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 :. | Gabrielle with a Rose | Grand Canal, Venice | The Lesson | Studies of the Berard Children | White Pierrot |
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Isaac Grunewald
Swedish, 1889-1946,was a Swedish-Jewish Expressionist painter born in Stockholm. Having studied at a Swedish art school, at age nineteen Gr??newald travelled to Paris to study under Henri Matisse. In 1909 he gained recognition in his homeland when he exhibited his work at Halldins konsthandel. He met Fauvist painter Sigrid Hjert??n, who had studied at the College of Crafts and Design in Stockholm, and encouraged her to return with him to study in Paris. Married in 1911, they became part of a group of Scandinavian artists known as "De Unga" (The Young Ones). The Crane (1915) by Isaac GrunewaldGrenewald and Hjerten regularly exhibited together at home and abroad and art historians now often cite them as being responsible for introducing modernism to Sweden. At a time in history when anti-Semitism was widespread and women in art were frowned upon, although widely known they were never fully accepted by the artistic community of the day and their works were often the subject of ridicule. Partly as a result of this, Isaac Grunewald had to supplement his income creating stage designs for the Royal Dramatic Theatre and the Royal Swedish Opera. He decorated the walls and ceiling of an auditorium (since renamed Grunewald Hall) at the Stockholm Concert Hall, site of the Nobel Prize ceremony, and the walls of the Matchstick Palace. The author of numerous essays on art, with his 1918 exhibit at Stockholm's Liljevalchs Konsthall Isaac Grunewald published his manifesto on Expressionism and opened his own art school. During the Second World War Grunewald worked at the renowned Rorstrand porcelain factory. His wife Sigrid Hjerten suffered from lifelong mental health problems frequently evidenced by anxiety and paranoia that resulted in her being hospitalized for extended periods in the 1930s. During the marriage the couple were frequently apart from each other for long periods and they separated permanently in 1937 and soon divorced. Isaac Grunewald remarried and in 1946 both he and his second wife were killed in an airplane crash. He is buried in Stockholm's Norra begravningsplatsen ("Northern Cemetery"). His 1912 self-portrait and his 1915 painting "The Singing Tree" appeared on Swedish postage stamps. Today, institutions such as the Arken Museum of Modern Art in Ishoj, Denmark rank Grunewald and Hjerten among the 20th Century's most important Scandinavian artists.
John Kensett
1816-1872 John Kensett Art Galleries Artist John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, and died on December 14, 1872 in New York City. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City. In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting. There he met and traveled with Benjamin Champney. The two sketched and painted throughout Europe, refining their talents. During this period, Kensett developed an appreciation and affinity for 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Kensett and Champney returned to the United States in 1847. After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe. Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England. He is most closely associated with the so-called "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Along with Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fitz Hugh Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade and others, the works of the "Luminists," as they came to be known, were characterized by unselfconscious, nearly invisible brushstrokes used to convey the qualities and effects of atmospheric light. It could be considered the spiritual, if not stylistic, cousin to Impressionism. Such spiritualism stemmed from Transcendentalist philosophies of sublime nature and contemplation bringing one closer to a spiritual truth. In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art. Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway was purchased by the American Art Union, made into an engraving by James Smillie, and distributed to 13,000 Art Union subscribers throughout the country. Other artists painted copies of this scene from the print. Currier and Ives published a similar print in about 1860. This single painting by Kensett helped to popularize the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut.
Elias Martin
Swedish Painter, 1739-1818,Painter and engraver. After training in his father joinery shop and with the painter Friedrich Schultz (1709-69), he was engaged to design ornamentation for ships of the coastal fleet at Sveaborg (Finland). There he also taught drawing to the son of Field Marshal Count Augustin Ehrensv?rd (1710-72) while himself learning printmaking techniques from the Field Marshal. During this period Martin produced accurate studies of Finland coastal scenery and the Sveaborg fortress (e.g. Stockholm, Nmus.), as well as purely imaginary landscapes based on engravings. In 1766 he went to Paris and with Alexander Roslin help was able to study under Joseph Vernet at the Acad?mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. A direct result of his studies was a View of Paris from the Quay Beneath the Pont Neuf (1766-7; Stockholm, Nmus.).