Ivan Generalić : Biography
Ivan Generalić (December 21, 1914 – November 27, 1992) was a Croatian naïve art painter. Generalić was born in Hlebine near Koprivnica. In elementary school, painting lessons were his greatest joy and as a child he used to earn money. He mostly drew with pencil on paper bags and some of these sketches were seen by Krsto Hegedušić, at the time (1930) just a student of the art academy, later a professor. Hegedušić was impressed with Generalić's work and organized Generalić's first public art exhibition, held in 1931 in the Zagreb Art pavilion. Positive critiques and contacts at the time led to a new era of not only Croatian, but also world art as well.
After World War II, in 1945 he became a member of ULUH (society of Croatian artists). In 1953 he exhibited in Paris, where he lived and painted for a few months. In 1959 he painted The Deer Wedding - his most valuable work, according to followers of the Croatian naïve art world.
Generalić has a large number of followers, beside his colleagues who form the first generation - Franjo Mraz and Mirko Virius. His second generation followers are Franjo Filipović, Dragan Gaži, Josip Generalić, Ivan Večenaj.
Francesco Albani : Biography
Francesco Albani or Albano (March 17 or August 17, 1578–October 4, 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter of Albanian origin.
Early years in Bologna
Born at 1572 Bologna, his father was a silk merchant who intended to instruct his son in the same trade; but by age twelve, Albani became an apprentice under the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, where he met Guido Reni. Soon he followed Reni to the so-called "Academy" run by the Carracci family: Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico. This studio fostered the careers of many painters of the Bolognese school, including Domenichino, Massari, Viola, Lanfranco, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Pietro Faccini, Remigio Cantagallina, and Reni.
Mature work in Rome
In the year 1600, Albani moved to Rome to work in the fresco decoration of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, being completed by the studio of Annibale Carracci. Rome, under Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592-1605) was exhibiting some degree of administrative stability and renewed artistic patronage. While pope Clement was born from a Florentine family residing in Urbino, his family was allied by marriage to the Emilia-Romagna and the Farnese, since Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma had married Margherita Aldobrandini. Parma, like Bologna, are part of the Region of Emilia-Romagna. Thus it was not surprise that Cardinal Odoarde Farnese, Ranuccio's brother, chose the Carraccis from Bologna for patronage, thereby establishing Bolognese predominance of Roman fresco painting for nearly two decades. Albani became one of Annibale's most prominent apprentices. Using Annibale's designs and assisted by Lanfranco and Sisto Badalocchio, Albani completed frescoes for the San Diego Chapel in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli between 1602-1607. In 1606-7, Albani completed the frescoes in the Palazzo Mattei di Giove in Rome. He later completed two other frescoes in the same palace, also on the theme of Life of Joseph. In 1609, he completed the ceiling of a large hall with Fall of Phaeton and Council of the Gods for the Palazzo Giustiniani (now Palazzo Odescalchi) at Bassano (di Sutri) Romano. This work was commissioned by the Marchese Vicenzo Giustiniani, famous for also being patron to Caravaggio. During 1612-14, Albani completed the Choir frescoes at the newly remodeled (by Pietro da Cortona) church of Santa Maria della Pace. In 1616 he painted ceiling frescoes of Apollo and the Seasons at Palazzo Verospi in Via del Corso for the cardinal Fabrizio Verospi. In later years, Albani developed a mutual, though respectful, rivalry with the more successful Guido Reni, who was also heavily patronized by the Aldobrandini, and under whom Albani had worked under at the chapel of the Palazzo del Quirinale. Albani's best fresco masterpieces are those on mythological subjects. Among the best of his sacred subjects are a St Sebastian and an Assumption of the Virgin, both in the church of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura in Rome. He was among the Italian painters to devote himself to painting cabinet pictures. His mythological subjects include The Sleeping Venus, Diana in the Bath, Danaë Reclining, Galatea on the Sea, and Europa on the Bull. A rare etching, the Death of Dido, is attributed to him. Carlo Cignani, Andrea Sacchi, Francesco Mola, and Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi were some of his students. On the death of his wife he returned to Bologna, where he married a second time and resided till his death.
