French 1594-1665 Nicolas Poussin Galleries The finest collection of Poussin's paintings, in addition to his drawings, is located in the Louvre in Paris. Besides the pictures in the National Gallery and at Dulwich, England possesses several of his most considerable works: The Triumph of Pan is at Basildon House, near to Pangbourne, (Berkshire), and his great allegorical painting of the Arts at Knowsley. The later version of Tancred and Erminia is at the Barber Institute in Birmingham. At Rome, in the Colonna and Valentini Palaces, are notable works by him, and one of the private apartments of Prince Doria is decorated by a great series of landscapes in distemper. Throughout his life he stood aloof from the popular movement of his native school. French art in his day was purely decorative, but in Poussin we find a survival of the impulses of the Renaissance coupled with conscious reference to classic work as the standard of excellence. In general we see his paintings at a great disadvantage: for the color, even of the best preserved, has changed in parts, so that the harmony is disturbed; and the noble construction of his designs can be better seen in engravings than in the original. Among the many who have reproduced his works, Audran, Claudine Stella, Picart and Pesne are the most successful.  Related Paintings of Nicolas Poussin :. | St Cecilia | St Cecilia | Gemaldefolge | The Triumph of Flora | The Inspiration of the Poet |
Related Artists:
Alphonse Mucha
1860-1939 Czech Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (today's region of Czech Republic). His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, even though drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrusovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected demand for a new poster to advertise a play starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris, at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster within two weeks, and on 1 January 1895, the advertisement for Gismonda appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Bernhardt was so satisfied with the success of that first poster that she entered into a 6 years contract with Mucha. Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used paler pastel colors. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris diffused the "Mucha style" internationally. He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian one. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he wanted always to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.
Heinrich von Angeli
1840 - 1925 Austrian painter. In 1853 he moved to Vienna to live with his uncle, who was a collector and a friend of the painters Friedrich von Amerling and Mathias Ranftl (1805-54). Angeli's early Self-portrait reflects the precocious maturity of his style, and in 1854 he enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste in Vienna. In 1856, on the advice of Amerling, he went to study under Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze in D?sseldorf, where he executed one of his most significant history paintings, Mary Stuart Reading her Death Warrant (1857). In 1859 he moved to Munich, where he worked independently and was encouraged by Karl Theodor von Piloty, producing the history paintings Ludwig XI and Franz de Paula (1859) and Antony and Cleopatra for Ludwig I of Bavaria. In 1862 he again settled in Vienna, where he enjoyed increasing success. The life-size portrait of Baronin Seidler and the genre painting Avengers of Honour (1869), both exhibited at the Weltausstellung in Vienna in 1873, secured his reputation. After brief stays in Paris and Berlin (c. 1866), he went in 1871 to Italy, where he painted numerous portraits and the genre work Absolution Denied. His final genre paintings, Youthful Love (sold London, Sotheby's, 3 Oct 1980) and Calabrian Shepherd Couple, also date from this year. Henceforth he devoted himself entirely to portrait painting, receiving important commissions from such aristocratic circles as the Kinsky and Auersperg families (e.g. Graf Anton Alexander Auersperg, 1876; Vienna, Pr?sidium des Nationalrates). Whereas his early portraits were influenced by Amerling, Anton Einsle and 17th-century Dutch art, from the 1870s he developed his own elegant and restrained style. This helped him to obtain commissions at the courts of Vienna, St Petersburg and London
MOEYAERT, Claes Cornelisz.
Dutch painter (b. 1590/91, Durgerdam, d. 1655, Durgerdam) Dutch painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was the son of an aristocratic Catholic Amsterdam merchant and moved to the city with his family in 1605. He was the most prolific of the history painters now called the PRE-REMBRANDTISTS, whose representations of biblical and mythological narratives, as well as of more recent secular history, give particular emphasis to dramatic and psychological effects. After working initially as a draughtsman and etcher, Moeyaert soon made his name as a painter. Landscapes with animals feature prominently in both his etchings and his paintings. At first he followed the lead of Adam Elsheimer, then of fellow Pre-Rembrandtists Pieter Lastman and Jan and Jacob Pynas, eventually, in the mid-1630s,