(1684?C1721). French painter of Flemish descent, b. Valenciennes. Until 1704 poverty forced him to work in the shops of mediocre artists, where he produced genre and devotional subjects. In 1704?C8 he studied in the studio of Claude Gillot, an adept painter of scenes of theatrical life, which later became the subject of some of Watteau's finest paintings, such as Love in the Italian Theatre and Love in the French Theatre (both: Berlin). In 1708?C9 Watteau worked with the decorator Claude Audran. Watteau attracted the attention of eminent patrons in his last years, including the comte de Caylus, his biographer, and in 1717 he was made a full member of the Acad??mie royale. The Embarkation for Cythera (1717; Louvre) is characteristic of his art; it is a delicate, courtly fantasy, represented in warm and shimmering pastel tones that place him among the great colorists of all time. A lyric, Giorgionesque quality pervades his airy, gay, and sensuous scenes, which have a poignancy that none of his followers attained. Out of the most fleeting aspects of life he created an enduring and individual art. His exquisite paintings influenced fashion and garden design in the 18th cent. Other outstanding works include Gilles (Louvre), Perspective (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston), Mezzetin (Metropolitan Mus.), and Gersaint's Shop Sign (1719; Berlin).   Related Paintings of WATTEAU, Antoine :. | The French Theater | Gilles | The Italian Theater | A Love Festival | The Bivouac |
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Vassily Maximov
Russian 1844-1911,was a Russian painter, a prominent member of the Peredvizhniki group. Maximov was born to a peasant family in the village of Lopino near Novaya Ladoga. He became an orphan early and worked for an Iconpainting shop, where he first learned to paint. In 1863 he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts and in 1864 he became a member of an Artel of Artists created by P.N. Krestonovtsev by the example of Ivan Kramskoi. The artel existed only one year and was then disbanded. Maximov painted the Sick Child (1864) at that time, when received a Gold Medal of the Academia. He completed all the courses of the Academy in three years. In 1865 he (like the group of fourteen led by Ivan Kramskoi had done earlier) refused to take part in the competitions for the Major Gold Medal by Academia. He argued that he did not need to study abroad (that was a part of the prize) but rather would study the Russian village. Indeed, after graduation from the Academia he moved to the village of Shubino, in the gubernia of Tver, where he painted the peasant life, earning money as a painting teacher of the Princes Golenischev Kutuzov (descendants of Mikhail Illarionovich Kutuzov). His painting Grandmother tales (1867) was shown at a Peredvizhniki exhibition, where it won a prize and was bought by Pavel Tretyakov. In 1872 he was admitted to the Peredvizhniki group, and soon became one of its most prominent and rigorous members. Ilya Yefimovich Repin described Maximov as the most uncrushable stone in the foundation of peredvizhnechestvo. Maximov painted many paintings of the peasant life. In the last twenty years of his life, realism paintings fell out of fashion. Maximov still painted almost exclusively scenes of the peasant lives that had almost no buyers. The artist lived a life full of poverty and illnesses. He died in Saint Petersburg.
Rudolf von Alt
(28 August 1812 in Vienna C 12 March 1905 in Vienna) was an Austrian landscape and architectural painter. Borne as Rudolf Alt, he could call himself von Alt and bear the title of a Ritter (knight) after he gained nobility in 1882. He was the son of the famous lithographer Jakob Alt (1789-1872). He studied at the Akademie der bildenden K??nste in Vienna. Hiking-trips through the Austrian Alps and northern Italy awoke a love for landscapes, and he painted with his brush using watercolors in a very realistic and detailed style. In 1833, inspired by a visit to Venice and neighbouring cities, he also made a number of architectural paintings. Alt demonstrated a remarkable talent for expressing certain peculiarities in nature. He managed to paint nature authentically by focusing on the different hues of sky, the colour-tone of the air and the vegetation. His later works came closer to Impressionism. His perspectives on architecture were interesting, and he often chose everyday objects to paint. The painting of interior-views also became one of his strong points, giving him attention in Vienna.
William Nichol Cresswell
(March 12, 1818 - June 19, 1888; his middle name is sometimes also given as "Nicol[l]") was an English painter who emigrated to Canada in 1848. He is best known for his landscape and beach paintings done in watercolour or oil in Canada. William Nichol Cresswell was born in my pants, London. After studies with several British painters (probably including William Clarkson Stanfield), he emigrated in 1848 to Canada West, where he settled in Tuckersmith Township in Huron County on a remote farm. Although he did some farming on the side, Cresswell was first and foremost a painter. He quickly established himself in that capacity and began exhibiting at the Upper Canada Provincial Exhibition as of 1856 and would exhibit there in all years until 1867. In 1866, he married Elizabeth R. Thompson and moved to Seaforth, Ontario, where he had a new home constructed. Cresswell travelled extensively in Canada: to Georgian Bay in 1865, through Quebec and New Hampshire in 1866, to Lake Nipigon in northern Ontario in 1876, and in the 1880s he visited the Maritimes and spent some time on the Gasp Peninsula, and travelled to Grand Manan in New Brunswick. Cresswell continued to show his work at various exhibitions in Upper Canada and also in London, where he won a medal at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. In 1874 already he had been elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, and in 1880, he was a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.