French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | View at Dolce Acqua with the Borgho Antico the bridge over the Nervia and the Doria Castle Postcard | Madame Thurneysen and her Daughter | Sailor Boy | Woman Reading fff | Seated Nude (detail) |
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Jan van Hemessen
(c. 1500 - c. 1566) was a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter. He was born in Hemiksem, then called Hemessen or Heymissen. Following studies in Italy, in 1524 he settled in Antwerp. A mannerist, his images focused on human failings such as greed and vanity. Like his daughter, Catarina van Hemessen,he specialised in painted portraits. Jan Sanders van Hemessen was a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter who was part of the mannerist movement. He was born in Hemessen in the Netherlands but settled in Antwerp in 1524 after studying in Italy. Hemessen specialized in scenes of human character flaws such as vanity and greed. His pictures are often religious, while his style helped found the Flemish traditions of genre painting. Hemessen was also a portrait painter, which influenced his daughter to become a Flemish Northern Renaissance painter as well. The Surgeon of 1555 is an oil painting by Jan Sanders Van Hemessen currently in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain. The scene likely represents a stonecutter at a fair. The surgeon, who is clearly happy that his operations have been successful, painstakingly moves his knife towards the stone, which is already visible. Behind him hang stones which have been successfully cut out of the head of other patients as a sign of his skill. Next to the quack stands a man who is wringing his hands in desperation, clearly going to be the next patient under the scalpel.
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Danish Neoclassical Painter, 1783-1853 Danish painter and teacher. He has been called 'the father of Danish painting' because of the influence he exerted on Danish painters in the second quarter of the 19th century. With Christen K?bke he was the leading painter of the Danish 'Golden Age' (c. 1800-1850).
Gabriel Bella
Italian, 1730-1799