English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Waterworks | No title | Houses of Parliament on Fire | Fishermen at sea (mk31) | Exercise |
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Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes
(December 6, 1750 - February 16, 1819) was a French painter. Valenciennes worked in Rome from 1778 to 1782, where he made a number of landscape studies directly from nature, sometimes painting the same set of trees or house at different times of day.He theorized on this idea in Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape (1800), developing a concept of a "landscape portrait" in which the artist paints a landscape directly while looking upon it, taking care to capture its particular details.Although he spoke of this as a type of painting mainly of interest to "amateurs", as distinguished from the higher art of the academies, he found it of great interest, and of his own works the surviving landscape portraits have been the most noted by later commentators. He in particular urged artists to capture the distinctive details of a scene's architecture, dress, agriculture, and so on, in order to give the landscape a sense of belonging to a specific place; in this he probably influenced other French artists active in Italy who took an anthropological approach to painting rural areas and customs, such as Hubert Robert, Pierre-Athanase Chauvin and Achille-Etna Michallon.
Gonzales Coques
1615 - 1684 was a Flemish Baroque painter He was the son of Pieter Willemsen Coques, a respectable Flemish citizen, and not, as his name might imply, a Spaniard, was born in Antwerp. In 1626?C28 he entered the studio of Pieter Brueghel the Younger, and subsequently studied with David II Rijckaert.He is primarily known as a painter of small cabinet conversation pieces, a type of elegant informal group portrait that he is credited with inventing. The influence of Anthony van Dyck resulted in his nickname "Little van Dyck". After a period of travel, probably to England where Van Dyck was active, he entered Antwerp's Guild of St. Luke in 1640?C41. He was married twice, first to Ryckaert's daughter Catharina, and then to Catharina Rysheuvels. He was a member of two rhetorician guilds in the city, and twice he was made president of the painters' guild. This small portraits were in great demand with both the bourgeoisie and nobility.Patrons included Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange and John of Austria the Younger. One of his canvases in the gallery at the Hague represents a suite of rooms hung with pictures, in which the artist himself may be seen at a table with his wife and two children, surrounded by masterpieces composed and signed by several contemporaries. Partnership in painting was common amongst the small masters of the Antwerp school; and it has been truly said of Coques that he employed Jacob von Arthois for landscapes, Anton Ghering and Willem Schubart von Ehrenberg for architectural backgrounds, Hendrik Steenwijck the younger for interiors, and Pieter Gysels for still life and flowers; but the model upon which Coques formed himself was Van Dyck,
Vilhelm Hammershoi
Danish Painter, 1864-1916, was a painter born in Copenhagen, Denmark known for his poetic, low-key portraits and interiors.The son of a well-to-do merchant, Christian Hammershoi and his wife, Frederikke (nee Rentzmann), Vilhelm studied drawing from the age of eight with Neils Christian Kierkegaard and Holger Gronvold, as well as painting with Vilhelm Kyhn, before embarking on studies with Frederik Vermehren and others at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. From 1883 to 1885, he studied with Peder Severin Kroyer.