(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 | Kakhetian Epos - Alasan Valley | A Family of Deer | A Tatar Fruiterer | Reclining Woman |
Related Artists:
SARACENI, Carlo
Italian painter, Roman school (b. 1579, Venezia, d. 1620, Venezia). Italian painter. He is best known for his jewel-like paintings representing sacred and secular themes, which combine a delicate technique inspired by Adam Elsheimer with a note of observed realism owed to Caravaggio. He also painted altarpieces and worked in fresco.
Edwaert Collier
Dutch 1640-1706 Evert Collier was born about 1640 in Breda, Noord-Brabant, and died in 1708. He is believed to have trained in Haarlem, as his earliest paintings show the influence of Pieter Claesz and Vincent Laurensz van der Vinne. By 1667, he had moved to Leiden, where he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1673. He moved to Amsterdam by 1686 and to London in 1693. He was buried September 8, 1708 at St. James, Piccadilly. The Denver Art Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom), the Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam) and the Tate (London) are among the public collections having paintings by Evert Collier.
Paul Berthon
A truly gifted illustrator and poster artist , French , 1872-1909 French designer and lithographer. He began his training in Villefranche, where he studied painting, and in 1893 he moved to Paris, entering the Ecole Normale d'Enseignement du Dessin. There he became a pupil and disciple of Eug?ne-Samuel Grasset, the Professor of Decorative Arts, and was also influenced by Luc Olivier Merson. Berthon's main output consisted of posters and decorative panels. However, he also produced bookbindings and furniture designs, both of which he exhibited at the Salon in 1895; designs for ceramics for Villeroy & Boch in the late 1890s; and a few designs for the covers of such magazines as L'Image (July 1897) and Poster (May 1899). His work is in an Art Nouveau style, and he adopted that movement's plant and figural motifs, especially the motif of the femme fatale, and also its long sinuous lines.