In Bright Stars, Kate Bryan examines the lives and legacies of 30 great artists who died too young, celebrating their inspiring stories and extraordinary talent.

Some of the world's greatest and best-loved artists died before the age of forty. But how did they manage to turn relatively short careers into such long legacies? What drove them to create, against all odds? And how can we use these stories to re-evaluate artists lost in the shadows or whose legacies have yet to be secured?

Most artists have decades to hone their craft, win over critics and forge their reputation, but that is not the case for the artists in this book. Art heavyweights such as Vincent van Gogh and Jean-Michel Basquiat have been mythologised, with their early deaths playing a key role in their posthumous fame. Others, like Aubrey Beardsley and Noah Davis, were driven to create, knowing that their time was limited.

For some, premature death, compounded by gender and racial injustice, meant being excluded from the history books, as was the case with Amrita Sher-Gil, Charlotte Salomon and Pauline Boty, now championed by Kate Bryan in this important revaluation. And, as the stories of Caravaggio and Vermeer show us, it can take centuries for forgotten artists to receive the recognition they truly deserve.

Publisher: Phaidon