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 :. | Write Master | Rancher at the desolate field | Landscape | Biglen Brothers Racing | Portrait of Douglas Morgan Hall |
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HONTHORST, Gerrit van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1590-1656 Dutch portrait, genre, and allegorical painter. In Italy (c.1610?C1620) he gained a sound understanding of the works of Caravaggio, which greatly affected his style. He was a master at painting candlelit genre pieces and biblical scenes. Upon his return to Holland, he introduced the Italian manner of illusionistic decoration into Dutch interiors, as in his decorative scheme for the palace of Honselaarsdijk. In 1628, Charles I invited him to England, where he decorated Whitehall and painted portraits of the king and nobility. Several of these are now in the National Gallery, London. He also worked for the court of Denmark, and from 1637 to 1652 at The Hague. Together with Terbrugghen and Baburen he led the influential Utrecht school of painting that introduced Caravaggesque dramatic realism into Dutch art.
Ivan Aivazovsky
July 29, 1817 C May 5, 1900) was a Russian painter of Armenian descent, most famous for his seascapes, which constitute more than half of his paintings.Aivazovsky was born in the town of Feodosiya, Crimea, to a poor Armenian family. His parents family name was Aivazian. Some of artist's paintings bear a signature, in Armenian letters, "Hovhannes Aivazian" (Յովհաննէս Այվազեան). His talent as an artist earned him sponsorship and entry to the Simferopol gymnasium ??1 and later the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, from which he graduated with the gold medal. Earning awards for his early landscapes and seascapes, he went on to paint a series of portraits of Crimean coastal towns before traveling throughout Europe. In later life, his paintings of naval scenes earned him a longstanding commission from the Russian Navy. In 1845, Aivazovsky went to Istanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdelmecid, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845-1890.
michele di matteo lambertini
active in Bologna 1416-1469