Swiss-born British Romantic Painter, 1741-1825
Henry Fuseli was the first artist to command the epic literature and heroic history of northern Europe as well as the Mediterranean countries, and by his wide reading and close study of the Old Masters he equipped himself to extend the scope of history painting far beyond the traditional limits of the Bible and classical antiquity. In his speculative boldness he was a child of the Enlightenment, but he was also a fierce critic of sterile rationalism and preached the gospel of the imagination with religious fervor.
Henry Fuseli was born Johann Heinrich F??ssli (in 1764 he Anglicized his name) in Zurich on Feb. 6, 1741, the son of a painter with strong religious convictions who destined him for the Zwinglian ministry. After a period of intensive theological study Fuseli was ordained in 1761 and preached his first sermon. He was a friend of Johann Kaspar Lavater, whose Aphorisms on Man he later translated into English from manuscript. Fuseli became the favorite disciple of Johann Jakob Bodmer, who in 1740 had published an essay on the wonderful in poetry that led to a literary war with Johann Christoph Gottsched in Germany and the formation of a revolutionary Swiss school which used English literature, especially Milton and Shakespeare, as a spearhead in promoting romanticism. Related Paintings of Henry Fuseli :. | Die drei Eidgenossen beim Schwur auf den Rutli | Euphrosyne vor der Phantasie und der Temperantia | The artist in conversation with Johann Jakob Bodmer | Horseman attacked by a giant snake | David Garrick and Hannah Pritchard as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the Murder of Duncan | Related Artists:
BIONDO, Giovanni delItalian painter, Florentine school (active 1356-1392 in Florence)
Thomas Phillips(18 October 1770 - 20 April 1845) was a leading English portrait and subject painter. He painted many of the great men of the day including scientists, artists, writers, poets and explorers.
Phillips was born at Dudley then in Worcestershire. Having acquired the art of glass-painting in Birmingham under Francis Eginton,[1] he visited London in 1790 with an introduction to Benjamin West, who found him employment on the painted-glass windows of St George's Chapel at Windsor. In 1791, he became a student of the Royal Academy, and exhibited there, in 1792, a view of Windsor Castle, followed in the next two years by the "Death of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, at the Battle of Castillon," "Ruth and Naomi," "Elijah restoring the Widow's Son," "Cupid disarmed by Euphrosyne," and other pictures.
After 1796, he mainly confined himself to portrait-painting. However, the field was very crowded with the likes of John Hoppner, William Owen, Thomas Lawrence and Martin Archer Shee competing for business; consequently, from 1796 to 1800, his exhibited works were chiefly portraits of gentlemen and ladies, often nameless in the catalogue and of no great importance historically-speaking.
Cecelia Beaux1824-1900
William Holbrook Beard Gallery
Beard was born in Painesville, Ohio. He studied abroad, and in 1861 moved to New York City, where in 1862 he became a member of the National Academy of Design.
He was a prolific worker and a man of much inventiveness and originality, though of modest artistic endowment. His humorous treatment of bears, cats, dogs, horses and monkeys, generally with some human occupation and expression, usually satirical, gave him a great vogue at one time, and his pictures were largely reproduced.
His brother, James Henry Beard (1814-1893), was also a painter.
