1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | Drinkstone Park | Portrat von Molly und Peggy mit Zeichenutensilien | Lady Sheffield | Chasing a Butterfly | Lady and Gentleman in a Landscape (mk08) |
Related Artists:
Jan Preisler
Czechoslovakian, 1872-1918 Bohemian painter. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague (1887-95). In 1906 he visited Belgium, the Netherlands and Paris. He taught at the Academy of Arts in Prague from 1913. He was a pioneer in modern Bohemian art, and his work developed from pure Art Nouveau and Symbolism towards Expressionism, in three phases. The period 1887-1900 is represented by the triptych Spring (1900; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.): with its lack of scales of tonal value or Impressionist instantaneousness, it is a skilful use of colour and composition. The figure of the boy with autobiographical features is symbolic of a whole generation. The period 1901-7 culminated in Painting from a Bigger Cycle (1901-2; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), which balances vertical and horizontal lines and employs bright colour combinations. In Black Lake (1904; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), which deals with the misery and excitement of first love, the contrast of black and white and the figure of the boy with a horse and a girl evoke the transitive moment between reality and dream. Spring (1906; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), a testament to Preisler admiration for the work of Gauguin, develops the resonant contrast of green, yellow and white. In 1908-18 Preisler returned to monumental decoration: of the Palacky Room in the Municipal House in Prague, 1910-12, in the style of Puvis de Chavannes. At this time he was approaching the Expressionism of the younger generation from the Eight (ii), especially in the three versions of the painting Good Samaritan (1910-13; all priv. col., see Kotalok, pl. 41), which shows the influence of Daumier and Munch.
Thomas Moran
b1837 UK d1926 Thomas Moran Locations Thomas Moran (February 12, 1837 - August 25, 1926) from Bolton, England was an artist of the Hudson River School who often painted the Rocky Mountains. Thomas Moran's vision of the Western landscape was critical to the creation of Yellowstone National Park. Thomas Moran along with Albert Bierstadt, Thomas Hill, and William Keith are sometimes referred to as belonging to the Rocky Mountain School of landscape painters because of all of the Western landscapes made by this group.
egron lundgren
Egron Sellif Lundgren, född 18 december 1815 i Stockholm, död 16 december 1875 i Stockholm var en svensk konstnär och författare. Hans lite egendomliga förnamn är givet av en omtänksam fader som önskade sin lille nyfödde ett rofyllt liv, eg-ron. Egron Lundgren kan betecknas som den svenska akvarellkonstens fader. Han började först som oljemålare där han utförde genremålningar och historiska framställningar i tidens anda. Under sina många resor till Italien, Spanien och Indien fann han dock sitt rätta uttrycksmedel i akvarellen vars teknik han utvecklade till ett mästerskap. Han bosatte sig i mitten av 1850-talet i London där han hade stora framgångar som porträttmålare. Med London som utgångspunkt företog han sedan ytterligare resor både till Italien och Spanien men även till Egypten och Indien. Hans reportagemålningar från sepoyupproret i Indien anses utgöra en av höjdpunkterna i hans produktion. Hans akvarellteknik utvecklades med åren till en snabb, upplöst teknik i rena, klara färger och lätt penselföring. England med sina dimhöljda öar kom till fullt uttryck i arbetena från hans många resor. Sina sista år tillbringade Egron Lundgren i Stockholm men också därifrån fortsatte han sitt resande. Mest känd för en sentida publik har han blivit genom sina brev och dagboksanteckningar, utgivna under titeln En målares anteckningar 1 - 2 Egron Lundgrens väg i Södra Ängby, Stockholm är uppkallad efter Egron Lundgren.