André Derain

   André Derain was a French painter. Born Chatou, France, June 10, 1880. Died Garches, France, Sept. 10, 1954.
   Derain was one of the leaders of Fauvism, a movement in modern art which emphasized brilliant colors and bold designs. He is especially famous for his landscapes, portraits, and still lifes. Derain was also an outstanding book illustrator and ballet designer. His important canvases include a portrait of Henri Matisse (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and The Farmhouse of Provence.
   Paintings by Derain, along with those by Matisse and others, were shown in the Fauve exhibition of 1905, which caused a sensation in the art world. Derain's later works, painted after World War I, are considered less important than his Fauvist canvases.

Gustave Courbet (painter)

   Gustave Courbet was a French painter. Born Ornans, France, June 10, 1819. Died near Vevey, Switzerland, Dec. 31, 1877.
   Courbet started the 19th-century movement toward Realism in French painting. In his works he broke sharply with the idealized subject matter of traditional painting. Courbet stated that, unlike the Classicists and Romantics, he would paint only what he could see. His interest in everyday events and average people is illustrated in two of his finest works, The Stonebreakers and A Burial at Ornans (both in the Louvre, Paris).

The Stonebreakers by Courbet

   Courbet went to Paris at the age of 20 to study art. His early works were Romantic, but he soon changed to a more realistic style. Many of his paintings, however, continued to show his essentially Romantic nature even as he attempted to portray accurately the world around him. Such famous works as Young Bather (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City) and A Spanish Woman (Philadelphia Museum of Art) are Realist in subject matter, but Romantic in mood. During his lifetime, however, he was considered a strict Realist, and Young Bather outraged spectators because it simply depicted a real woman rather than a woman meant to represent an imaginary ideal.
   Courbet's Realism brought him into conflict with the Salon, the official promoter and organizer of all public exhibitions. In 1855, when the Salon refused Courbet entry into its show, he organized his own exhibition. One of his paintings for this show, The Painter's Studio, is often considered his masterpiece. Courbet's conflict with authority extended to politics, as well as to art. In 1871 he was imprisoned for his part in the Commune, a French Socialist uprising. He escaped to Switzerland, where he died in exile.

Edgar Degas

   Edgar Degas (July 19, 1834 - Sept. 26, 1917) holds a unique position in the history of art. In his works he combined the Classical emphasis on pure line and composition with the Impressionist use of bright colors and interest in scenes of everyday life. Degas achieved a novel freshness and immediacy by tilting the perspective in his paintings and by showing figures from unusual angles. He is especially famous for his pictures of ballet dancers.
   The son of a prosperous banker, Degas originally intended to study law, but soon abandoned it for painting. Degas contributed to several Impressionist exhibitions, but he never considered himself an Impressionist and soon broke with the movement.
   After 1886, Degas lived and worked in seclusion. As his eyesight began to fail, he turned from oil
painting to pastels. His pastel drawings are noted for their exceptional strength and brilliance of color.
   When he was nearly blind, Degas created hundreds of sculptures, many of them statuettes of figures in motion.

Giulio Romano

Due Amanti

   Giulio Romano, real name Giulio Pippi de' Gianuzzi, c. 1492—1546, Italian painter and architect, was born in Rome. Succeeding Raphael as head of the Roman school of painting, he studied under his predecessor and assisted him in several of his leading works, especially in the Vatican series called "Raphael's Bible" and in the "Benefactors of the Church," in the salon of the Incendio del Borgo. By Raphael's will he was entrusted with the completion of the frescoes in the Sala di Constantino in the Vatican. Of the series he alone executed the "Battle of Constantine" and the "Apparition of the Cross." Entering the service of the Duke Federigo Gonzaga in 1524, he largely rebuilt Mantua, restoring the cathedral and adorning the Palazzo del Te with pictures of "The Story of Cupid and Psyche" and "The Fall of Giants." His death prevented his beginning an appointment as architect of St. Peter's.

Best Leonardo quotes

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

Water is the driving force of all nature.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

It's easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

The poet ranks far below the painter in the representation of visible things, and far below the musician in that of invisible things.

François Gérald

   François Gérald (1770-1837) was a French painter born in Rome. After a period of study with David in Paris, where he went to live in 1792, he won the Prix de Rome. His paintings "Belisaire" and "L"Amour et Psyche" did much to bring him into prominence. It was, however, his portraits of Madame Bonaparte, Madame Recámier, Madame de Staël, and Napoleon that ranked him with the finest painters of his day. His historical paintings include "La Bataille d'Austerlitz" and "Entrée de Henri IV a Paris."

Madame Recámier

Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay was a French painter. Born in Paris, France, Apr. 12, 1885. Died Montpellier, France, Oct. 25, 1941.
   Delaunay created some of the first abstract paintings of the 20th century. His dazzling style of combining colors was named Orphism for Orpheus, the legendary musician known for his enchanting harmonies. In such works as Windows (Philadelphia Museum of Art) and Disks (Museum of Modern Art, New York City), Delaunay uses the static geometric forms of Cubism, which he makes dynamic through his bright, prismatic colors. Probably his best-known work is the Eiffel Tower series, one example of which is in the Guggenheim Museum, in New York City; and two versions are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
   Delaunay's use of color had a decisive influence on Paul Klee and the German Blue Rider group of artists, including Franz Marc and August Macke. Also based on Delaunay's innovations was the first American movement in abstract painting, which is known as Synchromism.

