Poem by Edward Lear, paintings by Erica Rutherford

The owl and pussycat have gone to sea often in the past 100 years, but never in a boat so green, on a sea so blue, into horizons and lands so glowing with color. Artist Erica Rutherford has created beautiful, silk-screened images of Edward Lear’s much loved fantasy poem of two unlikely companions and a spare little boat. First published 150 years ago, “The Owl and the Pussycat” is impossible, nonsensical, whimsical, and it is in those very elements that its appeal lies. 

Hardcover | 24 pages 
26 x 21 cm (10.2 x 8.3 in.) 
Publication Date: 1986

Katy Hessel

How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?

Discover the glittering paintings by Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century United States and the artist who really invented the “readymade.” Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of postwar artists in Latin America, and the women defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many art forms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it’s never been told before. 

Hardcover | 512 pages 
16.5 x 24.4 cm (6.5 x 9.6 in.) 
Publication Date: 2023

Marc Mayer, Robert Storr 

This exhibition catalogue accompanies the first major retrospective of Thomas Nozkowski's works, organized by the National Gallery of Canada. The book includes stunning reproductions of over 60 paintings along with essays by Marc Mayer - curator of the exhibition and Director of the Gallery - and Robert Storr - Dean of the Yale School of Art. The texts provide new insight into the work of this contemporary artist, whose unrivalled originality has ensured the survival of abstraction, keeping it fresh and relevant for the twenty-first century. 

Hardcover | 171 pages 
30 x 29 cm (11.8 x 11.4 in.) 
Publication Date: 2009

Leslie Boyd

The first monograph on Cape Dorset artist Tim Pitsiulak (1967–2016), this richly illustrated book presents more than seventy reproductions and photographs, and includes personal annotations by the artist, along with an essay by Leslie Boyd, former director of Dorset Fine Arts, Toronto. 

Hardcover | 84 pages
23.6 x 1.5 x 20.8 cm (9.3 x 0.6 x 8.2 in.) 
Publication Date: 2018

Charles C. Hill, Dennis Reid

A fresh and imaginative reinterpretation of the work, life and, perhaps most intriguingly, times of the iconic Canadian artist Tom Thomson, this book is written by eight experts whose different perspectives contribute to a new understanding of Thomson's work.

Hardcover | 386 pages
Publication Date: 2002
Available in French only

David Silcox

A forerunner of the Group of Seven, Tom Thomson's compelling works ignited a powerful national art movement that shaped the way Canadians viewed their land. This illustrated introduction to his work covers: Thomson's childhood and early years; his career as a commercial artist; the influence of Lawren Harris and J.E.H.MacDonald; his fame as an artist; his discovery of Algonquin Park; and the mystery surrounding his death.

Paperback | 64 pages 
22.8 x 22.8 cm (9 x 9 in.) 
Publication Date: 2002

Sarah Hull

What is art? Why do we talk about narrative art? Where do artists draw their inspiration from? Throughout this fascinating book, young readers will discover surprising concepts, a profusion of colours and works by famous artists. Published in collaboration with the National Gallery of London.

Hardcover | 96 pages
26 x 20.5 cm (10.24 x 8.07 in.)
Only available in French

Catherine Crowston, Josée Drouin-Brisebois, Jonathan Shaughnessy 

With a focus on six Canadian contemporary artists who emphasize material excess, ornamentation and theatricality in their production, Trompé par la nature features spectacular installations that explore hybridity, natural processes and the viewer’s experience.  The catalogue accompanies an exhibition by the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Alberta, and Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art.

Paper | 72 pages
7.5 x 26 cm (3 x 10 in.) 
Publication Date: 2012

Amy Novesky 

A beautifully nuanced and poetic story, Une berceuse en chiffons captures the life of Louise Bourgeois, a world-renowned artist, and tells the story of a relationship between a mother and daughter, the birth of an artist, and how memory is stitched into us all. 

Hardcover | 40 pages
28.5 x 23.5 cm (11 x 9 in.) 
Publication date: 2016

Sarah Milroy

Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment offers commentary on a generation of extraordinary women painters, photographers, sculptors, architects and filmmakers from a century ago — pioneers who opened new frontiers for women artists in Canada — as well as works made by their Indigenous female contemporaries working in traditional media, for a cross-country snapshot of female creativity in this dynamic modern moment.