Legacy
Albani never acquired the monumentality or tenebrism that was quaking the contemporary world of painters, and in fact, is derided often for his lyric, cherubim-filled sweetness, which often has not yet shaken the mannerist elegance. While Albani's thematic would have appealed to Poussin, he lacked the Frenchman's muscular drama. His style sometimes appears to befit the decorative Rococo more than of his time. Among the pupils of Albani were his brother Giovanni Battista Albani, and others including Giacinto Bellini, Girolamo Bonini, Giacinto Campagna, Antonio Catalani, Carlo Cignani, Giovanni Maria Galli, Filippo Menzani, Andrea Sacchi, Andrea Sghizzi, Giovanni Battista Speranza, Antonio Maria del Sole, Emilio Taruffi, and Francesco Vaccaro[
David Allan : Biography
David Allan (13 February 1744 – 6 August 1796) was a Scottish painter, best known for historical subjects. He was born at Alloa in central Scotland. On leaving Foulis's academy of painting at Glasgow (1762), after seven years' successful study, he obtained the patronage of Lord Cathcart and of Erskine of Mar, on whose estate he had been born. Erskine made it possible for him to travel to Rome (1764), where he remained for several years engaged principally in copying the old masters.
Among the original works which he then painted was the "Origin of Portraiture", now in the National Gallery at Edinburgh--representing a Corinthian maid drawing her lover's shadow--well known through Domenico Cunego's excellent engraving. This won him the gold medal given by the Academy of St Luke in the year 1773 for the best specimen of historical composition.
Returning from Rome in 1777, he lived for a time in London, and occupied himself with portrait-painting. In 1780 he removed to Edinburgh, where, on the death of Alexander Runciman in 1786, he was appointed director and master of the Academy of Arts. There he painted and etched in aquatint a variety of works, those by which he is best known--such as "Scotch Wedding", "Highland Dance", "Repentance Stool" and his "Illustrations of the Gentle Shepherd"--being remarkable for their comic humour. He was sometimes called the "Scottish Hogarth".
His grave can be found at the Old Calton Burial Ground in Edinburgh. The headstone, which features a portrait relief, was paid for and erected by the Royal Scottish Academy.
Christoph Ludwig Agricola : Biography
Christoph Ludwig Agricola (November 5, 1667 - 1719) was a German landscape painter. He was born and died at Regensburg (Ratisbon). He spent a great part of his life in travel, visiting England, the Netherlands and France, and residing for a considerable period at Naples. His numerous landscapes, chiefly cabinet pictures, are remarkable for fidelity to nature, and especially for their skilful representation of varied phases of climate. In composition his style shows the influence of Caspar Poussin, while in light and colour he imitates Claude Lorrain. His pictures are to be found in Dresden, Braunschweig, Vienna, Florence, Naples and many other towns of both Germany and Italy.
Albrecht Altdorfer : Biography
Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 near Regensburg – 12 February 1538 in Regensburg) was a German painter, printmaker and architect of the Renaissance era, the leader of the Danube School in southern Germany, and a near-contemporary of Albrecht Dürer. He is best known as a significant pioneer of landscape in art.
Painting
He most often painted religous scenes, but is mainly famous as the first frequent painter of pure landscape, and also compositions dominated by their landscape. Taking and developing the landscape style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, he shows the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with moss, and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting sun. His Landscape with footbridge (National Gallery, London) of 1518-20 is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil. [1] He also made many fine finished drawings, mostly landscapes, in pen and watercolour. His best religious scenes are intense, sometimes verging on the expressionistic, and often depict moments of intimacy between Christ and his mother, or others. His most famous religious artwork is the The Legend of St. Sebastian and the Passion of Christ that decorated the altar in the St. Florian monastery in Linz, Austria. He often distorts perspective to subtle effect. His donor figures are often painted completely out of scale with the main scene, as in paintings of the previous centuries. He also painted some portraits; overall his painted oeuvre was not large.
Paintings in Munich
His rather atypical Battle of Issus (or of Alexander) of 1529 was commissioned by William IV, Duke of Bavaria as one of a suite by various artists. It is his most famous, and certainly one of his best works. He renounced the office of Major of Regensburg to accept the commission. Few of his other paintings resemble this apocalyptic scene of two huge armies dominated by an extravagant landscape seen from a very high viewpoint, which looks south over the whole Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile and the Red Sea (behind the isthmus to the left) on the other side. However his style here is a development of that of a number of miniatures of battle-scenes he had done much earlier for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in his illuminated manuscript Triumphal Procession in 1512-14. [2] It is thought to be the earliest painting to show the curvature of the Earth from a great height. The Battle is now in the Alte Pinakothek, which has the best collection of Altdorfer's paintings, including also his small St George and the Dragon,(1510) in oil on parchment, where the saint and the dragon are small figures almost submerged in the dense forest that towers over them. A Susanna and the Elders (1526) set outside an Italianate skyscraper of a palace shows his interest in architecture.[3] Another small oil on parchment, Danube Landscape with Castle Wörth (c 1520) is one of the earliest accurate topographical paintings of a particular building in its setting, of a type that was to become a cliché in later centuries.