Georges Rouault

   Georges Rouault (1871-1958), was a French artist. He was a deeply religious man with strong moral convictions, and his works show his hatred of hypocrisy, poverty, sin, and war.
   Rouault was born in Paris. From 1885 to 1890, he worked for a maker of stained-glass windows. Rouault's paintings, with their hard black outlines and brilliant, intense color, show the influence of stained-glass designing. About 1905, Rouault was briefly associated with a group of painters called the fauves. The bold brushstrokes and dramatic color contrasts of the fauves became important parts of his style. From about 1903 to 1916, he painted religious subjects and sad clowns, and satirical pictures of prostitutes and corrupt judges. These works reflect misery and pain. From 1916 to 1927, Rouault worked on a series of 58 aquatints and etchings. This series, called Miserere, was published in 1948 and ranks as one of the greatest achievements in modern printmaking. From 1927 until his death, Rouault painted clowns and religious pictures, but chose fewer Satirical subjects.

Who was Riemenschneider?

   Tilman Riemenschneider  (1460?-1531), was one of the best-known sculptors of his day in Germany. Riemenschneider carved in both stone and wood. Most of his sculpture is concerned with religious subjects. Riemenschneider's work is noted for its quiet religious feeling. His major sculpture is also known for its accurate portrayal of the subject's physical appearance, whether the subject is a person or an object.
   Riemenschneider was born in Thuringia. He studied his trade in several German cities before settling in Würzburg. He spent most of his life there, becoming a prominent citizen and a member of the Würzburg city Council.

William Morris Hunt

   William Morris Hunt (1824-1879) was a noted American portrait, figure and landscape painter whose efforts for the advancement of American art were incalculably valuable. He was born at Brattleboro, Vt., and studied at Harvard for a time, but was forced by ill health to leave. He traveled and studied sculpture and painting in Europe. Returning to the United States, Mr. Hunt settled in Boston. There he became a teacher of painting, imparting to his pupils a knowledge of the latest Parisian methods. Mr. Hunt's best works are his landscapes, though in all his work is noted a perfected technique and a fine sense of color values. He committed suicide while under a sudden derangement. Among his finest works are Head of a Jewess, Sheep Shearing at Barbizon, Girl With the Kitten, Gloucester Harbor, The Hurdy-Gurdy Boy and Dead in the Snow.

Sheep Shearing at Barbizon

Who was William Holman Hunt?

The Awakening Conscience

   William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) was an English painter. He studied at the Royal Academy in London, his birthplace. When he was about twenty-one, Rossetti, Millais and he banded together to form the preraphaelite school of painting, being ably seconded by Ruskin. Their fundamental principle was that all painting should have a marked moral effect and that a picture which was merely beautiful had no reason for being. They painted nature with a breadth and freedom that has been much admired. In 1854 Mr. Hunt went to Palestine to study Biblical scenery at first hand. His best-known paintings are The Light of the World and The Awakening Conscience; after his trip to the Holy Land, he painted The Finding of the Saviour in the Temple, The Scapegoat, A Street Scene in Cairo, Portrait of Rossetti, The After-Glow in Egypt, and many other pictures.

Who was Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi?

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, called Il Bolognese, (1606—80) was an Italian architect, painter, and engraver, born in Bologna and studied under the Caracci and Albani. Grimaldi was employed by Cardinal Mazarin in Paris (1649-51) to decorate the Palais Mazarin (now Bibliothéque Nationale); but he spent the greater part of his life in Rome, where he practiced as architect and painted under the patronage of various popes. Pope Innocent X em­ployed him in his gallery at Monte Cavallo and in the Vatican. Grimaldi was twice president of the Academy of St. Luke, Rome. His best-known works include "Baptism of Christ," "The Washerwomen," "Landscapes," and "Scenes from the Old Testament."

Henry Oliver Walker

   Walker, Henry Oliver Walker was an American figure and mural painter. He was born in Boston in 1843 and studied art under Bonnat in Paris. He opened a salon in New York City, where his ideal figure composi-tions compelled attention because of their poetic beauty, particularly those of "Eros et Musa" and "Musa Regina," which are to be seen in the National Gallery at "Washing­ton. He is better known, however, for his mural decorations, the most important including a series of lunettes representing "Lyric Poetry" in the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.: murals in the Minnesota state capitol at St. Paul; and the panel "Wisdom Attained By Learning" in the Appellate Court, New York. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Design in 1902 and of the National Institute of Arts and Letters the same year. He died in 1929.

