Baron Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Paris 1754-1829
French painter. His first teacher was the history painter Jean Bardin, who took him to Rome in 1768. Back in Paris in 1772, he transferred to the studio of Nicolas-Bernard Lepicie. In 1776 he won the Prix de Rome with Alexander and Diogenes (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.) and returned to Rome, where he was to spend the next four years at the Academie de France in the company of Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Francois-Pierre Peyron. While witnessing at first hand Peyron's development of a manner indebted to Poussin and David's conversion to Caravaggesque realism, Regnault inclined first towards a Late Baroque mode in a Baptism of Christ (untraced; recorded in two sketches and an etching), then, in Perseus Washing his Hands (1779; Louisville, KY, Speed A. Mus.), to the static Neo-classicism of Anton Raphael Mengs. Related Paintings of Baron Jean-Baptiste Regnault :. | Portrait of Jean-Pierre Bachasson, comte de Montalivet | The Judgment of Paris | The Education of Achilles by the Centaur Chiron (mk05) | The Genius of France between Liberty and Death | L'education d'Achille par le centaure Chiron | Related Artists: William Notman (8 March 1826 - 25 November 1891) was a Canadian photographer and businessman.
Notman was born in Paisley, Scotland in 1826, the same year in which photography was born in France. William Notman moved to Montreal in 1856. An amateur photographer, he quickly established a flourishing professional photography studio on Bleury Street. His first important commission was the documentation of the construction of the Victoria Bridge across the St. Lawrence River. The Bridge opened with great fanfare in 1860, attended by the Prince of Wales and Notman's camera. The gift to the Prince of a Maple Box containing Notman's photographs of the construction of the bridge and scenes of Canada East and Canada West so pleased Queen Victoria that, according to family tradition, she named him "Photographer to the Queen."
Notman's reputation and business grew over the next three decades, the first Canadian photographer with an international reputation, and he operated his business as a partnership with other noted Canadian artists, initially John Arthur Fraser and then Henry Sandham, whom he also mentored. He established branches throughout Canada and the United States, including seasonal branches at Yale and Harvard universities, to cater to the student trade. Notman was also an active member of the Montreal artistic community, opening his studio for exhibitions by local painters; the studio also provided training for aspiring photographers and painters. Notman was highly regarded by his colleagues for his innovative photography, and held patents for some of the techniques he developed to recreate winter within the studio walls. He won medals at exhibitions in Montreal, London, Paris, and Australia.
Photography during the mid 19th century was not the simple process it later became. The typical tourist generally did not carry a camera and much of the Notman studio's images were taken with the tourist's needs in mind. Visitors would look through Notman's Picture Books and chose views, to buy individually mounted or perhaps made up into an album, and have a portrait taken as well. Street scenes in the burgeoning cities of Canada, the magnificence of modern transportation by rail and steam, expansive landscapes and the natural wonders, all were in demand either as 8" x 10" prints, or in the popular stereographic form, and were duly recorded by the many staff photographers working for the Notman studio.
William Notman was a regular contributor to the photographic journal Philadelphia Photographer and in partnership with its editor, Edward Wilson, formed the Centennial Photographic Company for the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, held in honour of the 100th anniversary of the United States of America in 1876. He won the only gold medal to be awarded by the British judges and the portrait identification card required for entrance to the grounds was the ancestor of today's various photo-ID cards.
When William Notman died in November 1891, quite suddenly after a short bout of pneumonia, management of the studio Wm Notman & Son was left to his son William McFarlane Notman, an experienced photographer in his own right, who with his brothers, had accompanied the itinerant settlement known as "End of Track" for the Canadian Pacific Railway and documented the construction of the railway towards the west.
In 1935 William McFarlane Notman's younger brother Charles sold the studio to the Associated Screen News, and in 1957 the Notman Collection was purchased by McGill University, Montreal. The 200,000 negatives, 43 Index Books, 200 Picture Books and assorted memorabilia were transferred to the McCord Museum of Canadian History.
With the addition of the McCord Museum's existing photographic holdings to the Notman Collection, the Notman Photographic Archives was born, with the Notman Collection serving as the kernel for an extensive Canadian photography department, covering Canada from Newfoundland to Victoria, the Great Lakes to the Arctic, from 1841 to 1935.
camille van hyfteNicholas Roerich (Russian: ,October 9, 1874 - December 13, 1947), was a Russian mystic, painter, philosopher, scientist, writer, traveler, and public figure. A prolific artist, he created thousands of paintings (many of them are exhibited in well-known museums of the world) and about 30 literary works. Roerich was an author and initiator of an international pact for the protection of artistic and academic institutions and historical sites (Roerich's Pact) and a founder of an international movement for the defence of culture. Roerich earned several nominations for the Nobel Prize.
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