Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614 Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures. In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals.  Related Paintings of El Greco :. | Resurrection | christ on the mount of olives | The Immaculate Conception | Burial of Count Orgaz | Mary Magdalen in Penitence |
Related Artists:
Mura, Francesco de
Italian, 1696-1782 Italian painter. He was educated initially in the workshop of Domenico Viola at Naples, but in 1708 he entered the school of Francesco Solimena, whose favourite pupil and most trusted collaborator he became. At first he followed closely Solimena's monumental Baroque manner, as in the frescoes (1715) in S Nicola alla Carit? in Naples, but later developed a more controlled and refined style of rhythmical lines, light and airy colours and delicate psychological overtones. He employed this new style in his ten canvases of the Virtues and his vast Adoration of the Magi (all 1728; Naples, S Maria Donnaromita) and, above all, in his frescoes of the Adoration of the Magi in the apsidal dome of the church of the Nunziatella, Naples (1732; in situ). De Mura was also active as a portrait painter; his Portrait of the Artist's Wife
Albert van Ouwater
Albert van Ouwater (c. 1410/1415-1475) was one of the earliest artists of Early Netherlandish painting working in the Northern Netherlands, as opposed to Flanders in the South of the region. [edit] BiographyHe was probably born in Oudewater, and is mentioned by Karel van Mander (1604) as a reputable painter at the time in which he lived.[1] According to Karel van Mander he was possibly a contemporary of Jan van Eyck and had been the teacher of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, though he was quick to qualify this statement with the eye-witness account of an old man named Albert Simonsz who had been a pupil of Jan Mostaert and claimed neither he nor Mostaert had ever even heard of this Albert van Ouwater or Geertgen tot Sint Jans.[1] Van Mander highly commends an altarpiece by Van Ouwater in the principal church in Haarlem, the Grotekerk or Sint-Bavokerk, representing St. Peter and St. Paul, in which the figures are carefully and correctly designed, and richly coloured.[1] Van Mander posits Van Ouwater as the founder of the Haarlem school of painting, making him the first major Dutch (as opposed to Flemish) artist. According to Van Mander, landscape painting was a particular specialty of this Dutch school, although none of Van Ouwater's surviving works exhibit this tendency. Van Ouwater seems to have been a contemporary of Dirk Bouts in mid-15th-century Haarlem, and Geertgen tot Sint Jans may have been his pupil.
Edward Robert Hughes
British 1851-1917 Edward Robert Hughes (1851-1917) is a well known English painter who worked in a style influenced by Pre-Raphaelitism and Aestheticism. Some of his best known works are Midsummer Eve and Night With Her Train of Stars. Hughes was the nephew of Arthur Hughes. He often used watercolour/gouache. He was elected ARWS in 1891 and chose as his diploma work for election to full membership a mystical piece inspired by a verse by Christina Rossetti's "Amor Mundi". Technically Hughes experimented with ambitious techniques. He was a perfectionist who did numerous studies which in their own right turned out to be good enough for exhibition He was also an assistant to the elderly William Holman Hunt. He helped the increasingly infirm Hunt with the version of The Light of the World now in St. Paul's Cathedral and with The Lady of Shalott. He died on April 23 1914 at his cottage in St. Albans, Hertfordshire.