Lyric Poetry

Olin Levi Warner

Cupid and Psiche

   Olin Levi Warner was an American sculptor; born in Suffield, Conn., April 9, 1844; studied in the École des Beaux Arts in Paris and later was a student in Carpeaux's studio. In 1872 he returned to the United States and opened a studio in New York City. In 1877 Daniel Cottier, an art dealer, invited him to place some of his work on exhibition in his rooms, and several critics gave it favorable commendation. In 1877-1878 he modeled Twilight, a small statue, which established his reputation. His works in­clude The Dancing Nymph, Cupid and Psyche, and various reliefs, busts, and statues. He died in New York City, Aug. 14, 1896.

Edwin Dickinson

Edwin Dickinson was an American painter. Born Seneca Falls, N.Y., Oct. 11, 1891.
Dickinson has been a leading painter in the Realist style. His paintings, noted for their exact detail and somber color, include The Fossil Hunters (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City), Ruin at Daphne, and Villa La Louette (both at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City). He has sometimes painted in a Surrealistic style, portraying ambiguous objects and scenes with strange, symbolic meanings. Dickinson studied at the Art Students League in New York and with the famous art teacher William M. Chase.

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso

   Although he lived in France, Pablo Picasso had been born in Spain and was keenly sympathetic to the Loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War. This painting expressed his outrage over the bombing of the town of Guernica, which had no strategic value. Using only blacks, grays, and whites, Picasso evoked anguish and horror with his distorted figures writhing in agony under a stark electric light. The painting was on tour in New York City in 1939, when World War II began. Picasso suggested that it stay in the United States until "the re-establishment of public liberties" in Spain. "Guernica" was returned to Spain in 1981 and was placed in the Prado Museum in Madrid.

El Greco (painter)

   El Greco, or Domenicos Theotocopoulos, 1541—1614, was a Cretan painter, identified with Spain, born near Candia on the isle of Crete. Nothing is known of his life until the mention of his name in a letter written in Rome in 1570. Judging from his work, it would seem he had also lived in Venice, for it shows the influence of Venetian painters like titian, Tintoretto, and Jacopo Bassano. By 1577 he was in Toledo, Spain, where he produced his greatest work and became famous. Here he was commonly known as El Greco (The Greek). In 1586 he painted "The Burial of Count Orgaz," which is generally considered not only his masterpiece but one of the world's greatest paintings. His "Toledo in a Storm" (painted, it is supposed, between 1600—1610 and now in the Metro­politan Museum) is equaled in power and suggestion by few landscape paintings. El Greco lived a life of great frugality; it is said that of 24 rooms placed at his disposal in a palace he used only one. He has come to his greatest recognition in modern times, and there are few artists of the last 80 years who have not been affected by him at one time or another. Due perhaps to Byzantine influences, he could express the essential spirit of things, and his beautiful sense of rhythm, his color, which modulates gradually from the somber to the brilliant, and the deep significance he gives to an attitude or the position of a hand have seldom been approached by other painters before or since his time.

The Burial of Count Orgaz by El Greco

Who was James Ward?

Self-portrait (1848)

   James Ward was an English painter and engraver; born in London in 1769. At the age of 12 he was apprenticed to J. Raphael Smith, and later he studied engraving under his brother. His first painting was exhibited in 1790. The vigorous style and strong color clearly showed his brother's influence. Ward's work developed a more individual character and received great recognition. He was elected to the Academy in 1811 and was appointed official painter to the Prince of Wales. His self-portrait, executed when he was 79 years old, is one of his most famous works. James Ward died in 1859.

Who was Thomas Gainsborough?

   Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was a famous English painter, was born at Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the son of a wool manufacturer, and when 15 years old, he studied in London with an engraver and teacher of drawing. Three years later, he began to paint portraits and soon won fame. When the Royal Academy was founded in 1768, he was made one of the origi­nal members. Although he painted landscapes also, most of his pictures were portraits. He painted George III eight times, and his sitters included some of the most famous people of the day. Among his celebrated pictures are the "Blue Boy," "Musidora," "Duchess of Devonshire," "Mrs. Siddons," and "The Market Cart."

Musidora by Thomas Gainsborough

Who was George Inness?

Rainbow by Inness

   George Inness (1825-1894), a noted American landscape painter. He was born at Newburg, New York. When fourteen he began to study drawing, and about three years later he worked for a firm of map engravers. In 1845 after a period of study in the studio of Regis Gignoux in New York, he opened a studio of his own. Through the generosity of a patron, the promising young artist was given a trip abroad, where he studied in France and Italy. Inness was much influenced by the painters of the Barbizon school, and his works show this leaning in their faithful representation of nature.
   His work won him recognition as the greatest American landscape painter. The coloring of his pictures is particularly beautiful. Inness' landscapes comprehend to a degree the unusual merit of making the beholder see the cloud changes, and feel the breeze blow. The elements of nature seem in vital action though but a spread of paint upon a bit of canvas. In 1894 an exhibit was held in New York of two hundred and forty of his works. Some of his best paintings are Under the Greenwood, Close of a Stormy Day, An Autumn Morning, A Passing Storm, and Moonrise.