French Realist Painter , 1796-1875 French painter, draughtsman and printmaker. After a classical education at the Coll?ge de Rouen, where he did not distinguish himself, and an unsuccessful apprenticeship with two drapers, Corot was allowed to devote himself to painting at the age of 26. He was given some money that had been intended for his sister, who had died in 1821, and this, together with what we must assume was his family's continued generosity, freed him from financial worries and from having to sell his paintings to earn a living. Corot chose to follow a modified academic course of training. He did not enrol in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but studied instead with Achille Etna Michallon and, after Michallon's death in 1822, with Jean-Victor Bertin. Both had been pupils of Pierre-Henri Valenciennes, and, although in later years Corot denied that he had learnt anything of value from his teachers  Related Paintings of Corot Camille :. | The Little Shepherd | Entrance of Coubron | Reader crowned of flowers or The Muse of virgil | Christine Nilson or Bohemia with Mandolin | Self-portrait |
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Gustaf Lundberg
Swedish, 1695-1786,Swedish painter and pastellist. He was orphaned early and brought up by his grandfather, the goldsmith Fredrik Richter (1636-1714). In 1710 he was briefly apprenticed to David von Krafft (1655-1724). Against von Krafft's advice, and at his own expense, he travelled to Paris in 1717. He studied first with Hyacinthe Rigaud, Nicolas de Largillierre and Jean-Fran?ois de Troy, learning to paint in a R?gence style less heavy and serious than that taught by von Krafft in Sweden. He also studied drawing under Pierre-Jacques Cazes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1720 Rosalba Carriera came to Paris from Italy, bringing with her the fashionable technique of drawing in pastel chalks. Lundberg became her pupil and within a year had mastered the medium, charming the Parisians with his portraits. Until the arrival of Carriera, he had worked only in oils (e.g. the portrait of Gabriel Sack and his Wife Eva Bielke, 1730; priv. col.), but he now turned exclusively to pastels. He received portrait commissions from Louis XV (reg 1715-74), notably for those of his young queen Maria Leszczynska and of her parents Stanislav I Leszczynski and Catherine Opalinska (both 1725; Upplands Vesby, priv. col.), who at that time were living at Chambord. Through the agency of Carl Gustav Tessin, Lundberg was received (re?u) at the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1741. As his morceaux de reception he executed two portraits of Fran?ois Boucher and Charles-Joseph Nattier, shown at the Salon of 1743.
anthonis van dyck
Flemish painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and England. He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck's studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens's estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (c. 1632-44), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses, where they were appreciated as much for their own sake as for the identities and families of the sitters.
Nittis, Giuseppe de
Italian, 1846-84 Italian painter, pastellist and printmaker. Throughout his career he was committed to a plein-air aesthetic and was particularly interested in rendering varying light effects, a concern that brought him into contact with the Impressionists. He was also acquainted with the members of the Macchiaioli, for whom his work was influential. In addition to oils, he experimented with printmaking and made innovative use of pastels. Practising a restrained, and therefore 'acceptable', form of Impressionism, he achieved great success in his lifetime,