Enfilade

From Harvard UP:

Zara Anishanslin, The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists Who Championed the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2025), 400 pages, ISBN 978-0674290235, $33.

Told through the lives of three remarkable artists devoted to the pursuit of liberty, an illuminating new history of the ideals that fired the American Revolution.

The war that we now call the American Revolution was not only fought in the colonies with muskets and bayonets. On both sides of the Atlantic, artists armed with paint, canvas, and wax played an integral role in forging revolutionary ideals. Zara Anishanslin charts the intertwined lives of three such figures who dared to defy the British monarchy: Robert Edge Pine, Prince Demah, and Patience Wright. From London to Boston, from Jamaica to Paris, from Bath to Philadelphia, these largely forgotten patriots boldly risked their reputations and their lives to declare independence.

Mostly excluded from formal political or military power, these artists and their circles fired salvos against the king on the walls of the Royal Academy as well as on the battlefields of North America. They used their talents to inspire rebellion, define American patriotism, and fashion a new political culture, often alongside more familiar revolutionary figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Phillis Wheatley. Pine, an award-winning British artist rumored to be of African descent, infused massive history paintings with politics and eventually emigrated to the young United States. Demah, the first identifiable enslaved portrait painter in America, was Pine’s pupil in London before self-emancipating and enlisting to fight for the Patriot cause. And Wright, a Long Island–born wax sculptor who became a sensation in London, loudly advocated for revolution while acting as an informal patriot spy.

Illuminating a transatlantic and cosmopolitan world of revolutionary fervor, The Painter’s Fire reveals an extraordinary cohort whose experiences testify to both the promise and the limits of liberty in the founding era.

Zara Anishanslin is Associate Professor of History and Art History at the University of Delaware. She is the author of the award-winning Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World and has served as a historical consultant for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as Hamilton: The Exhibition.

Published last year by Yale UP, with a paperback edition due in September:

Paul Knox, London: A History of 300 Years in 25 Buildings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024), 448 pages, ISBN: 978-0300269208, $35.

A lively new history of London told through twenty-five buildings, from iconic Georgian townhouses to the Shard

A walk along any London street takes you past a wealth of seemingly ordinary buildings: an Edwardian church, modernist postwar council housing, stuccoed Italianate terraces, a Bauhaus-inspired library. But these buildings are not just functional. They are evidence of London’s rich and diverse history and have shaped people’s experiences, identities, and relationships. Paul L. Knox traces the history of London from the Georgian era to the present day through twenty-five surviving buildings. He explores where people lived and worked, from grand Regency squares to Victorian workshops, and highlights the impact of migration, gentrification, and inequality. We see famous buildings, like Harrods and Abbey Road Studios, and everyday places like Rochelle Street School and Thamesmead. Each historical period has introduced new buildings, and old ones have been repurposed. As Knox shows, it is the living history of these buildings that makes up the vibrant, but exceptionally unequal, city of today.

Paul Knox is an expert in the social and architectural history of London. Originally from the UK, he is now University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. He is the author of Metroburbia: The Anatomy of Greater London; London: Architecture, Building, and Social Change; and Cities and Design.

Coming September from ACC Art Books:

Andrew Jones, with photographs by Laura Hodgson, The London Club: Architecture, Interiors, Art (New York: ACC Art Books, 2025), 288 pages, ISBN: 978-1788843294, $75.

A stunning exploration of London’s most beautiful, interesting, and unusual members’ club architecture and interiors

London has more private members’ clubs than any other city, with new locations opening every year. The UK capital has exclusive clubs for everyone from plutocrats and bishops to jockeys and spies. Written by Andrew Jones, travel writer for the Financial Times and author of The Buildings of Green Park, this large-format picture book is richly illustrated with newly commissioned photographs by Laura Hodgson, covering 300 years of the capital’s architecture and interior design. The London Club: Architecture, Interiors, Art offers a fascinating take on the structures and decorations inside some of the most niche spots in London, giving readers a one-off glimpse into the hidden corners of the city’s social infrastructure.

Andrew Jones has lived in the heart of London clubland, on the border of Mayfair and St James’s, for almost 20 years. He is the author of The Buildings of Green Park, a tour of certain buildings, monuments and other structures in Mayfair and St. James’s, and a contributor to Seeing Things: The Small Wonders of the World according to Writers, Artists, and Others. He writes about cities for the Financial Times, and has also written on architecture for Blueprint, Drawing Matter, and The London Gardener, as well as pieces on London for The World of Interiors and the Londonist.

