Sarah Symmons | Art Hstorian, Biographer and Novelist

Major biography of The Honourable Mary Graham

Mary Graham A Scottish Beauty and Renowned traveller
In 1780 The Honourable Mary Graham left her native Perthshire and sailed to Lisbon. She
was to remain on the Iberian Peninsular for more than a year, one of numerous British
tubercular tourists seeking the benefits of a warm climate.

Essay on women travellers in Spain forthcoming from Tamesis Books, 2011

MANTILLAS, MAJAS, MURILLO AND MOORS. A FEMININE PERSPECTIVE ON

SPANISH ART FROM ANN FANSHAWE TO GWEN JOHN.

Nigel Glendinning and Hilary Macartney editors: Spanish Art in Britain and Ireland; 1750 - 1920

Goya: A Life in Letters

Goya: A Life in Letters

Pimlico Press 2004

This is the first edition of all Goya's known letters translated into English. His letters are witty, passionate, business like, amusing and occasionally, obscene. In these new translations Goya emerges as immensely likeable and many of his engravings, drawings and paintings, are shown to have emerged from episodes within his private life. As a major European painter of the Romantic period, Goya remains a monumental influence on the art of today partly through his courage and humanity in broaching subjects rarely, if ever, depicted by previous artists. This book of his letters allows the reader to see the private man as well as the public and professional artist who worked for powerful patrons, large institutions and personal friends.

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Art & Ideas: Goya

Art & Ideas: Goya

Cover of the Japanese edition

Phaidon Press 1998

This international best seller has been translated into Greek, French and Japanese. Drawing on little-known facts about Goya's life Sarah Symmons analyses his style, the type of dress worn by the fashionable men and women who sat for his portraits, his interest in the bull fight, in dreams and allegories and in an unusual range of media - fresco, mural, oil on many different surfaces, etching, aquatint, lithograph, miniatures on ivory , chalk, wash and pen drawings. Placing the artist within the historical context of his time she also traces the immense influence of his work throughout Europe and America and considers why present-day artists still find Goya's art a source of inspiration. This book has become a standard biography for students and a useful text for enthusiasts, connoisseurs and researchers.

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Chekago: A Novel of Moscow Life

Chekago: A Novel of Moscow Life

Hodder & Stoughton 1988

Chekago was the reason why Sarah adopted the pseudonym Natalya Lowndes. The novel describes the lives of a group of Russians living in central Moscow during the 1980s. Based on true stories, Chekago became famous as one of the first foreign novels to give an accurate pictures of Soviet domestic life before Perestroika and the second Russian Revolution of 1991.

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Dr. Sarah Symmons

Dr Sarah Symmons, Goya expert and expert on the art of John Flaxman and Honoré Daumier, Reader in Art History & Theory at the University of Essex, UK.

Dr Symmons has won numerous awards for her academic work and was part-author and organiser of two international exhibitions on British Romantic Painting and the art of the sculptor John Flaxman. She has published five art-historical books including 'Art and Ideas - Goya' (1998) from Phaidon Press. Her latest work 'Goya - A Life in Letters' was published in 2004 (Pimlico, Random House). She combines detailed research into Spanish art with broader interests in Romanticism, Neo-classicism and British sculpture and painting before the First World War.

A biography of the Honourable Mary Graham is in preperation.

Fiction

In 1988 Dr. Symmons' first novel, Chekago, published under the pseudonym Natalya Lowndes entered the Bristish best-seller lists and received much critical acclaim. Two further novels, Angel in the Sun and Snow Red and a range of short fiction have followed.