April 26, 1865 C March 7, 1931) Gallen-Kallela was a Finnish artist and designer closely associated with notions of National Romanticism, especially relating to the region of Karelia, also a source of inspiration for the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. Of particular influence was the collection of folk poems formed in the middle of the 19th century by Elias Lonrot. Following a national competition in 1891 Gallen-Kallela illustrated this national epic known as the Kaleval, the vivid images of which soon became widely known throughout Finland. He also made a significant contribution to the Finnish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 in which he painted frescoes on Kalevala themes in the main dome, as well as designing textiles and furniture. His furniture designs were made by the Iris company, founded by a close friend, Louis Sparre. Like many other ventures associated with Arts and Crafts, the Iris company was concerned with the production of well-designed, well-made furniture and ceramics. Gallen-Kallela designs at Paris 1900 attracted considerable attention leading to the award of a number of Gold and Silver Medals at the exhibition. He worked in a wide range of design media, including ryiji rugs, which he modernized using geometric motifs derived from the Finnish landscape. His distinctive contribution to Finnish culture is preserved in the Gallen-Kallela Museum, which was originally built by him as a studio and family home between 1911 and 1913 and now contains a large body of his work, including paintings, graphics, textiles, jewellery, stained glass, and architectural designs.   Related Paintings of Akseli Gallen-Kallela :. | en lang rad scener ur kalevala | Paimeni | Kullervos Curse | Portrait of Maxim Gorky | Probleemi or Kajustaflan |
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Alexandre Roslin
1718-1793
Henri-Lucien Doucet
(1856-1895) was a French figure and portrait painter, born in Paris, where he studied under Lefebvre and Boulanger, and in 1880 won the Prix de Rome. His pictures are usually piquant, sparkling representations of modern life, eminently Parisian in style, but the audacious realism of his earlier work is not maintained in his later, which is somewhat characterless. His portraits in pastel are also notable. His most widely known picture is Apres le bal (After the Ball, 1889). Other excellent examples are the portraits of Celestine Galli-Marie as Carmen (1884, Marseille Museum), La princesse Mathilde Laetitia Wilhelmine Bonaparte and My Parents (1890, Lyons Museum), A Spanish Woman (Pontoise Museum), and Nude Figure (1890). He was awarded a first-class medal for pastel in 1889 and the Legion of Honour in 1891. His painting A Skating Party, of 1893, was exhibited at the Chicago World Fair or the World's Columbian Exposition, which was held from May to October 1893 in Chicago in honour of the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World. Goupil made a limited edition first impression photogravure of the painting.
Ramon Casas
1866-1932 was a Catalan artist. Living through a turbulent time in the history of his native Barcelona, he was known as a portraitist, sketching and painting the intellectual, economic, and political elite of Barcelona, Paris, Madrid, and beyond; he was also known for his paintings of crowd scenes ranging from the audience at a bullfight to the assembly for an execution to rioters in the Barcelona streets. Also a graphic designer, his posters and postcards helped to define the Catalan art movement known as modernisme. Casas was born in Barcelona. His father had made a fortune in Matanzas, Cuba; his mother was from a well-off Catalan family. In 1877 he abandoned the regular course of schooling to study art in the studio of Joan Vicens. In 1881, still in his teens, he was a co-founder of the magazine L'Avenç; the 9 October 1881 issue included his sketch of the cloister of Sant Benet in Bages. That same month, accompanied by his cousin Miquel Carb i Carb, a medical student, he began his first stay in Paris, where he studied that winter at the Carolus Duran Academy and later at the Gervex Academy, and functioned as a Paris correspondent for L'Avenç. The next year he had a piece exhibited in Barcelona at the Sala Paris, and in 1883 in Paris the Salon des Champs Elysies exhibited his portrait of himself dressed as a flamenco dancer; the piece won him an invitation as a member of the salon of the Societe d'artistes françaises. The next few years he continued to paint and travel, spending most autumns and winters in Paris and the rest of the year in Spain, mostly in Barcelona but also in Madrid and Granada; his 1886 painting of the crowd at the Madrid bullfighting ring was to be the first of many highly detailed paintings of crowds. That year he survived tuberculosis, and convalesced for the winter in Barcelona.