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 with Decanter and Lemons on a Plate | Olive Picking (nn04) | Flowering almond tree branch in a glass and book | le cafe la nuit | The Langlois Bridge at Arles with Road alonside the Canal (nn04) |
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Ferdinand bol
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1616-1680 Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was a pupil and prominent follower of Rembrandt in Amsterdam. His reputation and fame are based on his history paintings, which, though successful at the time,
Pierre Renoir
French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..
Hans Gude
March 13, 1825 ?C August 17, 1903,Norwegian painter. He was the most renowned Norwegian landscape painter of his time. At the age of 12 he was enrolled as a pupil of Johannes Flintoe (1787-1880). After attending evening classes at the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, he went to D?sseldorf in 1841 to study privately with the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910). In 1842 Gude was admitted to the landscape class at the Akademie under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He was later appointed an assistant teacher at Schirmer private studio, and he succeeded his master as Professor of landscape painting both at the D?sseldorf Akademie (1854-62) and at the Karlsruhe Akademie (1864-80). In the 1840s Gude established his reputation in Norway and on the Continent with powerful images of the Norwegian mountains. These were shown in the Kunstforening galleries in D?sseldorf and Christiania and at the Berliner Akademische Kunstausstellung, where Gude exhibited throughout his life. Adolph Tidemand and Gude dominated the colony of Norwegian artists who studied in D?sseldorf in the mid-19th century. The two artists worked together on five paintings, all representing people in boats; Gude painted the landscape, Tidemand the figures. The Bridal Procession at Hardanger (1848; Oslo, N.G.) celebrates a ceremony of country life and is the most famous work of Norwegian National Romanticism. In a sunny western Norwegian landscape with snow on the high mountains, the bridal couple and wedding guests in national costume are shown rowing across the water from a medieval stave church on the headland in the background. Gude revealed greater maturity in High Mountain (1857; Oslo, N.G.). The disposition of mountains massed on the high plateau around a little lake produces an effect of monumentality. The predominant colours shade from grey to blue, concentrated in the cloud cover. The influence of Schirmer tranquil landscapes is apparent, while the rhythmic arrangement of light and shadow is reminiscent of Achenbach.