Printmaking
He was a significant printmaker with numerous engravings and about ninety-three woodcuts. These included some for the Triumphs of Maximilian, where he followed the overall style presumably set by Hans Burgkmair, although he was able to escape somewhat from this in his depictions of the more disorderly baggage-train, still coming through a mountain landscape. However most of his best prints are etchings, many of landscapes; in these he was able most easily to use his drawing style.[5] He was one of the most successful early etchers, and was unusual for his generation of German printmakers in doing no book illustrations. He often combined etching and engraving techniques in a single plate, and produced about 122 intaglio prints altogether.
Public life
He was a member of the ruling town council in Regensburg for many years, as well as the city architect and worked on improving the city walls. He presumably participated in the Council's decision to expel the city's Jewish community in 1519 , as well as making two famous etchings of the synagogue just before it was destroyed after the expulsion, to be replaced with a church, which Altdorfer designed, at least in part.[6] [7] Later he became a Protestant, and helped to steer Regensburg to Lutheranism. Albrecht's brother, Erhard Altdorfer, was also a painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving, and a pupil of Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard : Biography
Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard (September 11, 1743 – June 4, 1809), Danish artist, was born in Copenhagen, the son of Søren Abildgaard, an antiquarian draughtsman of repute, and Anne Margrethe Bastholm.
Training as an artist
He trained under a painting master before coming to the new Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen, studying under Johan Edvard Mandelberg and Johannes Wiedewelt.
He won medallions at the Academy from 1764 to 1767. The large gold medallion from the Academy won in 1767 included a travel stipend, which he waited five years to receive.
He assisted Professor Mandelberg of the Academy as an apprentice ca. 1769, painting decorations for the royal palace at Fredensborg. These paintings are classical, influenced by French classical artists such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Mandelberg had studied in Paris under François Boucher
Student travels
The Wounded Philoctetes (1775)
Although artists of that time typically traveled to Paris for further study, he chose to travel to Rome, where he stayed during the years 1772-1777. He took a side trip to Naples in 1776 with Jens Juel. His ambitions lay in the genre of history painting. While in Rome, he studied Annibale Carracci's frescoes at the Palazzo Farnese and the paintings of Rafael, Titian, and Michaelangelo. In addition he studied various other artistic disciplines (sculpture, architecture, decoration, wall paintings) and developed his knowledge of mythology, antiquities, anatomy, and perspective.
In the company of Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, he began to move away from the classicism he had learned at the Academy. He developed an appreciation for the literature of Shakespeare, Homer, and Ossian, the legendary Gaelic poet. He worked with themes from Greek as well as Norse mythology, which placed him at the forefront of Nordic romanticism.
He left Rome in June 1777 with the hope of becoming professor at the Academy in Copenhagen. He stopped for a stay in Paris, and arrived in Denmark in December of the same year.
Works
Though he won immense fame in his own generation and helped lead the way to the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, his works are scarcely known outside of Denmark.
He was a cold theorist, inspired not by nature but by art. His style was classical, though with a romantic trend. He had a remarkable sense of colour. As a technical painter he attained remarkable success, his tone being very harmonious and even, but the effect, to a foreigner's eye, is rarely interesting.
A portrait of him painted by Jens Juel was made into a medallion by his friend Johan Tobias Sergel. August Vilhelm Saabye sculpted a statue of him in 1868 based on contemporary portraits.
Josef Abel : Biography
Josef Abel (1768 – 4 October 1818) was an Austrian historical painter and etcher.
Abel was born in Aschach an der Donau. He visited the Academy in Vienna, which was at the time directed by Friedrich Heinrich Füger, and was one of his best scholars. Abel developed an interest for the ancient world, reflecting a popular direction in the art of the beginning of the XIX century in Germany and France. During the years 1801–1807, he studied in Italy, then returned to Vienna where he became member of the Academy on 8 February 1815 and remained till his death in 1818.
Among his famous works are paintings and etchings of Klopstock in Elysium, Orestes and Electra, Socrates and Theramenes as well as Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. He also painted the figural part of the Burgtheater under directions of Füger.
