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 :. | Two Person Dinghy | The Study of Nude | The Portrait of Asbury W-Lee | The Professor | Biglen Brothers, Turning the Stake |
Related Artists:
WITZ, Konrad
b. cca 1400, Rottweil, d. ca. 1445, Basel. German-born painter from Rottweil in Swabia, active in Switzerland. German painter. One of the great innovators in northern European painting, he turned away from the lyricism of the preceding generation of German painters. His sturdy, monumental figures give a strong impression of their physical presence, gestures are dignified and the colours strong and simple. Even scenes with several figures are strangely undramatic and static. The surface appearance of materials, especially metals and stone, is intensely observed and recorded with an almost naive precision. Powerful cast shadows help to define the spatial relationships between objects. His fresh approach to the natural world reflects that of the Netherlandish painters: the Master of Fl?malle and the van Eycks. He need not, however, have trained in the Netherlands or in Burgundy as knowledge of their style could have been gained in Basle. He remained, however, untouched by the anecdotal quality present in their art,
Sandro botticelli and workshop
Italian c.1445-1510
Cornelis van Spaendonck Prints
Dutch 1756-1840 Cornelis van Spaendonck (7 December 1756 - 22 December 1839) was a Dutch painter who was a native of Tilburg. Spaendonck initially worked under artist Guillaume-Jacques Herreyns (1743-1827) in Antwerp, and in 1773 moved to Paris to study and work with his brother, floral painter G??rard van Spaendonck (1746-1822). From 1785 to 1800, Cornelis van Spaendonck was head of the porcelain works at S??vres. Due to difficulties encountered as an administrator, he was relieved of his directorship in 1800, but remained at S??vres as a designer and artist until 1808. In 1789 Spaendonck became a member of the Acad??mie des Beaux Arts. He painted throughout his lifetime, and displayed his works at the Salons of Paris until 1833. Most of Spaendonck's works were created with oils and gouache, and he is remembered for his lush still-lifes of flowers. Among his paintings were subjects such as De Fleurs Et Fruits, Vase De Fleurs, Bouquet De Different Fleurs, Fleurs Du Jardin, Corbeille Fleurs, et al. At his death in 1840 there were 29 paintings in his studio, which were auctioned soon afterwards.