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 :. | Biglen Brothers, Turning the Stake | The Portrait of Susan | The Biglin Brothers Bacing | Sketch of figure, from two-sided sketch for swimming | Salutat |
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FLEGEL, Georg
German painter (b. 1566, Olomouc, d. 1638, Frankfurt am Main). was a German painter, best known for his still life works. Flegel was born in Olmetz (Olomouc), Moravia. Around 1580 he moved to Vienna, where he became the assistant to Lucas van Valckenborch I, a painter and draughtsman. Flegel and his employer later moved to Frankfurt, which at the time was an important art-dealing city. As an assistant, he inserted items such as fruit, flowers, and table utensils into Valckenborch's works. In a period of about 30 years (c. 1600-1630), he produced 110 watercolor pictures, mostly still life images which often depicted tables set for meals and covered with food, flowers, and the occasional animal.
Joseph Karl Stieler
(1 November 1781 - 9 April 1858) was a German painter. Born in Mainz to a family of engravers and die-cutters, Stieler received some artistic training from his father, August Friedrich Stieler (1736 - 1789). Stieler began his career as a painter of miniatures. His portrait style was most especially shaped during his work in the Parisian atelier of Francois Gerard, a student of Jacques-Louis David. In 1808, he established himself as an independent portraitist in Frankfurt am Main. He traveled through Italy in 1810. In 1816, he traveled to Vienna to paint the portrait of Emperor Francis I of Austria. Between February and April 1820, he worked on his portrait of Beethoven, which is probably the most well-known representation of the composer today. Stieler worked mainly in the service of the Bavarian court. His painted likenesses in Schloss Nymphenburg, Schönheitengalerie, the so-called Gallery of Beauties, were commissioned by King Ludwig I. Stieler also painted the portraits of Goethe, Amalia of Greece, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Johann Ludwig Tieck, and Alexander von Humboldt. The most distinguishing feature of Stieler's portraits is his utter focus on the sitter. Decorative additions are left out, and there is nothing that distracts the viewer's scrutiny. Stieler accomplished this concentration through deliberate light - dark contrast, which above all highlights the accurately characterized facial features. He died in Loytown.
Anthonie Leemans
(1631, The Hague - 1673, Amsterdam), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. According to Houbraken, who did not specify which brother he meant, he made a profitable living making trompe l'oeil paintings of hunting paraphernalia, birdcages, and weaponry. According to the RKD he was the older brother of the painter Johannes Leemans, and both are known for still life paintings of hunting paraphernalia and vanitas pieces that became an influence on Christoffel Pierson for their popularity. Anthonie also painted a few Italianate landscapes with soldiers.