English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Village | Self-portrait | Watercolour | Number seven | Castle von Kilgarran am Twyvey |
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Scarsellino
(1550 (or 1551) - 1620), was an Italian Late-Renaissance - Mannerist painter of the School of Ferrara. He was born and died in Ferrara; however, he traveled and worked extensively across Italy, encountering many influences. He was born to an artist father, the less-talented Sigismondo Scarsella. Apparently he lived in Venice for 4 years around 1570, though it is not known if he was affiliated to a particular studio. His early works show the influences of various contemporary styles and painters including the venetian schools and locally Dosso Dossi. A number of his works now are at the Galleria Borghese in Rome, The Bathing Venus, Diana and Endymion and Venus and Adonis. Scarsellino worked alongside the brothers Carracci in the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. However, unlike the Carracci, Scarsellino's paintings have a decorative quality, and lack monumentality. World War II bombing of Dresden destroyed two of his paintings: Flight into Egypt and Holy Family at Work.
Lambert, George
English Painter, ca.1700-1765 English painter. He was a pupil of Warner Hassels ( fl 1680-1710), a portrait painter in Godfrey Kneller's circle, but Lambert's earliest dated painting, Classical Landscape with Two Figures (1723; priv. col.), already shows the influence of the landscape painter John Wootton. From 1726 he worked in London as a scene painter at Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre; he followed the impresario John Rich to Covent Garden Theatre in 1732 and continued to work there until his death. In 1735 he was a founder-member of the prestigious Beef-Steak Club, an association of actors, men of letters and artists, among them William Hogarth and Rich.
Johann Georg Ziesenis
(b Copenhagen, 1716; d Hannover, 4 March 1776). German painter of Danish birth. He trained with his father, Johann Georg Ziesenis (1681-1748); he became a German citizen in 1743 and subsequently was appointed court painter to Herzog Christian von Pfalz-Zweibrecken in Zweibrecken and, later, Mannheim. In the early 1750s he overcame his technical shortcomings by studying Flemish art, particularly the work of Rubens and van Dyck. He also introduced a new genre, the private court portrait. His portrait of Karl Philipp Theodor, Kurferst von der Pfalz (1757; Munich, Alte Pin.) is original in its intimate view of a nobleman posed at leisure in casual dress, seated in his private study.