Mary Abbott : Biography
Mary Abbott, a descendant of Pres. John Adams and Gen. Robert E. Lee, was born in Boston in 1921, bur grew up in NY and Wash., DC high society. As a young woman, she worked for a while as a photographer’s model, but from a young age she had decided she wanted to be an artist. At age 12 she began to take classes at the Art Students League. In 1942 she married the painter Louis Teague who was in the Air Force. While he served in the military during the war, she studied and painted. As she revealed to Thomas McCormick in a private interview in 2004, “I was reading Proust, Painting ling Utrillo, and absorbing the abstracting of Picasso.” When she rreturned to NY, her friend, sculptor David Hare, introduced her to The Subjects of the Artist– an “anti-school” anyone could join if they left their artistic past behind and just FELT — started by Hare, Rothko, Motherwell and others. Rothko, Motherwell and Barnett Newman became her mentors. She said of them. “They taught us to draw imagination.” Hare also introduced her to peyote, the hallucinogenic experiences of which greatly influenced her use and understanding of color. In the late 1940’s, Abbott began an important affair with William de Kooning, “the love of my life.”By 1950 Abbott had begun to exhibit at important NY galleries. Many of her early successful abstract pieces resulted from trips she took to Haiti. According to McCormick “These canvases are densely packed with undulating rhythmic forms that spoke to the artist of the people and topography of that exotic island.”
Edwin Austin Abbey : Biography
Edwin Austin Abbey (April 1, 1852 – August 1, 1911) was an American artist, illustrator, and painter. He flourished at the beginning of what is now referred to as the "golden age" of illustration, and is best known for his drawings and paintings of Shakespearean and Victorian subjects, as well as for his painting of Edward VII's coronation."[1][2]. His most famous work, The Quest of the Holy Grail, resides in the Boston Public Library. Abbey was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1852. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Christian Schuessele. Abbey began as an illustrator, producing numerous illustrations and sketches for such magazines as Harper's Weekly and Scribner's Magazine. His illustrations began appearing in Harper's Weekly at an early age: before Abbey was twenty years old. Abbey was an illustrator with Harper's Weekly from 1871-1874. He moved to England in 1878 where he was made a full member of the Royal Academy in 1898. In 1902 he was chosen to paint the coronation of King Edward VII. It was the official painting of the occasion and, hence, resides at Buckingham Palace. In 1907 he declined an offer of knighthood in order to retain his U.S. citizenship. Friendly with other expatriate American artists, he summered at Broadway, Worcestershire, England, where he painted and vacationed alongside John Singer Sargent at the home of Francis Davis Millet. He completed murals for the Boston Public Library in the 1890s. The frieze for the Library was titled "The Quest for the Holy Grail." It took Abbey eleven years to complete this series of murals in his England studio. In 1908-1909, Abbey painted a number of murals and other artworks for the rotunda of the new Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. His works in that building include allegorical medallions representing Science, Art, Justice, and Religion in the Capitol Rotunda, large lunette murals underneath the Capitol dome, and a number of works in the House Chamber. Unfortunately, Abbey became ill with cancer in 1911 slowing his work. At the time, he was working on the "Reading of the Declaration of Independence Mural" which was later installed in the House Chamber. Abbey was so ill, that his studio assistant, Ernest Board completed the work with little supervision from Abbey. Later in 1911, Abbey died, leaving his commission for the State Capitol of Pennsylvania unfinished. John Singer Sargent, a friend and neighbor of Abbey, and studio assistant Board completed the "Reading of the Declaration of Independence Mural." Abbey's works were installed in the Rotunda and House Chamber. Two rooms from Abbey's commission were left undone, and the remainder of the commission was given to Violet Oakley. Oakley completed the works from start to finish using her own designs. Abbey was elected to the National Academy of Design and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 1937 Yale University became the home for a sizable collection of Abbey's works, the result of a bequest from Abbey's widow.
Giuseppe Abbati : Biography
Giuseppe Abbati (January 13, 1836 – February 21, 1868) was an Italian artist who belonged to the group known as the Macchiaioli. Abbati was born in Naples and received early training in painting from his brother Vincenzo. He participated in Garibaldi's 1860 campaign, suffering the loss of his right eye at the Battle of Capua. Afterwards he moved to Florence where, at the Caffè Michelangiolo, he met Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, and the rest of the artists who would soon be dubbed the Macchiaioli. While his early paintings were interiors, he quickly became attracted to the practice of painting landscapes en plein air. His activity as a painter was interrupted during 1866 when he enlisted again in the army for the Third Independence War, during which he was captured by the Austrians and held in Croatia. Returning to civilian life at the end of the year, he moved to Castelnuovo della Misericordia and spent the final year of his life painting in the countryside. Abbati died at the age of thirty-two in Florence after his own dog bit him, infecting him with rabies. His paintings are characterized by a bold treatment of light effects. He often painted a luminous landscape scene as seen through the doorway of a darkened interior, as in the View from the Wine Cellar of Diego Martelli (1866). Some of his late landscapes are in the greatly elongated horizontal format often favored by the Macchiaioli.
