American Hudson River School Painter, 1837-1926 American painter and printmaker of English birth. His brothers Edward (1829-1901), John ( 1831-1902) and Peter (1841-1914) were also active as artists. His family emigrated from England and in 1844 settled in Philadelphia where Moran began his career as an illustrator. He was guided by his brother Edward, an associate of the marine painter James Hamilton, whose successful career afforded an example for Moran. Between the ages of 16 and 19 Moran was apprenticed to the Philadelphia wood-engraving firm Scattergood & Telfer; he then began to paint more seriously in watercolour and expanded his work as an illustrator. In the 1860s he produced lithographs of the landscapes around the Great Lakes. While in London in 1862 (the first of many trips to England), he was introduced to the work of J. M. W. Turner, which remained a vital influence on him throughout his career. Moran owned a set of the Liber studiorum and was particularly impressed by Turner's colour and sublime conception of landscape. With his wife, Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-99), an etcher and landscape painter, he participated in the Etching Revival, scraping fresh and romantic landscapes and reproductive etchings  Related Paintings of Moran, Thomas :. | Pass at Glencoe, Scotland | Chicago World's Fair | Untitled lithograph | Gathering Storm near Maravatio, Mexico | The Grand Canal |
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Joseph Anton Koch
1768-1839 Austrian Joseph Anton Koch Galleries was an Austrian painter of the German Romantic movement. The Tyrolese painter left academic training in the Karlsschule Stuttgart, a strict military academy, and traveled through France and Switzerland. He arrived in Rome in 1795. Koch was close to the painter Asmus Jacob Carstens and carried on Carstens' 'heroic' art, at first in a literal manner. After 1800 Koch developed as a landscape painter. In Rome he espoused a new type of 'heroic' landscape, revising the classical compositions of Poussin and Lorrain with a more rugged, mountainous scenery. He left Rome in 1812 and stayed in Vienna until 1815, in protest of the French invasion. During this period he incorporated more non-classical themes in his work. In Vienna he was influenced by Friedrich Schlegel and enthusiasts of old German art. In response, his style became harsher, and this new approach had a wide influence on German landscape painters who visited Rome.
Merson, Luc-Olivier
French Painter, 1846-1920 French painter and illustrator. He was the son of the painter and art critic Charles-Olivier Merson (1822-1902) and trained initially at the Ecole de Dessin in Paris under Gustave Adolphe Chassevent (1818-1901) and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils. He made his d?but at the Salon in 1867 and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1869 with the melodramatic work, the Soldier of Marathon (1869; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). As a prizewinner he then spent five years in Italy, where he was impressed and influenced by the works of the Italian Primitives, as is apparent in such works as St Edmund, King and Martyr (1871; Troyes, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.), with its muted colours and rigid composition. In the Salon of 1875 he exhibited Sacrifice for the Country, St Michael, which had been commissioned as a design for a Gobelins tapestry for the Salle des Ev?ques in the Panth?on, Paris. Soon afterwards he was chosen to decorate the Galerie de St Louis in the Palais de Justice, Paris, with scenes from the life of Louis IX. This resulted in two large works, Louis Opening the Doors of the Gaols on his Accession and Louis Condemning Sire Enguerrand de Coucy (both 1877). He also used historical, often religious, subjects for his smaller-scale works, as in St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Fish (1880; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.).
Emile Munier
was a French academic artist and student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Emile Munier was born in Paris and lived with his family at 66 rue des Fosses, St. Marcel. His father, Pierre François Munier, was an artist upholsterer at the Manufacture Nationale des Gobelins and his mother, Marie Louise Carpentier, was a polisher in a cashmere cloth mill. Emile and his two brothers, François and Florimond, were gifted artists and each spent some time at the Gobelins. During Emile's training he developed a close relationship with his professor Abel Lucas and his family. He eventually married Abel's daughter Henriette. During the 1860s, Munier received three medals at the Beaux-Arts and in 1869 he exhibited at the Paris Salon. He became a great supporter of the Academic ideals and a follower of Bouguereau, whose subject matter would be an important inspiration to the young Munier. In 1867, Henriette gave birth to a son, Emile Henri. Six weeks after the birth, having contracted severe rheumatism, Henriette died prematurely. In 1871, Munier abandoned his career as an upholsterer and devoted his time solely to painting; he also began teaching classes to adults three nights a week. Sargine Augrand, a student of Abel Lucas and a close friend of Emile and Henriette (before she died), caught Emile eye; they married in 1872 and lived in a small apartment and studio. Munier frequented the studio of Bouguereau, and they became friends. In 1885 he painted, and exhibited at the Paris Salon, Trois Amis (Favourite Pets). This painting, representing a chubby girl playing on her bed with a kitten and a dog, was an extremely successful work, being reproduced in many forms and used for publicity posters by Pears Soap. With this work, Emile asserted himself as one of inters of young children and their pets; it was eventually acquired by an American collector. Among his many American patrons were Chapman H. Hyams and his wife, who were important collectors of contemporary French paintings during the 19th century and favored artists like Henner, Bouguereau, Gerôme, Vinel and Schreyer. Munier painted their portrait in 1889, and it, along with much of their collection, is now in the New Orleans Museum of Art. During the 1890s Munier continued to paint peasant, mythological and religious subjects. In 1893 he exhibited L'esprit de la chute d'eau, at the Paris Salon, a nude nymph whom is not unlike Naissance de Venus by Bouguereau.