French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Bathers at Asnieres | Seine-s Dusk | The circus | Sunday Afternoon on the island of the Grande Jatte (nn03) | The Sail boat |
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Peter Monamy
was an English marine painter who lived between 1681 and 1749. Peter Monamy was baptised at the church of St Botolph's-without-Aldgate, London, England, on 12 January 1681 (new style). He was the last known surviving child of Peter, or Pierre, Monamy, born 1650 in Guernsey, and his English wife, Dorothy Gilbert; and the grandson of Andre Monamy, 1612-1680, who had been a strongly committed Commonwealth Parliamentarian in Guernsey during the 1650s. Dorothy Gilbert was the daughter of James Gilbert, who was Master of the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers in 1670 and 1672. The Monamy family had been prominent merchants and residents of Guernsey since at least the 1560s, and in the Channel Islands since the 1530s. The painter's father, Pierre, had a brother named Andre, or Andrew, who was active in London as a merchant trader in salt and wool, during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In December, 1696, Andrew Monamy, together with his cousin, Daniel Le Febvre, is described as "guardian" of the children of Peter (i.e. Pierre) Monamy, deceased. The elder Peter Monamy appears to have died in about 1685. On 3 September 1696, Peter Monamy, aged 15, was bound as an apprentice for seven years by indenture to William Clark, a former (1687) Master of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers, one of London's ancient guilds of craftsmen. Clark is recorded in several capacities in the London of the late 17th century, as a constable and juryman, with premises in Thames Street, and on London Bridge, and practised as what would today be called an interior decorator, with a thriving business. House decoration comprised a wide range of activities, including the provision of paintings as overdoors, and on panelling, house murals on canvas as well as decorative sign-boards for trade establishments. William Clark died before January, 1704, when his will was proved.
MASTER of the St. Bartholomew Altar
German painter active 1470-1510 in Cologne
James Peele
James Peale (1749 - May 24, 1831) was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale. Peale was born in Chestertown, Maryland, the second child, after Charles, of Charles Peale (1709 - 1750) and Margaret Triggs (1709 - 1791). His father died when he was an infant, and the family moved to Annapolis. In 1762 he began to serve apprenticeships there, first in a saddlery and later in a cabinetmaking shop. After his brother Charles returned from London in 1769, where he had studied with Benjamin West, Peale served as his assistant and learned how to paint. Peale worked in his brother's studio until January 14, 1776, when he accepted a commission in the Continental Army as an ensign in William Smallwood's regiment. Within three months he was promoted to captain, and during the next three years fought in the battles of Long Island, White Plains, Trenton, Brandywine, Germantown, Princeton, and Monmouth. He resigned his army commission in 1779, and moved to Philadelphia to live with his brother. In 1782 he married, after which he established his own household and artistic career. (One notable later collaboration, however, was in 1788 to make floats for Philadelphia's Federal Procession in honor of the newly drafted United States Constitution.)