Riza Abbasi: Biography
Agha Reza Reza-e Abbasi (also Riza Abbasi) (1565 - 1635) was the most renowned Persian miniaturist, painter and calligrapher of the Isfahan School, which flourished during the Safavid period under the patronage of Shah Abbas I.
He is considered to be one of the foremost Persian artists of all time. He received his training in the atelier of his father, Ali Asghar, and was received into the workshop of Shah Abbas I at a young age.
At the age of about 38 he received the honorific title of Abbasi from his patron, but soon left the Shah's employ, apparently seeking greater freedom to associate with simple people. In 1610 he returned to the court and continued in the employ of the Shah until his death.
His specialty was the Persian miniature, with a preference for naturalistic subjects often portrayed in an effeminate and impressionistic manner,[1] a style which came to be popular during the late Safavid court.
Many of his works depict handsome youths, often in the role of saqi, or "wine pourer," who at times are the focus of the admiring gaze of an older man and according to Louis Crompton, a manifestation of the Persian tradition of "appreciating youthful male beauty" (2003, p.171).
Today his works can be found in the museum that bears his name in Tehran, as well as in many of the major museums of the West, such as the Smithsonian, the Louvre and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Pacita Abad: Biography
Pacita Abad (1946-2004) was born in Basco, Batanes, a small island in the northernmost part of the Philippines, between Luzon and Taiwan. Her more-than-thirty-year painting career began when she travelled to the United States to undertake graduate studies. She had over 40 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries in the U.S., Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America. She also participated in more than 50 group and traveling exhibitions throughout the world. Abad’s work is now in public, corporate and private art collections in over 70 countries. Abad studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. and The Art Students League in New York City. She lived on 5 different continents and working in more than 80 countries, including Guatemala, Mexico, India, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Mali, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia and Indonesia. Her early paintings were primarily figurative socio-political works of people and primitive masks. Another series was large scale paintings of underwater scenes, tropical flowers and animal wildlife. Pacita’s most extensive body of work, however, is her vibrant, colorful abstract work - many very large scale canvases, but also a number of small collages - on a range of materials from canvas and paper to bark cloth, metal, ceramics and glass. Abad created over 5,000 artworks and painted a 55-meter long Alkaff Bridge in Singapore and covered it with 2,350 multicolored circles. Abad developed a technique of trapunto painting (named after a quilting technique), which entailed stitching and stuffing her painted canvases to give them a three-dimensional, sculptural effect. She then began incorporating into the surface of her paintings materials such as traditional cloth, mirrors, beads, shells, plastic buttons and other objects.
Hans von Aachen: Biography
Hans von Aachen (1552, Cologne - March 4, 1615, Prague) was a German mannerist painter.
His name is derived from the birth place of his father, Aachen in Germany. Other variations of the name include Johann von - and - von Achen and various concisions like Janachen, Fanachen, Abak, Jean Dac, Aquano, van Aken etc.
Hans von Aachen began painting in Germany as a pupil of the Flemish master E. Jerrigh. He then moved to Italy in 1574 to study further. He toured Rome and Florence, but eventually settled in Venice. He initially became a pupil of Kaspar Rems, but soon decided to develop his own mannerist technique, by studying Tintoretto and Michelangelo's followers. However, during all of his life he was influenced by the style of Bartholomeus Spranger and Hendrick Goltzius who dominated the art scene in Germany at the time.
He returned to Germany in 1588 where he became well known as a painter of portraits for noble houses. He painted several works for Duke William V of Bavaria. He married Regina, the daughter of the composer Orlando di Lasso in Munich. In Munich he came into contact with the Imperial Court in Prague. In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor. However, Von Aachen only moved to Prague in 1601, where he stayed painting commissions from Emperor Rudolph II who conferred knighthood on him in 1605.[1] Von Aachen continued working on commissions under the newly appointed ruler, Matthias I.
Amongst van Aachens pupils were Peter Isaak and Joseph Heinz. His works have been copied by Wolfgang Kilian, Dominicus Custos and Jan Sadeler.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Vincent
Biography and Creations
Slideshow
Links
FEEDJIT Live Traffic Feed
List of Painters