Australian portrait painter , 1877 - 1906 was an Australian artist. Ramsay was born in Glasgow, Scotland, son of John Ramsay. He moved with his family to Melbourne in 1878. He was educated at Essendon Grammar School, and joined classes at the National Gallery of Victoria at age 16 under Lindsay Bernard Hall and became one of the most brilliant students ever trained there. He won several first prizes, and at the competition for the travelling scholarship held in 1899 was narrowly beaten by Max Meldrum, another student of unusual ability. Ramsay went to Europe in September 1900 and was fortunate in finding a kindred spirit, George Washington Lambert, on the same vessel. Arriving at Paris he entered Acad??mie Colarossi and was soon recognized as a student of great potential. He sent five pictures to the 1902 exhibition of La Soci??t?? Nationale des Beaux Arts and four of these were accepted and hung together. No greater compliment could have been paid to a young student. Another Australian student whose studio was in the same building, Ambrose McCarthy Patterson (nephew of Nellie Melba, then at the height of her fame). Ramsay was introduced to Melba, who gave him a commission for a portrait and would no doubt have been able to help him in his career. Unfortunately Ramsay became ill in Paris, and it became necessary for him to return to the warmer climate of Australia and the opportunity to paint Melba was missed. Before leaving Europe he had exhibited four pictures at the British Colonial Art Exhibition held in London at the Royal Institute galleries. Returning to Australia, in spite of failing health, Ramsay succeeded in doing some remarkable work including "The Sisters" now in the Sydney gallery, the "Lady with a Fan" (possibly his most famous painting), the portrait of David Scott Mitchell, and his own portrait now in the Melbourne gallery. He gradually became weaker and died on 5 March 1906.  Related Paintings of Hugh Ramsay :. | Sisters | Self portrait | Jeanne | Portrait of Miss Nellie Patterson | Self-portrait, bust showing hands |
Related Artists:
Alexander von Humboldt
Berlin 1769-1859 Berlin,was a German naturalist and explorer, and the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt's quantitative work on botanical geography was foundational to the field of biogeography. Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled to Latin America, exploring and describing it from a scientific point of view for the first time. His description of the journey was written up and published in an enormous set of volumes over 21 years. He was one of the first to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic were once joined (South America and Africa in particular). Later, his five-volume work Kosmos (1845) attempted to unify the various branches of scientific knowledge.
Kurt Schwitters
German Dadaist Painter and Sculptor, 1887-1948 German painter, sculptor, designer and writer. He studied at the Kunstakademie in Dresden (1909-14) and served as a clerical officer and mechanical draughtsman during World War I. At first his painting was naturalistic and then Impressionistic, until he came into contact with Expressionist art, particularly the art associated with Der Sturm, in 1918. He painted mystical and apocalyptic landscapes, such as Mountain Graveyard (1912; New York, Guggenheim), and also wrote Expressionist poetry for Der Sturm magazine. He became associated with the DADA movement in Berlin after meeting Hans Arp, Raoul Hausmann, Hannah H?ch and Richard Huelsenbeck, and he began to make collages that he called Merzbilder. These were made from waste materials picked up in the streets and parks of Hannover, and in them he saw the creation of a fragile new beauty out of the ruins of German culture. Similarly he began to compose his poetry from snatches of overheard conversations and randomly derived phrases from newspapers and magazines. His mock-romantic poem An Anna Blume, published in Der Sturm in August 1919, was a popular success in Germany. From this time 'Merz' became the name of Schwitters's one-man movement and philosophy. The word derives from a fragment of the word Kommerz, used in an early assemblage (Merzbild, 1919; destr.; see Elderfield, no. 42), for which Schwitters subsequently gave a number of meanings, the most frequent being that of 'refuse' or 'rejects'. In 1919 he wrote: 'The word Merz denotes essentially the combination, for artistic purposes, of all conceivable materials, and, technically, the principle of the equal distribution of the individual materials .... A perambulator wheel, wire-netting, string and cotton wool are factors having equal rights with paint'; such materials were indeed incorporated in Schwitters's large assemblages and painted collages of this period, for example Construction for Noble Ladies (1919; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.; see fig. 1; see also COLLAGE). Schwitters's essential aestheticism and formalism alienated him from the political wing of German Dada led by Huelsenbeck, and he was ridiculed as 'the Caspar David Friedrich of the Dadaist Revolution'. Although his work of this period is full of hints and allusions to contemporary political and cultural conditions, unlike the work of George Grosz or John Heartfield it was not polemical or bitterly satirical.
Francesco Maria Raineri
(February 2, 1676 - February 28, 1758) was an Italian painter of the late-Baroque, mainly active in Mantua. Also called Lo Schivenoglia after the town, just outside of the city of Mantua, of his birth. He was a pupil of Giovanni Canti. Among his works, he was known for his paintings of battle scenes, landscapes, and cappriccios (vedute of imaginary scenes) with historical or mythologic figures. He was named director of the Academy of painters in Mantua in 1752. He is known to have painted a St. Sebastian for the chapel of Santa Anna.