Rodin and the Art of Ancient Greece (British Museum) - Thames & Hudson

Rodin, known for The Thinker and The Kiss, drew energy and inspiration from classical ancient art, as well as absorbing and assimilating models of ancient Greek and Roman art in an innovative way. Especially the Parthenon sculptures served as an excellent source of inspiration. He first encountered them in books, plaster casts at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and some originals at the Louvre, then was drawn to see them firsthand during several visits to the British Museum. He collected a collection of antiquities, including many fragments of marble sculpture, which he considered complete objects in their own right. In his work, he presented the idea of a headless, limbless torso as a work of art, which significantly influenced his contemporaries.

Rodin and the art of ancient Greece combine all these elements for the first time. It tells the story of the reception of Parthenon sculptures in the modern era, as well as Rodin’s lifelong engagement with them. The presented works, encompassing a wide range of Rodin’s sculptures and drawings along with selected sculptures from the Parthenon and his own collection, are thematically explored, shedding new light on the life and art of one of the greatest and most radical sculptors of the modern age.

The Thames & Hudson publishing house 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 a broad audience, as well as to leading scholars’ research. 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. It is also expanding its list of children’s books. 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 book ideas are developed, commissioned, produced, and sold to publishers operating in different markets and languages to create large editions and thus 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 Thames & Hudson’s first list in 1950, *English Cathedrals*, with photographs by Martin Hürlimann, was the first and achieved the greatest success. The strong conviction {brand|company} from the very beginning regarding the durability of books remained in print until 1971. In the first year of publication, Albert Einstein’s *Out of My Later Years* also appeared, an early indicator of the program’s breadth. As the list gradually and successfully 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 and 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 in the country.”

Other important 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 archaeological interest, both in book form and television. Over 34 titles were 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 wrote 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 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 along 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*, 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 a remarkable 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.

Thus, the world of art and scholarship remains at the heart of Thames & Hudson’s publishing program, which remains 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 fascinating and extraordinary titles. Many of these are elite collectible editions.

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