When purchased directly from us, your copy of Letters of Note: Art can also be signed by the author, personalised, and/or gift-wrapped. See dropdown menu for options. Should you order a personalised copy, the inscription you supply will be handwritten by the book's author, Shaun Usher, near the front of the book.
First published in 2020, Letters of Note: Art is an engrossing collection of the world’s most entertaining, inspiring and powerful letters with art at their heart, from missives on the agony of being overlooked, the ecstasy of producing work that excites, to surprising sources of inspiration and rousing manifestos. On the walls of this book-shaped gallery can be found thirty letters of note, all of which in some way shine a light on various moments in the history of art and illuminate them for your enjoyment. Most, but not all of these letters have been written through the ages by artists themselves—artists who momentarily put down their pencils, their paintbrushes, their chisels, and instead put pen to paper to create the windows into the art world through which you are soon to look.
Like art so often can, some of these letters act as portals to a particular time and place. Just as Constable’s The Hay Wain transports you to the River Stour beneath a cluster of clouds one calm day in the 19th century, so too shall war artist Paul Nash’s bleakly harrowing missive to his wife drop you onto the hellish field of battle during World War I; and just as the broad, expressive brushstrokes of Rembrandt’s Self-Portrait somehow reveal so much about someone you have never met, so too will Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi’s defiant letter to her patron, written at a time when she was not meant to succeed, paint a powerful picture of its determined author.
Includes letters by:
Michelangelo, Salvador Dali, Frida Kahlo, Artemisia Gentileschi, Oscar Howe, Martin Scorsese, Henri Matisse, Mick Jagger, Augusta Savage, Vincent van Gogh, & many more.