1776-1857 Russian painter. He was born a serf and in 1790 was apprenticed to a pastrycook in St Petersburg. From 1793 he attended classes at the Academy of Art there, in 1799 becoming a pupil of the portrait painter Stepan Shchukin (1762-1828). In 1804 he was sent to work as a pastrycook and manservant on an estate in the Ukraine owned by his master, General Morkov. Tropinin's Ukrainian period (1804-21) was interrupted by frequent, often protracted, visits to Moscow. During these years he copied a great deal, drew landscapes from nature and also painted religious subjects. His early style is painterly and distinguished by freedom of execution and skill in the use of colour, but the compositions are derivative and the drawing weak: The Spinner (1820s), The Lacemaker (1823), Wedding in the Village of Kukavka, Podolsky Province and Girl with a Bird (all Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.). Portraiture, however, began to take on a more important place in his work; the best of this period is the Portrait of Arseny, the Artist's Son (1818; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.), especially notable for its use of colour. Tropinin captured perfectly the child's spontaneous vision of the world, his sensitive spirit and openness. While in Moscow from 1813 to 1818, he portrayed a series of important cultural figures that brought him great popularity. He was freed from serfdom on 8 May 1823 and shortly thereafter he became a nominee to the Academy for his paintings The Lacemaker  Related Paintings of Vasily Tropinin :. | Self-Portrait by a Window with a View on the Kremlin | Girl from Podillya, | Portrait of Alexander Pushkin, | Portrait of Vasily Karatygin, | Portrait of Arseny Tropinin, son of the artist, |
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Samuel Dircksz van Hoogstraten
1627-1678 Flemish Samuel Dircksz Van Hoogstraten Galleries
Giovanni Santi
(c. 1435 - 1 August 1494) was an Italian painter and decorator, father of Raphael. He was born at Colbordolo in the Duchy of Urbino. He was a petty merchant for a time; he then studied under Piero della Francesca. He was influenced by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo, and seems to have been an assistant and friend of Melozzo da Forle. He was court painter to the Duke of Urbino and painted several altarpieces, two now in the Berlin Museum, a Madonna in the church of San Francesco in Urbino, one at Santa Croce on Fano, one in the National Gallery at London, and another in the gallery at Urbino; an Annunciation at the Brera in Milan; a resurrected Christ in the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; and a Jerome in the Lateran. He died in Urbino.
Robert Koehler
American Painter, 1850-1917 was a German born painter and art teacher who spent most of his career in the United States of America. Koehler was born in Hamburg; his family spelled their name Köhler until they moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in Robert's childhood. There he attended the historic German-English Academy. Koehler studied art from Henry Vianden and apprentice himself to a lithography firm. After some time working as a lithographer in New York City, Koehler went to Munich to study fine art at the Royal Academy in 1873. Koehler's work while in Munich won him silver and bronze awards from the Academy, and Bavaria's Cross of the Order of St. Michael. Koehler then set himself up as head of a private art school; pupils included Alfons Mucha. In 1892 Robert Koehler returned to New York City to work as a portrait artist. The following year he moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, accepting an offer to be the director of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts (now the Minneapolis College of Art and Design) Koehler was also involved with the establishment of Minneapolis' Museum of Fine Art, now the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.