33cm x 26cm x 3cm (13" x 10.25" x 1.2") Abrams The Library of Great Painters, 1970(?), 160 pages

The book opens with and account of the artists life and work, and then looks at individual works by Gauguin. Each work is discussed individually with up to a page of text. Following the text is a chronology, and the book concludes with a bibliography, there is no index

52 black and white pictures show paintings, woodcuts, monotypes, drawings and more illustrating the the text section. Following that is the Colour Section with first 15 watercolours and woodcuts printed in colour directly on the page, each captioned. The section Oil Paintings in Colour follows with 47 (plus one more opposite the frontispiece) full colour images tipped-in, facing each image is the page of descripitive text.

This is a substantial volume, more due to the thickness of the stock it is printed on than the total number of pages. It is well produced but reflects some of the problems or its time (1970); the black and white images suffer from having very dark areas lacking any details, and while the colour images printed directly on the page fair somewhat better and have a good intensity of colour they are a little flat. The tipped-in colour plates are good, crisp and having good colour. All the images are shown to a good size including those in the text, the plates are generally as large as the page allowing for margins will permit.

With 48 tipped-in plates, if buying this now it is worth checking to ensure they are all there. ( )