Hardcover | 320 pages
Publication Date: 2021

Lori Pauli

Recognized as one of Canada's most eloquent interpreters of landscape, Geoffrey James has been making photographs since the early 1970s. His first photographs, images of gardens, express classical notions of beauty as they reveal the geometry and underlying structures of the formal garden. These small panoramic photographs evoke a quiet passion for the great landscape schemes and natural sanctuaries of the past. In his most recent work, James pays particular attention to the way in which nature and culture intersect. While not concerned with "Romantic" notions of "the ruin," his photographs do suggest a fall from grace.

Hardcover | 176 pages
Publication Date: 2008

Lori Pauli

Recognized as one of Canada's most eloquent interpreters of landscape, Geoffrey James has been making photographs since the early 1970s. His first photographs, images of gardens, express classical notions of beauty as they reveal the geometry and underlying structures of the formal garden. These small panoramic photographs evoke a quiet passion for the great landscape schemes and natural sanctuaries of the past. In his most recent work, James pays particular attention to the way in which nature and culture intersect. While not concerned with "Romantic" notions of "the ruin," his photographs do suggest a fall from grace.

Hardcover | 176 pages
Publication Date: 2008

Cornelia Homburg, Anabelle Kienle
Joseph J. Rishel, Jennifer A. Thompson

Vincent van Gogh’s profound love of nature has often been taken for granted but has rarely been studied in detail. While he has long been admired for his dazzling use of intense colour and expressive brushwork, it is his innovative representation of nature that makes him a truly modern artist and is the focus of Van Gogh: Up Close. This exhibition, which has been organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, concentrates on Van Gogh’s French period, from 1886 to 1890, and highlights how he conveyed his intense response to the natural world – whether this was a landscape, a still life, or the rendering of a single blade of grass – through a number of different, and often radical compositional strategies.

Softcover | 290 pages
Publication Date: 2012

Cornelia Homburg, Anabelle Kienle
Joseph J. Rishel, Jennifer A. Thompson

Vincent van Gogh’s profound love of nature has often been taken for granted but has rarely been studied in detail. While he has long been admired for his dazzling use of intense colour and expressive brushwork, it is his innovative representation of nature that makes him a truly modern artist and is the focus of Van Gogh: Up Close. This exhibition, which has been organized by the National Gallery of Canada and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, concentrates on Van Gogh’s French period, from 1886 to 1890, and highlights how he conveyed his intense response to the natural world – whether this was a landscape, a still life, or the rendering of a single blade of grass – through a number of different, and often radical compositional strategies.

Softcover | 290 pages
Publication Date: 2012

Robin Laurence, Mary Reid & Josée Drouin-Brisebois

For over three decades, Wanda Koop has created an overwhelming body of work. Published in conjunction with the exhibition Wanda Koop: On the Edge of Experience, organized by the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada, this beautifully illustrated catalogue presents a selection of paintings, as well as a number of video works.

Paper | 164 pages
Publication Date: 2011

Diana Nemiroff

From obstacles of bureaucracy to veiled challenges to women in powerful positions, Women at the Helm paints a rich picture of what it takes to lead a major art institution. In her latest book, author and art historian Diana Nemiroff explores a transformative thirty-year period in the history of the National Gallery of Canada through the careers of its first three women directors (Jean Sutherland Boggs, Hsio-yen Shih, and Shirley L. Thomson), detailing each of their unique triumphs and tribulations.

Paperback | 552 pages
85 photos, colour insert
19 x 24 cm (7.5 x 9.5 in)

Lynne Cooke

This transformative exhibition explores how abstract art and woven textiles have intertwined over the past hundred years.

In the 20th century, textiles were often considered lesser – as applied art, women’s work, or domestic craft. Woven Histories challenges the hierarchies that have separated textiles from fine arts. Putting into dialogue some 130 works by more than 45 creators from across generations and continents, the exhibition explores the contributions weaving and related techniques have made to abstraction, modernism’s pre-eminent art form.

See a variety of textile techniques including weaving, knitting, netting, knotting and felting. Learn about the wide-ranging reasons artists from Anni Albers to Rosemarie Trockel and Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee Nation) have engaged with this art form. Some seek to effect social change; others address political issues. Engaging with textiles as subject, material and technique, still others revitalize abstraction’s formal conventions or critique its patriarchal history and gendered identity.

Follow this hidden thread of art history to discover the work of creators who were once marginalized for their gender, race or class.

Hardcover
24 x 28 cm (9.5 x 11 in.)
Publication date: 2024

The exhibition is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in collaboration with the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York.