Hardcover, 60 pages, 240 x 224 mm, 62 colour illustrations, 1982
UK Kestrel Books ISBN 978-0-722-65823-9
USA Scribners Books ISBN 978-1-199-38578-9
Understanding a painting comes out of the meeting of two people’s imaginations: the spectator’s and the artist’s. ‘If you are going to get into a painting and see what it is really about,’ explains Robert Cumming, ‘you will need to know what to look for and be prepared to use your imagination. Becoming involved in this way is what makes great art such a continual excitement – a voyage of discovery.’
Robert Cumming’s second book, is a lively guide to ‘reading’ the intellectual/emotional content of paintings: the use of symbols and the depiction of biblical/mythological events; the appeal to the sense of pattern, texture and colour; the expression of emotion through distortions of colour and shape; indications of social and cultural attitudes.
Translated into six languages, JUST IMAGINE won The Times Senior Information Book Award and the Premio Pier Paolo Vergerio European Prize for Children’s Literature from Padua University.