French Baroque Era Painter, 1612-1695 Pierre Mignard (7 novembre 1612 - May 30, 1695), called "Le Romain" to distinguish him from his brother Nicolas, was a French painter. He was born at Troyes, and came of a family of artists; he also needs to be distinguished from his nephew Pierre (1640-1725), often called "Pierre II" or "Le Chevalier". In 1630 he left the studio of Simon Vouet for Italy, where he spent twenty-two years, and made a reputation which brought him a summons to Paris. Successful with his portrait of the king, and in favour with the court, Mignard pitted himself against Le Brun, declined to enter the Academy of which he was the head, and made himself the centre of opposition to its authority. The history of this struggle is most important, because it was identical, as long as it lasted, with that between the old gilds of France and the new body which Colbert, for political reasons, was determined to support.. Portrait of Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth. Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Pierre Mignard Shut out, in spite of the deserved success of his decorations of the cupola of Val de Grace (1664), from any great share in those public works, the control of which was the attribute of the new Academy, Mignard was chiefly active in portraiture. Turenne, Moliere, Bossuet, Maintenon (Louvre), La Valliere, Sevigne, Montespan, Descartes (Castle Howard), all the beauties and celebrities of his day, sat to him. His readiness and skill, his happy instinct for grace of arrangement, atoned for want of originality and real power. With the death of Le Brun (1690) the situation changed. Mignard deserted his allies, and succeeded to all the posts held by his opponent. These late honours he did not long enjoy. In 1695 he died whilst about to commence work on the cupola of the Invalides. His best compositions have been engraved by Audran, Edelinck, Masson, Poilly and others. There is a good selection of works by Pierre, Nicolas, and Pierre II in Avignon at the Mus??e Calvet. The Courtauld Institute of Art (London), Harvard University Art Museums, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Kunst Indeks Danmark, the Louvre, Mus??e d'art et d'histoire (Geneva), Mus??e des Augustins (Toulouse, France), Mus??e Ingres (Montauban, France), Museo Lombardi (Parma, Italy), the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Gallery, London, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum and Versailles are among the public collections holding works by Pierre Mignard  Related Paintings of Pierre Mignard :. | portrait of colbert de villacerf. c | Portrait of Henrietta of England | Portrait of Olympia Mancini | Madame de Maintenant | The Mystical Marriage of St. Catherine |
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Hieronymus Bosch
Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1450-1516, Flemish painter. His surname was originally van Aeken; Bosch refers to 's Hertogenbosch, where he was born and worked. Little is known of his life and training, although it is clear that he belonged to a family of painters. His paintings, executed in brilliant colors and with an uncanny mastery of detail, are filled with strangely animated objects, bizarre plants and animals, and monstrous, amusing, or diabolical figures believed to have been suggested by folk legends, allegorical poems, moralizing religious literature, and aspects of late Gothic art. Such works as the Garden of Earthly Delights (Prado) appear to be intricate allegories; their symbolism, however, is obscure and has consistently defied unified interpretation. Bosch clearly had an interest in the grotesque, the diabolical, the exuberant, and the macabre. He also may have been the first European painter to depict scenes of everyday life, although often with a strong element of the bizarre. King Philip II of Spain collected some of his finest creations. The Temptation of St. Anthony (Lisbon) and The Last Judgment were recurring themes. Other examples of his art may be seen in the Escorial and in Brussels. Examples of the Adoration of the Magi are in the Metropolitan Museum and in the Philadelphia Museum, which also has the Mocking of Christ. Bosch, who deeply influenced the work of Peter Bruegel the Elder, was hailed in the 20th cent. as a forerunner of the surrealists, and his work continues to influence many contemporary artists.
Georges Seurat
French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.
William Mulready
(1 April 1786 - 7 July 1863) was an Irish genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes, and for creating Mulready stationery letter sheets, issued at the same time as the Penny Black postage stamp. William Mulready was born in Ennis, County Clare. Early in his life, in 1792, the family moved to London, where he was able to get an education and was taught painting well enough so that he was accepted at the Royal Academy School at the age of fourteen. Choosing the Wedding Gown illustrating ch 1 of Vicar of Wakefield by Oliver GoldsmithIn 1802, he married Elizabeth Varley (1784-1864), a landscape painter. Their three children, Paul Augustus (1805-1864), William (1805-1878), and Michael (1807-1889) also became artists. His relationship with his wife however deteriorated gradually over the years, which is detailed in papers stored at the library of the Victoria and Albert Museum. His strong Catholic beliefs prevented any chance of a divorce but they separated. He accused her of "bad conduct" but shied from providing details. In a letter to him in 1827 she blamed him entirely for the collapse of their marriage, suggesting cruelty, pederastic activities and adultery were the reasons. His son, William Mulready Junior (1805-1878), lived in London and maintained a career of a portrait painter and picture restorer. He had five children (Ellen, Mary, Augustus Edwin, Henry William, and John).They also were trained as artists, but not all of them pursued the artistic career: Henry William and John described themselves as 'house painters'. Augustus Edwin Mulready (1844-1904) was the most successful of them and became known as a member of the Cranbrook Colony of artists.