Peter Lord, considered to be the greatest living scholar on Welsh visual art and culture, surveys the evolution of the visual culture of Wales from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century in this new, single-volume history. Written for everyone with an interest in the art and history of Wales, the volume illustrates some 400 landscapes and portrait paintings, prints and sculptures from artists such as Augustus John, Ceri Richards, Christopher Williams and many more. The author describes both how the work emerged from its Welsh historical context and was related to the art of other cultures. Revealing the many discoveries made since its first publication of the Visual Culture of Wales series in 1998, The Tradition is the only study now in print that encompasses the whole field of Welsh visual art. It is published with the support of the National Museum of Wales, The Paul Mellon Foundation, the National Library of Wales, the Marc Fitch Fund, Swansea University and the Welsh Book Council.
Includes new and expanded material not originally featured within Lord's Visual Culture of Wales series.

Peter Lord took a degree in Fine Art at Reading University in 1970. He was a visiting fellow at the Yale Center for British Art in 1994, and subsequently research fellow at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies from 1996-2003. From 2007-10 he was research fellow at CREW, Swansea University. He has published and broadcast extensively on the visual culture of Wales in both Welsh and English languages, and curated major exhibitions for national institutions. Between 1998 and 2003 he published the three volumes of The Visual Culture of Wales, which is regarded as the authoritative text on the subject. In 2013 an autobiography, Relationships with Pictures was published by Parthian Books. It was followed by The Tradition: a New History of Welsh Art 1400-1990, which in 2017 was Wales Non-fiction Book of the Year, and Looking Out: Welsh Painting, Social Class and International Context, also both published by Parthian. His most recent book is The Art of Music: Branding the Welsh Nation, co-written with Rhian Davies.