British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | Lady Caroline Howard | lady caroline fox | the eliot family | Portrait of Lady Georgiana Spencer | the lamb children |
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Jan Frans van Douven
Jan Frans van Douven, or Johan Francois Douven, (Roermond, 2 March 1656 - Desseldorf, 1727) was a Southern Netherlandish portrait painter belonging to the Dutch Leyden School. Born in Roermond, he spent most of his life as Court painter in Desseldorf, now in Germany, where he created most of his worksDate circa 1695(1695) Medium oil
Osborne, Walter
Irish, 1859-1903 Irish painter. The son of the animal painter William Osborne (1823-1901), he trained in the schools of the Royal Hibernian Academy (1876-81). In 1881 he won the Royal Dublin Society's Taylor scholarship and went to study at the Koninklijk Academie voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. Charles Verlat was the professor of painting, and Antwerp was then at the height of its popularity with students from the British Isles. In Antwerp and subsequently in Brittany, Osborne made contact with painters of the Newlyn school and other British naturalists. In Brittany he painted Apple Gathering, Quimperle (1883; Dublin, N.G.), a small greenish-grey picture of a girl in an orchard, which in subject and treatment shows the influence of Jules Bastien-Lepage. Throughout the 1880s Osborne worked in England, joining groups of artists in their search for the ideal naturalist motif. In the autumn of 1884 he was at North Littleton, near Evesham (Heref. & Worcs), where he painted Feeding Chickens in weather so cold that his model, a young peasant girl, nearly fainted. It is carefully drawn but painted with the square-brush technique characteristic of Bastien-Lepage's followers, and is very close to the contemporary work of George Clausen and Edward Stott (1855-1918). At Walberswick in Suffolk he painted October Morning (1885; London, Guildhall A.G.), a carefully studied plein-air work using bright dots of pure colour on a base of beige and grey. During this time Osborne gave careful attention to the showing of his work. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin from 1877 and at the Royal Academy in London from 1886.
Hans Bol
(1534 - 1593), Flemish artist, received his early training from his two uncles who were also painters. He then was the apprentice to a Mechelen watercolorist and tempera painter at the age of fourteen. Because Boles watercolors became so widely reproduced, he began creating miniatures on parchment. The technique earned him many international clients and a good income. In addition, Bol also produced several oil paintings, illuminated manuscripts, drawings, and engravings. He preferred to create landscapes, mythological, allegorical and biblical scenes, and genre paintings. Bol was a mannerist, which followed the High Renaissance. One of his most famous works of art is Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, made with watercolours on paper. It was inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, in which the ancient myth of Icarus is told. The painting is a marvelous example of the art of landscape. Subtle colour transitions, skilful perspective and effective contrasts between foreground and background, and human figures and the forces of nature, lend this miniature painting a cosmic dimension. Bol chose the Icarus theme on several occasions. It was also subject of one of his paintings, which described in detail and highly praised by Karel van Mander in the 17th century. Although Bol was once an important and admired painter, we only know him through his small drawings and watercolours. Most of his paintings appear to have been lost. This miniature is all the more important, because it probably produces the painting referret to by Van Mander, which may have been his masterpiece. Consequently, Bol ought to be viewed not only as a superior miniature painter, but above all as an important artist who played a key role in the development of landscape art.