Masterpieces and master collectors : impressionist and early modern paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums / Gosudarstvennyĭ Ėrmitazh (Russia) ; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum ; Guggenheim Hermitage Museum

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Masterpieces and Master Collectors: Impressionist and Early Modern Paintings from the Hermitage and Guggenheim Museums, September 16, 2001-March 17, 2002.

Preface / Mikhail Piotrovsky -- Breaking new ground / Thomas Krens -- Moscow's two great collectors : Shchukin and Morozov / Albert Kostenevich -- The collective collections of the Guggenheim Museums / Lisa Dennison -- Plates -- Artist biographies and catalogue entries.

One summer's day in the late 1960s two young Londoners fell in love with a hill farm in South Wales. They had almost no money, no idea about sheep, and their marriage was uncertain from the start. Their new home was a mile up the wild mountain, one end dug into its damp flank. It was ancient, cold and unbelievably primitive, with a view like a prospect of Africa. On a fair day it was paradise. But it was a working farm, cut off from the world and condemned - they found out, after they'd bought it - as 'unfit for human habitation'. This is the story of a passionate adventure; it is also the biography of a partnership, a portrait of an extraordinary way of life and an account of a bewitching childhood. From memory, conversations and the diaries of his now-separated parents, Horatio Clare reconstructs their relationships with each other and their mountain farm, and tells the story of his astonishing upbringing. At the fore is his mother, a wilful romantic, who chooses to make a life on the mountain single-handedly, and to raise her children there.

English