(born Niko Pirosmanashvili; May 5, 1862-1918) was a Georgian primitivist painter. Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a pleasant family in the Kakheti province. His family owned a small vineyard. He was later orphaned and put in the care of his two elder sisters. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872 he worked as a servant for wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876 he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman. Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882 he opened a workshop in Tbilisi which was unsuccessful. In 1890 he worked as a railroad conductor, and in 1895 worked creating signboards. In 1893 he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi which he left in 1901. Throughout his life Pirosmani, who was always poor, was willing to take up ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than abstract aesthetics.  Related Paintings of Niko Pirosmanashvili :. | Childless Millionaire and a Poor Woman Blessed with Children | A Peasant Woman with Children Going to Fetch Water | Giorgi Saakadze | The Russo-Japanese War | A Rich Kinto's Son |
Related Artists:
Thomas Beach
British Painter, 1738-1806,English painter. He studied with Joshua Reynolds from 1760 until early in 1762, during which time he was also a student at the St Martin's Lane Academy, London. He probably settled in Bath; his recorded portraits of the 1760s are all of sitters from Dorset or Somerset, and he sent two portraits from an address in Bath to the Society of Artists exhibition of 1772. He exhibited with the Society until 1783, becoming its vice-president (1782) and president (1783) he also exhibited at the Royal Academy (1785-90, 1797). He probably divided his mature practice between London and Bath. His early reliance on Reynolds's ideas of propriety gave way to a more direct approach, seen at its best in such group portraits as The Stapleton Family (1789; U. Bath, Holburne of Menstrie Mus.). In this work, the four children are shown in costume, as a fortune-teller and her customers. The theatrical element in Beach's work, reflecting his interest in the stage, is seen most strikingly in Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble in 'Macbeth' Act 2, Scene ii (1786; London, Garrick Club). Beach's diary for 1798, the only one to have survived, chronicles what appears to have been an annual tour of the west country; that year he completed 31 portraits between June and December. Beach was able to capture a strong likeness and this, despite a certain naivety and awkwardness in composition, was enough to establish his reputation in moderately fashionable provincial circles. His last recorded work is a Self-portrait
Persac Marie Adrien
French-born Louisiana artist , 1823 - 1873
Arvid Johanson
(born 3 February 1929) was a Norwegian newspaper editor and politician for the Labour Party. He served five full terms in the Parliament of Norway, was Norway's second Minister of Petroleum and Energy, and outside of politics he spent most of his career in the newspaper Halden Arbeiderblad. He was born in Halden as a son of Arvid Martin Johanson (1896 - 1981) and housewife Karla Niemi (1899 - 1932). He started his career as a journalist in Halden Arbeiderblad in 1947, and remained there for a year. In 1949 he worked in Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad. He returned to Halden Arbeiderblad, and remained there for the rest of his career. He underwent studies at the Norwegian Journalist Academy from 1942 to 1953 and at Fircroft College from 1954 to 1955. He was a board member of the county chapter of the Norwegian Press Association from 1954 to 1955.