Book of the Year

Hardwick Hall: A Great Old Castle of Romance

David Adshead and David A.H.B. Taylor (eds.)
Yale University Press for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and the National Trust

Twenty scholars explore the 400-year history and collections of this Elizabethan country house, presenting new research on its architecture, furniture, textiles and courtyard gardens.

Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane

James Delbourgo
Allen Lane

This biography of the physician and collector, whose eclectic collections formed the foundation of the British Museum, also explores the links between empire, slavery and the Enlightenment.

Les Rothschild: une dynastie de mécènes en France, 1873–2016

Pauline Prévost-Marcilhacy (ed.)
Somogy éditions d’Art

More than 50 scholars have contributed to this lavishly illustrated three-volume survey of the collections of the French branch of the Rothschild family, and their gifts to public museums.

Clothing Art: The Visual Culture of Fashion, 1600–1914

Aileen Ribeiro
Yale University Press

This series of essays explores Western European fashion as it appears in the visual arts between the 17th and early 20th centuries, and ends by pondering the place of fashion within art history.

Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense

Jenny Uglow
Faber & Faber

Lear’s extensive travels are examined in this illustrated biography, as well as his relationships with patrons, and his nonsense verse. Uglow also places Lear among the writers and artists of his day, including Tennyson and Holman Hunt.

Richard Hollis Designs for the Whitechapel

Christopher Wilson
Hyphen Press

This account of Hollis’s graphic design for the Whitechapel Art Gallery from 1969–85 is both an archival history of the contemporary art institution and an overview of post-war British design.