Book Lines of Sight Irish Writers on Art - Thames & Hudson

“Paintings were windows through which I saw fragments of other people's past lives, and through them I recognized something of my own.” This is how Christine Dwyer Hickey reflects on Stanley Royle's “The Goose Girl” in her response in the collection of the new publication, which combines two well-known traditions: art and literature. Over fifty acclaimed Irish novelists, playwrights, and poets selected images from the National Gallery of Ireland as starting points for exploring ideas and telling stories about art, love, loss, family, dreams, memory, places, and privacy. Works and literary reactions to them are incredibly diverse.

“Paintings were windows through which I saw fragments of other people's past lives, and through them I recognized something of my own.” So contemplates Christine Dwyer Hickey in response to Stanley Royle's “The Goose Girl.” Seamus Heaney finds peaceful beauty on a canal path by Gustave Caillebotte; Roddy Doyle gives voice to a man in a crowd painted by Jack B. Yeats; Colm Tóibín considers a portrait to be a reflection of the possibilities of John Butler Yeats; John Banville sheds light on Caravaggio's darkness; Jennifer Johnston recalls colorful meals during Bonnard; Kevin Barry narrates a bittersweet encounter at a fairground, inspired by Ernest Procter's Dancer; Colum McCann visualizes women working in wartime factories through abstract propellers by Mary Swanzy; Paula Meehan poignantly depicts the post-war world inhabited by Irish artist Gerard Dillon. Each writer in *Lines of Vision* creates and vividly connects with other worlds—observed, remembered, and imagined. Their creative reactions to paintings, perceptive and sometimes very personal, encourage viewing art from new perspectives and angles.

The Thames & Hudson brand was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their greatest passion and mission was to create a “museum without walls” and to make the world of art accessible to the general public, as well as to the research of leading scientists. To reflect international perspectives, the company's name combined the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, the other west, suggesting a connection between the Old World and the New.

Today, still an independent, family-owned company, Thames & Hudson is one of the world's leading publishers of illustrated books, with over 2000 titles in print. It publishes high-quality books across all areas of visual creativity: fine arts, applied arts, decorative arts, performing arts, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and music, as well as archaeology, history, and popular culture. The list of children's books is also expanding. Headquartered in London with a sister company in New York and branches in Melbourne, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In Paris, another subsidiary, Interart, distributes English-language books in France.

History of Thames & Hudson

Walter Neurath was born in Vienna in 1903. In 1938, he left his hometown—where he ran an art gallery and published illustrated books—for London. Initially, he worked as a production director at Adprint, a company founded by Viennese émigré Wolfgang Foges. Neurath and Foges developed a pioneering concept of what is now called book packaging (or co-publishing), where ideas for books are developed, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages, to create large editions and reduce unit production costs. Neurath’s concept was the first of many innovations introduced to the publishing world through Thames & Hudson.

Seeking to continue book packaging in a second edition and recognizing the need to amortize the high costs of producing illustrated books, Neurath established his own publishing house with offices in London and New York in the fall of 1949. Eva Neurath, who arrived in London from Berlin in 1939, was a co-founder.

Of the ten titles published on the initial list by Thames & Hudson in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, were the first and achieved the greatest success. The company's strong conviction from the very beginning regarding the longevity of books remained evident, as the title stayed in print until 1971. In the first year of publication, *Beyond My Later Years* by Albert Einstein also appeared, indicating the early scope of the program. As the list gradually expanded—from ten titles in 1950 to 144 in 1955—the company moved its offices to High Holborn and in 1956 relocated to a Georgian townhouse at 30 Bloomsbury Street, near Bedford Square, becoming the epicenter of book publishing in London. The manufacturing remained at this address, eventually expanding to five houses by 1999, when it returned to High Holborn.

In 1958, Thames & Hudson launched one of its most renowned series, *World of Art*, which became the foundation of a highly diverse list. Characterized by pocket-sized editions with black spines, the series expanded in just seven years to include 49 titles. Nearly 60 years later, the series boasts over 300 titles, which, according to Christopher Frayling, are “stained with paint copies” in every art school across the country.

Other significant series that added depth and prestige to the list include *Ancient People and Places*, edited by Glyn Daniel, who from the 1950s contributed to pioneering interest in archaeology, both in book form and television. Over 34 titles have been published in this series over 34 years. The large-format *Great Civilizations* series, published in 1961, featured contributions from esteemed scholars such as Alan Bullock, Asa Briggs, Hugh Trevor-Roper, A. J. P. Taylor, and John Julius Norwich.
After establishing one of the most important publishing houses in Europe in less than two decades, Walter Neurath died in 1967 at the age of 63. Sculptor Henry Moore remarked that “his death was a loss to our cultural life.” Sir Herbert Read noted that Neurath “more than anyone else was responsible for the revolution in art book publishing” and was “one of those rare entrepreneurs who successfully combine business acumen with idealism.” Eva Neurath became chairwoman. Walter’s son, Thomas, who joined the company in 1961 with his sister Constance, became managing director; Constance later served as artistic director for several decades. Both Thomas and Constance remain on the Thames & Hudson board, as do Thomas’s daughters, Johanna and Susanna.

From producing the first commercial edition of *The Book of Kells* to the triumphant publication of the six-volume *Vincent van Gogh - Letters*, and from technical innovations like “French folds” to the controversial documentation of graffiti art in *Subway Art*, Thames & Hudson has always been at the forefront, both culturally and in production techniques.

The year 2016 marked an extraordinary new chapter for the company, announcing publishing partnerships with two of the world’s most important museums: the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The art world and scholarship thus remain at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which stays true to its core principle: providing a “museum without walls.”
Today, Thames & Hudson is a recognizable international brand, a symbol of British publishing. Its extensive catalog includes thousands of incredible book titles, many of which are exclusive collector’s editions.

Manufacturer information