Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1395-1441
Painter and illuminator, brother of Hubert van Eyck. According to a 16th-century Ghent tradition, represented by van Vaernewijck and Lucas d'Heere, Jan trained with his brother Hubert. Pietro Summonte's assertion (1524) that he began work as an illuminator is supported by the fine technique and small scale of most of Jan's works, by manuscript precedents for certain of his motifs, and by his payment in 1439 for initials in a book (untraced) for Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Jan is first documented in The Hague in August 1422 as an established artist with an assistant and the title of 'Master', working for John III, Count of Holland (John of Bavaria; reg 1419-25), who evidently discovered the artist while he was bishop (1389-1417) of the principality of Liege. Related Paintings of EYCK, Jan van :. | Mary of the Annunciation | The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin | St Barbara dg | The Annunciation sdw | Angel of the Annunciation | Related Artists:
Mednyanszky, LaszloHungarian, 1852-1919
Ladislaus Josephus Balthasar Eustachius Mednyenszky was a Hungarian painter in the Impressionist tradition. Despite an aristocratic background, he spent most of his life moving around Europe working as an artist. Mednyenszky spent considerable periods in seclusion but mingled with people across society - in the aristocracy, art world, peasantry and army - many of whom became the subjects of his paintings. His most important works depict scenes of nature and poor, working people, particularly from his home region in Upper Hungary. Medny nszky was born in Beck, the Kingdom of Hungary (now Beckov in Slovakia), to Eduard Mednyenszky and Maria Anna Mednyenszky, (nee Szirmay) both from landowning families. Mednyenszky's family moved in 1861 to the chateau of his grandfather, Baltazer Szirmay, at Nagyőr (Strežky), near Szepesbela (Spišsk Bele) in north-eastern Hungary. This was to be the setting for many of his works. Medny nszky met the Austrian artist Thomas Ender in 1863 when Ender visited the chateau at Nagyőr. Ender took an interest in Mednyenszky's early efforts at drawing, lending his assistance to improve Mednyenszky's skills. Mednyenszky attended a grammar school in K??smerk (Kežmarok), near his home, then attended the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich in 1872 - 1873. Dissatisfied in Munich, he moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux-Arts. After the death of his professor, Isidore-Alexandre Augustin Pils, in 1875, Mednyenszky left the École and began practicing independently from Montmartre. Mednyenszky returned to Nagyőr after 1877 to continue painting, and subsequently travelled widely in Europe, between his childhood homes in Upper Hungary and Budapest, Vienna, Paris and beyond. Mednyenszky visited the Szolnok artists' colony in the autumn of 1877 and Italy in 1878. His mother died in 1883, after which he lived in seclusion in Nagyőr. He returned to Nagyőr in 1887 to help deal with an outbreak of cholera but soon fell ill himself, with pneumonia. He spent much of 1889-1892 in Paris and returned regularly to Nagyőr until 1900.
Augustus Egg (2 May 1816 - 26 March 1863) was a Victorian artist best known for his modern triptych Past and Present (1858), which depicts the breakup of a middle-class Victorian family.
Augustus Egg was born in London on 2 May 1816 to Joseph and Ann Egg, and baptised in St James's Church, Piccadilly on 30 May 1816. He had an elder brother, George Hine Egg.
His father Joseph Egg was a wealthy gunsmith from the distinguished gun making family, who immigrated to London from Huningue, Alsace. Egg was educated in the schools of the Royal Academy, beginning in 1836. Egg was a member of The Clique, a group of artists founded by Richard Dadd and others in the late 1830s (c. 1837). Egg sought to combine popularity with moral and social activism, in line with the literary work of his friend Charles Dickens. With Dickens he set up the "Guild of Literature and Art", a philanthropic organisation intended to provide welfare payments to struggling artists and writers. He acted the lead role in a play written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton to raise funds for the organisation. His self-portrait in the role is in Hospitalfield House in Arbroath.
Egg's early paintings were generally illustrations of literary subjects. Like other members of The Clique, he saw himself as a follower of Hogarth. His interest in Hogarthian moral themes is evidenced in his paired paintings The Life and Death of Buckingham, depicting the dissolute life and sordid death of the Restoration rake. Yet his paintings often took a humorous look at their subjects, as in his Queen Elizabeth Discovers she is no longer Young (1848).
Unlike most other members of The Clique, Egg also admired the Pre-Raphaelites; he bought work from the young William Holman Hunt and shared ideas on color theory with him. His own triptych, known as Past and Present, was influenced by Hunt's work. The triptych depicted three separate scenes, one portraying a prosperous middle-class family and the other two depicting poor and isolated figures e two young girls in a bedsit and a homeless woman with a baby. The viewer was expected to read a series of visual clues that linked together these three scenes, to reveal that the prosperous family in the central scene is in the process of disintegrating because of the mother's adultery. The two outer scenes depict the separated mother and children a few years later, now living in poverty. The painting's use of flashback e the central scene is occurring in the past e has been seen as a precursor of cinema.
Egg was also an active organiser of exhibitions, being admired by fellow-artists for his dedication and fair mindedness. He was one of the organisers of the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857. He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1860.
Always in poor health, Egg spent his later years in the warmer climate of continental Europe, where he painted Travelling Companions, an ambiguous image of two near-identical young women that has sometimes been interpreted as an attempt to represent two sides of the same person. A member of the circle of friends that included Dickens and Wilkie Collins, Egg features in their surviving correspondence. He participated, as actor and costume designer, in their amateur theatricals, which were often conducted for charitable purposes as noted above. In January 1857 he took a part in Collins's play The Frozen Deep, which starred Dickens and was performed at his home, Tavistock House (Egg played John Want, the ship's cook.) The production was also acted before Queen Victoria and then performed for charity. Dickens described Egg as a "dear gentle little fellow," "always sweet-tempered, humorous, conscientious, thoroughly good, and thoroughly beloved."
He died in Algiers, Algeria in 1863.
Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret1852-1929
The popular French naturalist painter Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret is best known for his painstakingly detailed paintings of peasant scenes. Dagnan-Bouveret also created portraits and religious paintings.
Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan was born in Paris on Jan. 7, 1852. His father moved to Brazil when he was 16, but he decided to stay in France with his mothers father. Later Dagnan-Bouveret added his grandfathers family name Bouveret to his own. Dagnan-Bouveret entered art school in Paris at age 17 and studied under the well-known academic painter Gerome. During this period Dagnan-Bouveret entered his paintings in several official competitions and placed highly in several. In 1878 Dagnan-Bouveret moved to the region known as the Franche-Comte, where he produced many landscapes and still life paintings. Dagnan-Bouveret won recognition in 1880 with his oil painting An Accident, which depicts a peasant boy with an injured hand visiting the doctor. Considered one of his finest paintings, it exemplifies Dagnan-Bouverets attempt to examine the psychology of his subjects through the use of well-rendered detail.
Dagnan-Bouveret took advantage of new photographic technology to bring greater detail and heightened realism to his paintings. Dagnan-Bouveret used this technique especially in his paintings of peasants, such as Horses at the Watering Trough (1885). Dagnan-Bouveret was known to select people from his village, dress them in historical costumes, and then take photographs, which he then used with sketches as the basis of his paintings. By the 1890s his popularity as a portrait painter among wealthy patrons allowed him to explore more personal themes. Many of Dagnan-Bouverets later paintings, such as Supper at Emmaus (1896 C97), were religious in nature. Dagnan-Bouveret died in Quincey, Haute-Saone, France, on July 3, 1929.