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 :. | members of the society of dilettanti | mary , duchess of richmond | Portrait of John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore | Portrait of Mrs. Thrale and her daughter Hester | John Ligonier, 1st Earl Ligonier |
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MICHELI Parrasio
Italian painter, Venetian school (before 1516 - 1578) Italian painter and draughtsman. The natural son of a Venetian aristocrat, Salvador Michiel, he pursued his early training in the workshop of Titian and later in his career was associated with Paolo Veronese, who provided him with drawings for his paintings. He is known to have been in Rome before 1547. Micheli's earliest work is an altarpiece depicting the Virgin and Child with SS Lorenzo and Ursula (1535; Murano, S Pietro Martire), which was commissioned by Ursula Pasqualigo in memory of her deceased husband, the former Procurator Lorenzo Pasqualigo. There is also a Venus and Cupid (c. 1547; London, priv. col.) and a Lucrezia (c. 1547; London, Mond col.). In 1550 he married the daughter of a German baker. Several documented paintings have been destroyed or are untraced: the painting of Doge Lorenzo Priuli Accompanied by Ten Senators with Personifications of Fortune and Venice (1563), for which he received 225 ducats, was destroyed in the fire in the Doge's Palace of 1574. The work is known from a preparatory study (Berlin, Kupferstichkab.) and a contract of 22 October 1563. Five paintings known to have been in the Libreria Marciana that same year are also untraced. The large painting depicting the Adoration of the Dead Christ (Venice, S Giuseppe), signed and dated parrhasio Micheli dipinse nel 1573, includes a self-portrait. Micheli also painted portraits of Venetian noblemen (e.g. Girolamo Zane, Venice, Accademia; Tommaso Contarini, Venice, Doge's Palace) and associated with prominent men of letters including Paolo Giovio and Pietro Aretino.
Johann Caspar Schneider
Rhine valley by Johann Caspar Schneider in 1820
Wassily Kandinsky
1866-1944 Wassily Kandinsky Galleries was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession??he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat??he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied first in the private school of Anton Azbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914 after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.