French 1844-1910 Henri Rousseau Locations He was born in Laval in the Loire Valley into the family of a plumber. He attended Laval High School as a day student and then as a boarder, after his father became a debtor and his parents had to leave the town upon the seizure of their house. He was mediocre in some subjects at the high school but won prizes for drawing and music. He worked for a lawyer and studied law, but "attempted a small perjury and sought refuge in the army," serving for four years, starting in 1863. With his father's death, Rousseau moved to Paris in 1868 to support his widowed mother as a government employee. In 1871, he was promoted to the toll collector's office in Paris as a tax collector. He started painting seriously in his early forties, and by age 49 he retired from his job to work on his art. His wife died in 1888 and he later remarried. Rousseau claimed he had "no teacher other than nature", although he admitted he had received "some advice" from two established Academic painters, Felix Auguste-Clement and Jean-Leon Gerome. Essentially he was self-taught and is considered to be a naive or primitive painter.  Related Paintings of Henri Rousseau :. | Sergeant Frumence Biche | The Tiger Hunt | tiger in a tropical storm | The Mexican Picador | A Carnival Evening |
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Ciro Ferri
Italian Baroque Era Painter and Sculptor , ca.1634-1689 was an Italian Baroque sculptor and painter, the chief pupil and successor of Pietro da Cortona. He was born in Rome, where he began working under Cortona and with a team of artists in the extensive fresco decorations of the Quirinal Palace (1656-1659). He collaborated with Cortona and completed for him the extensive frescoed ceilings and other internal decorations begun in the Pitti Palace, Florence (1659-1665). His independent masterpiece is considered an extensive series of scriptural frescoes in the church of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore (Bergamo). In addition, also well known is his an altarpiece of St Ambrose Healing the Sick in the church of Sant'Ambrogio della Massima in Rome. In 1670, he began the painting of the cupola of Sant'Agnese in Agone in central Rome, in a style recalling of Lanfranco's work in the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle; but died before it was completed in 1693 by his successor Sebastiano Corbellini. He executed also a large amount of miscellaneous designs, such as etchings and frontispieces for books; and served as an architect as well. Ferri was appointed to direct the Florentine students in Rome, and Gabbiani was one of his leading pupils. As regards style, Ferri ranks as chief of the grand manner of Cortona, as opposed to the more sober and spare style promulgated by Andrea Sacchi, and continued by Carlo Maratta and others.
Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat
(20 June 1833 - 8 September 1922) was a French painter. He was born in Bayonne, but from 1846 to 1853 he lived in Madrid, where his father owned a bookshop. While tending his father's shop, he copied engravings of works by the Old Masters, developing a passion for drawing. In Madrid he received his artistic training under Madrazo. He later worked in Paris, where he became known as a leading portraitist, never without a commission. His many portraits show the influence of Velezquez, Jusepe de Ribera and other Spanish masters, as well as Titian and Van Dyke, whose works he studied in the Prado. Following the period in Spain Bonnat worked the ateliers of the history painters Paul Delaroche and Leon Cogniet (1854) in Paris. Despite repeated attempts, he failed to win the prix de Rome, finally receiving only a second prize. However, a scholarship from his native Bayonne allowed him to spend three years in Rome (1858 - 60) independently. During his stay in Rome, he became friends with Edgar Degas, Gustave Moreau, Jean-Jacques Henner and the sculptor Henri Chapu. He won a medal of honor in Paris in 1869, going on to become one of the leading artists of his day. Bonnat went on to win the Grand Officer of the Legion d'honneur and became a professor at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1882. Bonnat was quite popular with American students in Paris. In addition to his native French, he spoke Spanish and Italian and knew English well, to the relief of many monolingual Americans. In May 1905 he succeeded Paul Dubois as director of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Bonnat "was a liberal teacher who stressed simplicity in art above high academic finish, as well as overall effect rather than detail," explains Julius Kaplan (see References). Bonnat's emphasis on overall effect on the one hand, and rigorous drawing on the other, put him in a middle position with respect to the Impressionists and academic painters like his friend Jean-Leon Gerôme.
Rik Wouters
(21 August 1882, Mechelene11 July 1916, Amsterdam) was a Belgian fauvist painter and sculptor. Wouters was educated at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.