German (Resident in Britain) 1734-1810 Johann Zoffany Galleries Painter of portraits, conversation pieces, and theatrical scenes, Zoffany was born in Germany and came to England about 1758 after studying in Italy. He began by painting clock faces and doing hack work, before turning to painting theatrical scenes, especially depicting David Garrick. He was favoured by the royal family. George III nominated him for the Royal Academy in 1769 and recommended him to the duke of Tuscany.  Related Paintings of Johann Zoffany :. | William Sharp as shown in The Sharp Family | The Tribuna of the Uffizi, | Death of Captain Cook | Duke Ferdinando I of Parma | A Cockfight in Lucknow |
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Baron Antoine-Jean Gros
1771-1835 French Baron Antoine-Jean Gros Galleries The son of a painter, Antoine Jean Gros was born in Paris on March 16, 1771. At the age of 14 he entered the studio of Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged leader of the classical revival. Although his own work became radically different from David's, he maintained a lifelong respect for his teacher and envisioned himself as the upholder of the Davidian tradition. In 1787 Gros entered the Acad??mie de Peinture, and when the Acad??mie dissolved in 1793 (a result of the French Revolution) he went to Italy. He met Josephine Bonaparte in Genoa in 1796, and she introduced him to Napoleonic society. Gros entered Napoleon's immediate entourage and accompanied him on several north Italian campaigns. Gros also became involved with Napoleon's program of confiscating Italian art for removal to France. Gros returned to Paris in 1800 and began to show his Napoleonic paintings in the annual Salons. The most famous of these are the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) and Napoleon at Eylau (1808). These works served to deify Napoleon, showing him engaged in acts of heroism and mercy. Stylistically, the paintings were revolutionary:their exotic settings, rich color, agitated space, and general penchant for showing the gruesome specifics of war and suffering differed radically from the cool generalizations of Davidian classicism that Gros had learned as a student. The presentation of contemporary historical events was also new, a harbinger of the realism that developed steadily during the first half of the 19th century in French, American, and English painting. Finally, the emphatic emotionalism of Gros's art established the foundation of romantic painting that Th??odore G??ricault and Eug??ne Delacroix developed after him. Unlike that of some of his countrymen (David is a case in point), Gros's position did not suffer after the fall of Napoleon. Gros painted for the restored monarchy, for instance, Louis XVIII Leaving the Tuileries (1817), and he decorated the dome of the Panth??on in Paris with scenes of French history (1814-1824). For this Charles X made him a baron in 1824. But these works lack the zest and commitment of Gros's Napoleonic period, perhaps because they were not based on the immediate kinds of historical experiences that had inspired the earlier paintings. Although marked by considerable public success, Gros's later career was in many ways acutely troubled. Basically, he could not resolve his personal esthetic theories with his own painting or with the work of his younger contemporaries. To the end Gros wished to propagate the classicism of David, and he took over David's studio when the master was exiled in 1816. By the 1820s, however, the revolutionary romanticism of G??ricault and Delacroix, among others, had clearly begun to eclipse classicism, and Gros found himself fighting a lonely and losing battle for conservatism. Ironically, he was fighting a trend that his own best work had helped to originate. As he persisted, moreover, his own painting began to show a diffident mixture of classic and romantic attitudes. Thus, while he was inherently a romantic, he tragically came to doubt himself. Gros died on June 26, 1835, apparently a suicide.
Denis van Alsloot
(Dutch: Denijs van Alsloot) (c. 1570, Mechelen - c. 1626) was a Flemish Baroque painter. He initially painted using the style of Gillis van Coninxloo, but after 1610 gradually developed a style of his own. This style can be seen in paintings such as The feast of the Ommegang (Museo del Prado, Madrid) and Procession to Mary at the Zavel in Brussels (Victoria and Albert Museum, London). At the beginning of the 17th century, in either 1600 or 1606, his career rose when he served as court painter to Albert and Isabella. Hendrick de Clerck sometimes painted the people (Dutch: stoffering or stoffage) in his landscape works. Van Alsloot's work can be regarded as a precursor to modern Landscape art.
Franz Pforr
German 1788-1812 He received his earliest training from his father, the painter Johann Georg Pforr (1745-98), and his uncle, the art professor and first inspector of the painting gallery in Kassel, Johann Heinrich Tischbein the younger (1742-1808). In 1805 he became a student at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in Vienna, which was dominated by the severe Neo-classicism of its director, Heinrich Feger; he was taught by Hubert Maurer (1738-1818), Franz Cauzig (1762-1828) and Johann Martin Fischer. During the war with France in 1805, Pforr volunteered as a guard in the Vienna militia. He suffered a nervous breakdown, brought on by the conflict between his passionate longing for a contemplative life and a desire to see military action. He probably turned to religion to help sustain his mental equilibrium. In 1806 he resumed his academic studies and, believing himself destined to become a battle painter, made numerous drawings of historical battles, for example his still schoolish and baroquely composed Wallenstein in the Battle of L?tzen (1806; Frankfurt am Main, Stedel. Kstinst. & St?dt. Gal.). However, it was not until 1807, with Drawing with Twelve Travel Sketches (Frankfurt am Main, Stadt- & Ubib.), that he first began to overcome his beginner style and to develop his own. This resulted in reduced detail, simplified continuous contours, a structuring by means of planar rather than illusionistic criteria, a new clarity of vision and a chastened balance between nature and artistic conception.