French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | The Blind man bluff game | Der Garten der Villa d'Este | The See-Saw | The Meeting | Inspiration |
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Paul Raud
(22 October 1865 in Kirikukela, Viru-Jaagupi Parish C 22 November 1930 in Tallinn) was an Estonian painter. The twin brother of painter Kristjan Raud, he studied in Desseldorf beginning in 1886, becoming influenced by the work of Eduard Gebhardt. After his return to Estonia, he painted mainly portrait commissions for some time, before traveling with his brother and Amandus Adamson to the islands of Muhu and Pakri in 1896. His works of this period are reminiscent of those of Max Liebermann. In 1899 he returned to work in Germany, taking on some of the stylistic trappings of Impressionism; this, coupled with time spent working with Ilya Repin, influenced his later style. Later in his career, most especially during and after World War I, he began to teach, from 1915 working as a drawing instructor at the Tallinn Institute of Commerce and from 1923 at the State School of Industrial Art in Tallinn.
Ramsay Richard Reinagle
British Painter, 1775-1862 was an English portrait, landscape, and animal painter, and son of Philip Reinagle. Ramsay Richard Reinagle was a pupil of his father, whose style he followed, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy as early as 1788. He afterwards went to Italy, and was studying in Rome in 1796. Subsequently he visited Holland in order to study from the Dutch masters. After his return home he painted for a time at Robert Barker's panorama in Leicester Square, and then entered into partnership with Thomas Edward Barker, Robert's eldest son, who was not himself an artist, in order to erect a rival building in the Strand. They produced panoramas of Rome, the Bay of Naples, Florence, Gibraltar, Algeciras Bay, and Paris, but in 1816 disposed of their exhibition to Henry Aston Barker and John Burford. In 1805 Reinagle was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, and in 1806 a member. He became its treasurer in 1807, and was president from 1808 to 1812 Between 1806 and 1812 he sent to its exhibitions sixty-seven drawings, mostly Italian landscapes and scenery of the English lakes. During the same period he exhibited portraits and landscapes in oil at the Royal Academy, of which he became an associate in 1814, and an academician in 1823. He was a clever copyist of the old masters, and is said to have been much employed by a picture-dealer in restoring and 'improving ' their works.In 1848 he sent to the Royal Academy exhibition as his own work a small picture of 'Shipping a Breeze and Rainy Weather off Hurst Castle' painted by a young artist named J. W. Yarnold, which he had purchased at a broker's shop, and in which he had made some slight alterations. Attention was called to the imposition, and a full inquiry made by the academy resulted in his being called upon to resign his diploma as a royal academician. In 1850 he published in the 'Literary Gazzette' two letters in which he unsuccessfully endeavoured to exculpate himself.He continued to exhibit at the academy until 1857,
Charles Laval
(1862-1894) was a French painter born March 17, 1862 in Paris and who died April 27, 1894. He is associated with the Synthetic movement and Pont-Aven School, and he was a contemporary and friend of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Gauguin created a portrait of him in 1886 looking at one of Gauguin's Ceramic sculptures, entitled "Still Life with Profile of Laval". Paul Gauguin and Laval both came to Pension Gloanec in Pont-Aven in 1886 and became friends. In search of an exoticism that could provide the key to art, Gauguin and Laval went to Panama in 1887. To gain some subsidies, Laval performs academic portraits (all lost), using his experience received from Leon Bonnat. A series of mishaps caused Laval and Gauguin to leave the Central America for the island of Martinique.