Felix Ziem
French Painter, 1821-1911
was a French painter in the style of the Barbizon School. Born Felix-Francois Georges Philibert Ziem in Beaune in the Côte d'Or departement of the Burgundy region of France, his mother was a native of Burgundy who married a Croatian immigrant. Originally, Ziem planned to be an architect and studied at the School of Architecture in Dijon, and for a time worked as an architect. Painting developed from a hobby to a career following an 1841 visit to Italy where he fell in love with the city of Venice, a place that would become the source for many of his works. Apart from Venetian scenes, he also painted many still lifes, portraits and landscapes from a variety of places including Constantinople, Martigues, Cagnes-sur-Mer and his native Burgundy. Ziem's works were first exhibited in 1849 at the Paris Salon and remained a regular exhibitor there for many years. Part of the Barbizon school, he also traveled extensively throughout Europe and in 1860 moved to Montmartre, the artistic quarter of the city of Paris. Financially successful, he was known to assist struggling young artists. In 1857, the government of France recognized his contribution to the art world by making him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Related Paintings of Felix Ziem :. | Constantinople,Fantasy | The Ramparts,Algiers | Marine Antwerp Gatewary to Flanders | Cairo Street | Oriental Dancer | Related Artists: Hans Olaf HeyerdahlSwedish, 1857-1913
Norwegian painter. He was born into an enlightened but conservative family, his father being an engineer, occasional architect and writer of Nordic saga poetry, and he spent his childhood and youth in the rapidly expanding town of Drammen, 40 km from the capital Christiania. In 1873 he was admitted to the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, where he studied under Peder C. Thurmann, a landscape artist trained in Desseldorf. For more advanced training, Heyerdahl was obliged to go abroad, and in 1874 he enrolled at the Munich Akademie. He was encouraged by Professor Ludwig von Lefftz (1845-1910) to give up landscape in favour of history painting and portraits (e.g. the artists Christian Skredsvig, 1876, and Eilif Peterssen, 1877; both Oslo, N.G.). In 1877, under the guidance of Professor Wilhelm Lindenschmit (1829-95), Heyerdahl finished his most inventive and brilliant composition, the Expulsion from the Garden (Oslo, N.G.). Using over life-size figures, set in a barren tempestuous landscape, Heyerdahl skilfully contrasted the youthful rage of Adam with the resigned despair of Eve. This sombre work won him a third prize medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878. Wilhelm TrubnerGerman, 1851-1917
was a German realist painter of the circle of Wilhelm Leibl. Trubner was born in Heidelberg and had early training as a goldsmith. In 1867 he met classicist painter Anselm Feuerbach who encouraged him to study painting, and he began studies in Karlsruhe under Fedor Dietz. The next year saw him studying at the Kunstacademie in Munich, where he was to be greatly impressed by an international exhibition of paintings by Leibl and Gustave Courbet. Courbet visited Munich in 1869, not only exhibiting his work but demonstrating his alla prima method of working quickly from nature in public performances. This had an immediate impact on many of the city's young artists, who found Courbet's approach an invigorating alternative to the shopworn academic tradition. The early 1870s were a period of discovery for Tr??bner. He travelled to Italy, Holland and Belgium, and in Paris encountered the art of Manet, whose influence can be seen in the spontaneous yet restrained style of Trubner's portraits and landscapes. During this period he also made the acquaintance of Carl Schuch, Albert Lang and Hans Thoma, German painters who, like Trubner, greatly admired the unsentimental realism of Wilhelm Leibl. This group of artists came to be known as the "Leibl circle". He published writings on art theory in 1892 and 1898, which express above all the idea that "beauty must lie in the painting itself, not in the subject". By urging the viewer to discover beauty in a painting's formal values, its colors, proportions, and surface, Trubner advanced a philosophy of "art for art's sake". George Bellows1882-1925
Growing prestige as a painter brought changes in his life and work. Though he continued his earlier themes, Bellows also began to receive portrait commissions, as well as social invitations, from New York's wealthy elite. Additionally, he followed Henri's lead and began to summer in Maine, painting seascapes on Monhegan and Matinicus islands.
At the same time, the always socially conscious Bellows also associated with a group of radical artists and activists called "the Lyrical Left", who tended towards anarchism in their extreme advocacy of individual rights. He taught at the first Modern School in New York City (as did his mentor, Henri), and served on the editorial board of the socialist journal, The Masses, to which he contributed many drawings and prints beginning in 1911. However, he was often at odds with the other contributors because of his belief that artistic freedom should trump any ideological editorial policy. Bellows also notably dissented from this circle in his very public support of U.S. intervention in World War I. In 1918, he created a series of lithographs and paintings that graphically depicted the atrocities committed by Germany during its invasion of Belgium. Notable among these was The Germans Arrive, which was based on an actual account and gruesomely illustrated a German soldier restraining a Belgian teen whose hands had just been severed. However, his work was also highly critical of the domestic censorship and persecution of anti-war dissenters conducted by the U.S. government under the Espionage Act.
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