1817-1887 French Francois Bonvin Location Bonvin was born in humble circumstances in Paris, the son of a police officer and a seamstress. When he was four years old his mother died of tuberculosis and young Francois was left in the care of an old woman who underfed him. Soon his father married another seamstress and brought the child back into the household. Nine additional children were born, putting a strain on the familys resources, and to make matters worse his stepmother took to abusing and undernourishing Francois. The young Bonvin started drawing at an early age. His potential was recognized by a friend of the family, who paid for him to attend a school for drawing instruction at age eleven. This instruction ended after two years, when his father apprenticed him to a printer, and Bonvin was to remain mostly self-taught as an artist. He spent his free time at the Louvre where he especially appreciated the Dutch old masters. Bonvin married a laundress at the age of twenty, at about the same time that he secured a job at the headquarters of the Paris police. It was during this period in his life that he also contracted an illness which would trouble him for the rest of his life. Bonvin exhibited three paintings in the Salon of 1849, where he was awarded a third-class medal. He exhibited in the Salon of 1850 with Courbet, and won recognition as a leading realist, painting truthfully the lives of the poor which he knew at first hand. His paintings were well received by critics and by the public. Although his work had elements in common with Courbets, his modestly scaled paintings were not seen as revolutionary. He was awarded the Legion d honneur in 1870. His subjects were still life and the everyday activities of common people, painted in a style that is reminiscent of Pieter de Hooch and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. It is the latter who is especially recalled by Bonvins delicate luminosity. In 1881 he underwent an operation which did not restore him to health, and he became blind. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1886. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1887.   Related Paintings of Francois Bonvin :. | Style life with brewed | The Ave Maria;Interior of a Convent at Aramont,Verberie(Oise) | Stilleben mit Spargel | Still life with Lemon and Oysters | Seated Boy with a Portfolio |
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Jean-Louis Forain
1852-1931 French painter, printmaker and illustrator. Around 1860 he moved with his family to Paris, where he was taught by Jacquesson de la Chevreuse (1839-1903), Jean Baptiste Carpeaux and Andre Gill. He participated in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and was a friend of the poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud; the latter is the presumed subject of a portrait (1874; priv. col., see 1982 exh. cat., no. 1) that may have influenced Manet late portrait of Mallarme (1876; Paris, Louvre). Forain first met Manet through his friendship with Degas in the early 1870s at the salon of Nina de Callias. He continued to associate with Manet, meeting the group of young Impressionists at the Cafe Guerbois and the Cafe de la Nouvelle Athenes. In 1878 Forain painted a small gouache, Cafe Scene (New York, Brooklyn Mus.), which probably influenced Manet Bar at the Folies-Bergere (1881-2; London, Courtauld Inst. Gals).
Joseph Badger
(ca.1707-1765) was a portrait artist in Boston, Massachusetts in the 18th-century. He painted some 80 portraits of merchants, businessmen, clergy, and other notables, and their wives and children. Badger was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, to tailor Stephen Badger and Mercy Kettell. In 1731 he married Katharine Felch; they moved to Boston around 1733. He was a member of the Brattle Street Church. He "began his career as a house-painter and glazier, and ... throughout his life continued this work, besides painting signs, hatchments and other heraldic devices, in order to eke out a livelihood when orders for portraits slackened."
johan gustaf sandberg
Johan Gustaf Sandberg, född 1782, död 1854, var målare; han var professor i teckning vid Konstakademien från 1828, och direktör där 1845?C1853. Sandberg ägnade sig främst åt historiemåleri, med motiv ur nordisk mytologi och svensk historia. Hans främsta verk inom detta område är kalkmålningarna över Gustav Vasa i Uppsala domkyrka. Han målade också en mängd porträtt. Sandberg blev 1794 elev i konstakademins principskola och 1801 i antikskolan, lärde samtidigt musik och klaverspelning och tjänade pengar genom lektioner och genom arbete på kungliga teaterns dekorationsmålarverkstad. Under den följande tiden slöt han sig till den opposition mot akademin, som hade sin medelpunkt i "Sällskapet för konststudium". Tvisten med akademin lade sig snart, Sandberg valdes till ledamot 1821 och blev ordinarie professor 1828. Däremot hade han aldrig tillfälle att göra den för äldre tiders konstnärer obligatoriska studieresan till södern. Han utförde teckningarna till praktverket "Ett år i Sverige" (1827 -35) med bilderna graverade under Christian Didrik Forssells ledning och texten skriven av Anders Abraham Grafström. Under upprepade sommarvistelser på Säfstaholms slott målade Sandberg folktyper och folkdräkter. Åtskilliga porträtt utförde Sandberg för det praktfulla "Galleri af utmärkta svenska lärde, vetenskapsidkare och konstnärer", som han utgav 1835?C42 (100 porträtt, litograferade av J. Cardon).