Tom Stammers is a historian of France and Reader in Art and Cultural history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. His first book, ‘The Purchase of the Past’ (Cambridge University Press), won the 2021 RHS Gladstone Prize.
The new permanent gallery presents all kinds of exquisite pieces with special family associations
Reuniting objects that belonged to important collectors can be a visual treat, but there are some intellectual traps to be avoided
Over the centuries Notre-Dame de Paris has become much more than a place of worship – it is a symbol of a nation
Fernand Khnopff was among the most original artists of the fin-de-siècle – but his dreamlike images are unmistakably Belgian
In her final book Linda Nochlin makes a case for painting that looks poverty in the eye
A monumental new study argues that 'the patronage of the French Rothschild family is a European history of taste'
Charles Percier may not be a household name, but his Empire style sums up the Napoleonic era – and has had imitators ever since
Was the French Second Empire as morally and artistically bankrupt as its critics made it out to be?
The French artist's obsessive portrayal of antiquity reveals his endless variety
The enduring intellectual influence of Francis Haskell, the 'historian's art historian' who reshaped the whole discipline.
