of more than sixty nineteenth-century interiors: from cottages to palaces, from an emperor's chambers in Portugal to the bedroom of a Russian dacha. They originate from two private collections - one American, the other European - which together provide a unique survey of this highly specialized genre. One group offers an illustrated history of interiors, spanning the heyday of these drawings. The other comes from an album compiled for the princely Wittgenstein family, and commemorates the houses they owned in France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and England.Charlotte Gere, the noted authority on nineteenth-century decoration, provides commentaries which perfectly complement the reproductions. Combining consummate scholarship with a rich background knowledge of the period, she identifies objects, describes fashions in furnishings, quotes from travel diaries and memoirs, and explains the social and family functions of each room.Perhaps no other form of art provides such a vivid picture of how people lived in the nineteenth century. Here is a chance to enjoy the beauty and the fascination of these delightful mementos from a vanished way of life.