Coming this fall, from Rizzoli:

Christopher Ridgway, with photographs by Mattia Aquila and Nicholas Howard, Castle Howard: A Grand Tour of England’s Finest Country (Paris: Flammarion, 2025), 364 pages, ISBN: 978-2080445865, £100 / $130.

An exclusive tour of a famous English historic house—featured in period dramas including Bridgerton and Brideshead Revisited—set on acres of beautiful parkland and gardens.

The iconic architectural marvel Castle Howard is the epitome of English baroque magnificence. Nestled in the rolling hills of North Yorkshire, this grand estate was commissioned by Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, and masterfully crafted by Sir John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor in the early eighteenth century. The residence’s facades reveal Vanbrugh’s signature flair for the dramatic, while inside, extravagant frescoes, intricately carved stonework, and antique furnishings tell the captivating story of centuries of aristocratic elegance. Recent renovations, undertaken by American designer Remy Renzullo, have rejuvenated the castle’s bedrooms, merging history with contemporary opulence.

The domain’s sprawling parkland features meticulously landscaped gardens, a tranquil lake, a monumental neoclassical mausoleum and pyramids, and the breathtaking Atlas fountain. This comprehensive monograph explores the history of Castle Howard, its architecture, its gardens, and the generations of the Howard family who have lived there for more than three hundred years. Featuring previously unpublished archival documents, as well as photographs of the sumptuous interiors and art collections, this book is a celebration of a British national treasure, whose timeless beauty has captured the imagination of filmmakers for decades.

Christopher Ridgway, curator at Castle Howard since 1984, has lectured extensively on the history of country houses. He coauthored The Irish Country House: A New Vision (yeartk). Mattia Aquila is an interior design and architecture photographer. His photographs have appeared in Venice: A Private Invitation (2022) and Pierre Frey: A Family Legacy of Passion and Creativity (2023). Nicholas Howard manages Castle Howard with his wife, Victoria.

From Bloomsbury Publishing:

Franny Moyle, Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun: The Extraordinary Entwined Lives of Two Eighteenth-Century Painters (London: Apollo, 2025), 496 pages, ISBN: 978-1801107440, $45.

In the late autumn of 1789, two of Europe’s most celebrated painters met in Rome. One, Angelica Kauffman, was a Swiss-born prodigy who had conquered the art scenes of London and Italy. The other, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, a Parisienne portraitist and favourite of the ancien regime, had just fled revolutionary France under threat of violence and scandal. Both were feted in their time, both were trailblazers in a male-dominated world—visionaries who helped define eighteenth-century art and feminism before the term existed.

This dual biography, framed within a thrilling story, restores these two extraordinary but unjustly overlooked figures to their rightful place in history. Set against a backdrop of revolution, empire and Enlightenment, it traces the dramatic lives and remarkable careers of Vigée Le Brun and Kauffman: artists who not only achieved unparalleled success and influence, but did so while pushing the boundaries of what women could be, both on canvas and in society. With vivid storytelling, one of the most gifted living writers of artistic biography, Franny Moyle, reclaims their legacies. She examines how each artist navigated fame, scandal and exile; explores the relationships between them and their peers; and considers how they were caught up in the huge cultural cross-currents that were reshaping Europe.

Through their work and their lives, they spoke boldly to the roles of women in public life, highlighted the prejudices and abuses suffered by their sex, reimagined and celebrated the female subject, and challenged the institutions that sought to contain them. Through them we encounter icons such as Marie Antoinette (whose portrait by Le Brun scandalised French society) and Catherine the Great, as well as cultural figures such as Emma Hamilton and Madame de Staël. The most notable men of their time—monarchs, statesman, aristocrats, artists, and more—are also woven into the fabric of the tale. Mrs Kauffman and Madame Le Brun is a timely, revelatory history that not only brings two forgotten artists into view, but rethinks the story of European art itself.

Franny Moyle is a British television producer and author. Her first book Desperate Romantics was adapted into the BBC drama serial of the same title by screenwriter Peter Bowker. Her second book Constance: The Tragic and Scandalous Life of Mrs Oscar Wilde was published in 2011 to critical acclaim. In 2016 she released The Extraordinary Life and Times of J.M.W Turner.