(8 May 1850 ?C 13 November 1899) was a Brazilian painter of the 19th century. He is widely regarded as the most important Brazilian realist painter of the 19th century, and a major inspiration for the modernist painters. While most Brazilian academic artists made their fame painting mythological or historical subjects, Almeida Junior would become popular for painting rural figures, especially farmers and the caipira, the countrymen that are a kind of a symbol of the rural areas of the São Paulo state. While most realist painters used farmers and countrymen as an allegory of workers, Almeida Junior would paint his caipiras mostly on leisure time. He would also produce touching images of upscale landowners. The Bandeirantes, the ruthless explorers of colonial Brazil, would be depicted in the A partida da monção, showing an expedition on the Tiet?? River. Almeida Junior was born in the city of Itu, then a small town in the state of São Paulo. After becoming a sensation in his town he would be invited to study in the Brazilian Imperial Fine Arts Academy of Rio de Janeiro, but in 1876 would study in France after being granted a scholarship by emperor Pedro II of Brazil in person in the city of Moji-Mirim. He would have Alexandre Cabanel as one of his masters. He admired the French realist and naturalist painting (a major influence at his work), and, after returning to Brazil in 1882, became of the leading names in Brazilian realist painting. He was stabbed to death by the husband of his mistress on November 13, 1899 in Piracicaba.   Related Paintings of Almeida Junior :. | Rio das Pedras Spot Landscape | Votorantim Falls | Self portrait | Painting | Portrait of Joana Liberal da Cunha |
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Stanislaw Witkiewicz
(8 May 1851 in Pašiaušė - 5 September 1915 in Lovran) was a Polish painter, architect, writer and art theoretician. Witkiewicz was born in the Lithuanian village of Pašiaušė (Polish: Poszawsze) in Samogitia, at that time, in the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth lands ruled by the Russian Empire. Witkiewicz studied in Saint Petersburg, 1869-71, then in Munich, 1872-75. He created the Zakopane Style (styl zakopiaki) (also known as Witkiewicz Style (styl witkiewiczowski)) in architecture. He was strongly associated with Zakopane and promoted it in the art community. His son, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, became a famous painter, playwright, novelist and philosopher, also known (from the conflation of his surname and middle name) by the mononymous pseudonym "Witkacy." The son's godmother was the internationally famous actress Helena Modjeska (Helena Modrzejewska), whom the elder Witkiewicz in 1876 had nearly accompanied to California in the United States. Witkiewicz had strong views against formal education: "school is completely at odds with the psychological make-up of human beings". He applied this principle in his son's upbringing and was disappointed when the 20-year-old Witkacy chose to enroll at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakew. In 1908, suffering from tuberculosis, the elder Witkiewicz left his family in Zakopane and relocated to Lovranno, a fashionable resort in what was then Austria-Hungary, which today is in Croatia. He died there in 1915.
Merle, Hugues
French, 1823-1881
Charles Leickert
22 September 1816, Brussels - 5 December 1907, Mainz was a Belgian painter of Dutch landscapes. Orphan Leickert first learned painting in The Hague under the supervision of landscape painters Bartholomeus van Hove, Wijnand Nuijen, and Andreas Schelfhout among many others. Leickert specialised in winter scenes, sometimes romanticising the sky in pale blues and bright pinks. He painted almost all his works in the Netherlands, from 1841-1848 in The Hague and from 1849-1883 in Amsterdam. In 1856, he became a member of the Royal Academy of Amsterdam. At the age of 71 he moved to Mainz, Germany where he later died in 1907.