American Realist Painter, 1844-1916. Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 ?C June 25, 1916) was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".  Related Paintings of Thomas Eakins :. | Landscape of Biglin | Portrait | The Pathetic Song | Portrait of Alice Kurtz | Elizabeth at the Piano |
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Martin van Meytens
(June 24, 1695 - March 23, 1770) was a Swedish-Austrian painter who painted members of the royal Court of Austria such as Marie Antoinette, Maria Theresa of Austria, Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor's family and others. His painting style has inspired many other painters to paint in a similar format.
BLEKER, Gerrit Claesz
Dutch painter (active 1625-1656 in Haarlem)
Floris van Dyck
, also called Floris van Dijck or Floris Claesz. van Dyck (Delft or Haarlem, c. 1575 - Haarlem, before 26 April 1651), was a Dutch Golden Age still life painter. He lived in Haarlem for most of his life, but he was born in Delft. He was a cousin of Pieter Cornelisz van Dijck. In 1600 he is documented as being in Rome, indicating he made a journey to Italy. In 1606 he returned to the Netherlands, where he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1610 and became dean in 1637. He was influenced by Osias Beert and Clara Peeters. He is considered the inventor of the banketje (banquet still life genre similar to breakfasts, or ontbijtjes), together with Nicolaes Gillis.