(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 :. | Nanny Goat | Feast in the Grape Pergola or Feast of Three Noblemen | Lion | Village | Childless Millionaire and a Poor Woman Blessed with Children |
Related Artists:
Georges de La Tour
1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.
Dirk Valkenburg
(1675, Amsterdam - 1721, Amsterdam), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. According to the RKD he was a pupil of Michiel van Musscher, Herman van Vollenhove, and Jan Weenix. In 1698 he worked in Vienna for the Prince of Liechtenstein, and from 1706-1707 he travelled to Surinam to draw the native plants and birds for the wealthy city secretary of Amsterdam, Jonas Witsen, who owned a plantation there and whom he met through his teacher Musscher. He is known for exotic landscapes, paintings of birds, and fruit and flower still lifes.
Giovanni Santi
(c. 1435 - 1 August 1494) was an Italian painter and decorator, father of Raphael. He was born at Colbordolo in the Duchy of Urbino. He was a petty merchant for a time; he then studied under Piero della Francesca. He was influenced by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and seems to have been an assistant and friend of Melozzo da Forle. He was court painter to the Duke of Urbino and painted several altarpieces, two now in the Berlin Museum, a Madonna in the church of San Francesco in Urbino, one at Santa Croce on Fano, one in the National Gallery at London, and another in the gallery at Urbino; an Annunciation at the Brera in Milan; a resurrected Christ in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and a Jerome in the Lateran. He died in Urbino.