Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Still life:Bloaters on a Piece of Yellow Paper (nn04) | Bowl with Sunflowers | Olive Grove (nn04) | Memories of the Garden in Etten | Portrait of the Art-trader Alexander Reid |
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GUARDI, Francesco
Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.
BASCHENIS, Evaristo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1617-1677 Evaristo Baschenis (December 7, 1617 ?C March 16, 1677) was an Italian Baroque painter of the 17th century, active mainly around his native city of Bergamo. He was born to a family of artists. He is best known for still lifes, most commonly of musical instruments. This could explain his friendship with a family with notable violin makers from Cremona. Still-life depictiona were uncommon as a thematic among Italian painters prior to the 17th century. Baschenis, along with the more eccentric 16th century painter Milanese Arcimboldo, represents provincial outputs with idiosyncratic tendencies that appear to appeal to the discernment of forms and shapes rather than grand manner themes of religious or mythologic events. For Arcimboldo, the artifice is everything; for Baschenis, the items, man-made musical instruments, have a purpose and a beauty even in their silent geometry. One source for his photographic style of still life could be Caravaggio's early painting of peaches, or alternatively, Dutch paintings. The most faithful imitator of his style is a younger contemporary Bergamese, Bartolomeo Bettera. Baschenis is a contemporary of the Bergamese portrait artist, Carlo Ceresa, and appears to have been influential for the Modenese artist Cristoforo Munari.
CAPRIOLO, Domenico
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1494, Venezia, d. 1528, Treviso) Italian painter. He moved from Venice to Treviso c. 1517, where he is well documented (though there is little about his painting). In 1518-19 he married Camilla, daughter of the painter Pier Maria Pennacchi. A coherent body of work executed between 1518 and 1528 has been reconstructed. Capriolo's first secure work, the Adoration of the Shepherds (Treviso, Mus. Civ.), signed and dated 1518, has a formal structure reminiscent of the late style of Giovanni Bellini, with the broader chromatic range of Palma Vecchio and a crepuscular light that recalls the Venetian works of Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo or Giovanni da Asola ( fl 1512-31). The Assumption in Treviso Cathedral, commissioned in 1520, shows, in its spiralling movement, the influence of the contemporary frescoes of Pordenone in the nearby Malchiostro Chapel. In the Legend of the Doubting Midwife (Treviso, Mus. Civ.), signed and dated 1524, the influence of Savoldo is greater than that of Palma. This is also apparent in the altarpiece of the parish church of Ponzano Veneto (Treviso), dated 1525. The portrait of Lelio Torelli (Barnard Castle, Bowes Mus.), signed and dated 1528, Capriolo's last known work, seems by contrast to reflect local models of portraiture and lies somewhere between the styles of Sebastiano Florigerio and Bernardino Licinio. Other works assigned to Capriolo include: the altarpieces of the parish churches of Cavasagra and Spercenigo, near Treviso; the Adoration of the Shepherds in the sacristy of Serravalle Cathedral at Vittorio Veneto; a fragment of a Nativity (Venice, Mus. Correr); two paintings of the Virgin and Child with Saints (Bucharest, Mus. A.; Conegliano, Mus. Civ. Castello).