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 See-Saw | Education is Everything | The Pond | Young Girl Reading | Badende |
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Laszlo Paal
Laszlo Paal (1846-1879) was a Hungarian Realist landscape painter. He was a pupil of Mihaly Munkacsy. His pictures are representative of lyrical realism: his oeuvre is related to the tendencies of the Barbizon School.
Nikolai Kuznetsov
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Adrian Vanson
Adrian Vanson (died c. 1602) was court portrait painter to James VI of Scotland. Adrian succeeded Arnold Bronckorst as court painter in Scotland in May 1584, and his appointment was subsequently confirmed by royal letter on 20 August 1584. Adrian Vanson was paid £8-10s in June 1581 for two pictures sent to Theodore Beza. A letter by James VI's former tutor Peter Young accompanied pictures of John Knox and George Buchanan sent to Geneva in November 1579 for the woodcuts in Beza's Icones (1580). The Scottish portraits arrived too late for the book, and the woodcuts of Knox and a James VI, thought to be by Vanson, were first published in Simon Goulart's edition of the Icones in 1581. The picture of George Buchanan, which was never published in Beza's Icones, but may have appeared in other later works, is attributed to Bronckorst. Knox from Beza's Icones, after Adrian VansonVanson also painted ceremonial spears and banners for the coronation of Anne of Denmark. When he was made a burgess of Edinburgh, it was hoped he would teach his craft to apprentices. He may have been 'Lord Seton's painter', who was recorded drawing portraits for coins at the mint in Edinburgh. There was a un-named Flemish painter working on the king's portrait at Stirling Castle in May 1579. This may have been Vanson or Bronckorst. According to the inventories of the Earl of Leicester, he had a portrait of the 'young king of Scots' in 1580, which may have been another copy of this picture. Leicester sent his own portrait to James VI, painted on canvas by Hubbard in 1583. Attributed portraits include James VI; Anne of Denmark; Patrick Lyon, Lord Glamis; Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean; Agnes Douglas, Countess of Argyll. Vanson's James VI of circa 1585 survives at Edinburgh castle. In May 1586 a French ambassador in Scotland, the Baron d'Esneval, promised to get Mary, Queen of Scots a copy of a recent portrait of James VI from the only painter in Edinburgh. There had been rumours of an embassy to Denmark to discuss the king's marriage in April 1586. It is thought the picture at Edinburgh Castle was made by Vanson for this embassy or a similar purpose.