The dictionary of British artists, 1880-1940 : an Antique Collectors' Club research project listing 41,000 Artists

Antique Collectors Club, 1984 4to (28 cm), IV, 567 pp. Publisher's cloth and dust jacket. "Over the last two decades or so Victorian painting has enjoyed a return to popularity after nearly half a century of neglect. Now attention is moving forwards towards the largely undocumented and little understood period of British art which covers broadlythe first half of the 20th century. There are many books on particular artists and some on schools and movements, but until the publication of this book there has been no basic work of reference covering the vast mass of artists who painted during the period and whose work is to be found in most British homes. The method of compilation has been to extract a list of artists exhibiting at the forty-nine main exhibition centres, both public and commercial, throughout England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, during the period and to search contemporary sources to provide additional information. This apparently simple exercise has produced a staggering 41,000 artists and, consequently, a wealth of information that has never been published before and, given the escalating cost of publishing, is never likely to be improved upon. When one considers that many of the standard dictionaries covering the world for all times only provide some two to three hundred thousand artists and that this book covers only sixty years in one country, it is unlikely to be challenged as the basic standard work on the subject." (from the publisher's description)