Friday, October 15, 2010

On The Shelves - "Catalog Raisonné on William Bouguereau"




FINALLY!!! I pre-ordered this book 3-4 years ago, back when it was first announced. Let me start by saying.....it was well worth the wait!! All of the delays this book went through was done to make this the ultimate Bouguereau collection, and let me tell you, this is the ultimate Bougereau collection.


The Catalog Raisonné comes in a 2 volume set and both books are great. One book is about his life and work, which is quite extensive. The second book is a catalog of all his work with photos ranging from 1/4pg to full page and from black and white to color. My concern was that they were going to try and cut corners with printing a lot of black and white photos. This is not the case. The amount of full page color work in these books is great! There are very few pages that have no pictures, and with both books totalling 903 pages, they didn't pull any punches.


Now lets talk $, because if you want to own this book set, you're really going to have to pay for it. I paid $350 for an unsigned copy from the Art Renewal Center. They have a signed(by the people who put the collection together) copy of the book for $450. Now, Amazon has the book listed at $261.34, but has it listed as "Not yet released". So, I'm not sure how sure a thing that price is. I'm a little bumbed that I paid $350 at Art Renewal Center when Amazon is offering it at $90 less, but I'm just happy that I've got the collection.


If you're a fan of Bouguereau's work, this is a must have. ARC really did an amazing job on this!

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