What Naruto Art Books Has Kishimoto Published?
The art books are where Naruto's visual history is officially preserved. The first, Uzumaki, appeared in 2004, collecting the early color work: magazine covers, chapter title page illustrations and promotional art from the series' first years, when Kishimoto's color palette and character designs were still settling into their famous forms.
The second, Paint Jump: Art of Naruto, was released on April 4, 2008 as part of Jump's anniversary art book program, presenting the work at a larger scale with the production values of a gallery volume. The third, the Naruto Illustration Book, followed on July 3, 2009, covering the Part II era through the Pain arc period, and it is the volume that most later collections draw from.
Viz brought the line west as Uzumaki Naruto: Illustrations, released November 3, 2015 with a list price of $19.99 at the time, including a double-sided poster and stickers in the package. The English edition arrived the same autumn as the manga's English finale, so it functioned as a farewell retrospective for the English readership as much as an art book.
Why art books outrank the covers
Tankobon covers are commissioned on deadline and tied to their volumes. The art books free the same illustrations from that context: full-bleed reproductions, no logos, no cover copy, printed on better paper. For anyone studying how Kishimoto's rendering of Naruto himself changed between 1999 and 2009, the three books in sequence are the primary source, more reliable than scattered magazine appearances.
The Library's use for them
Original Naruto color pages and covers surface rarely and trade in specialist channels in Japan. The art books are the documented, obtainable record of that art, and the Library photographs them as reference objects: covers, representative spreads and colophons, so that a wrapped Jump magazine or a loose illustration can be identified against the official reproductions.