Canadian-born American Impressionist Painter, 1858-1924
American painter, printmaker, illustrator and designer of Canadian birth. He moved with his family to Boston in 1868 and was working as a commercial artist by 1886, lettering showcards, but his early attempts at watercolour foretold little of the talent that emerged after he travelled to Paris in January 1891. He studied for three years at the Atelier Colarossi under Gustave Courtois (1853-1923), and later at the Acad?mie Julian under Benjamin Constant, Joseph Blanc and Jean-Paul Laurens. Related Paintings of Maurice Prendergast :. | Crescent Beach | Santa Maria Formosa Venice | Evening on a Pleasure Boat | From Darkness | St. Malo | Related Artists:
Frederick Walker,ARA,RWS1840-1875
English painter and illustrator. He acquired his training in drawing and painting through study in the British Museum (where he copied heavily from the Antique), a short period spent in an architect's office, life classes at Leigh's school, a studentship at the Royal Academy and three years' employment as a draughtsman on wood with the commercial engraver Josiah Wood Whymper (1813-1903).
NATTIER, Jean-MarcFrench Rococo Era Painter, 1685-1766
Brother of Jean-Baptiste Nattier. As well as being taught by his father, he trained with his godfather, Jean Jouvenet, and attended the drawing classes of the Acad?mie Royale, where in 1700 he won the Premier Prix de Dessin. From around 1703 he worked on La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg. The experience of copying the work of Rubens does not, however, seem to have had a liberating effect on his draughtsmanship, which was described by the 18th-century collector Pierre-Jean Mariette as 'cold'. Nattier was commissioned to make further drawings for engravers in the early part of his career, including those after Hyacinthe Rigaud's famous state portrait of Louis XIV (1701; Paris, Louvre) in 1710, which indicates that he had established a reputation while he was still quite young. Although he was offered a place at the Acad?mie de France in Rome on the recommendation of Jouvenet, Nattier preferred to remain in Paris and further his career. In 1717 he nevertheless made a trip to Holland, where he painted portraits of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine (St Petersburg, Hermitage).
Asher Brown Durand1796-1886
Asher Brown Durand Galleries
His interest shifted from engraving to oil painting around 1830 with the encouragement of his patron, Luman Reed. In 1837, he accompanied his friend Thomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and soon after he began to concentrate on landscape painting. He spent summers sketching in the Catskills, Adirondacks, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, making hundreds of drawings and oil sketches that were later incorporated into finished academy pieces which helped to define the Hudson River School.
Durand is particularly remembered for his detailed portrayals of trees, rocks, and foliage. He was an advocate for drawing directly from nature with as much realism as possible. Durand wrote, "Let [the artist] scrupulously accept whatever [nature] presents him until he shall, in a degree, have become intimate with her infinity...never let him profane her sacredness by a willful departure from truth."
Like other Hudson River School artists, Durand also believed that nature was an ineffable manifestation of God. He expressed this sentiment and his general views on art in his "Letters on Landscape Painting" in The Crayon, a mid-19th century New York art periodical. Wrote Durand, "[T]he true province of Landscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation..."
Durand is noted for his 1849 painting Kindred Spirits which shows fellow Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon his death in 1848. The painting, donated by Bryant's daughter Julia to the New York Public Library in 1904, was sold by the library through Sotheby's at an auction in May 2005 to Alice Walton for a purported $35 million. The sale was conducted as a sealed, first bid auction, so the actual sales price is not known. At $35 million, however, it would be a record price paid for an American painting at the time.