1769-1830 British Sir Thomas Lawrence Galleries was a notable English painter, mostly of portraits. He was born in Bristol. His father was an innkeeper, first at Bristol and afterwards at Devizes, and at the age of six Lawrence was already being shown off to the guests of the Bear as an infant prodigy who could sketch their likenesses and declaim speeches from Milton. In 1779 the elder Lawrence had to leave Devizes, having failed in business and Thomas's precocious talent began to be the main source of the family's income; he had gained a reputation along the Bath road. His debut as a crayon portrait painter was made at Oxford, where he was well patronized, and in 1782 the family settled in Bath, where the young artist soon found himself fully employed in taking crayon likenesses of fashionable people at a guinea or a guinea and a half a head. In 1784 he gained the prize and silver-gilt palette of the Society of Arts for a crayon drawing after Raphael's "Transfiguration," and presently beginning to paint in oil.   Related Paintings of Sir Thomas Lawrence :. | Portrait of Miss Caroline Fry | Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Leveson-Gower, later Marchioness of Westminster, wife of the 2nd Marquess of Westminster | The Children of Ayscoghe Boucherett | Portrait of Princess Caroline Ferdinande of Bourbon | Countess of Inchiquin |
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William Sharp
British 1749-1824,was an English line-engraver born in London. He was originally apprenticed to what is called a bright engraver, and practised as a writing engraver, but gradually became inspired by the higher branches of the engraver's art. Among his earlier plates are some illustrations, after Stothard, for the Novelists' Magazine. He engraved the "Doctors Disputing on the Immaculateness of the Virgin" and the "Ecce Homo" of Guido Reni, the "St Cecilia" of Domenichino, the "Virgin and Child" of Dolci, and the portrait of John Hunter of Sir Joshua Reynolds. His style of eta-graving is thoroughly masterly and original, excellent in its play of line and rendering of half-tints and of "colour." He died at Chiswick on the 25th of July 1824. In his youth, owing to his hotly expressed adherence to the politics of Paine and Horne Tooke, he was examined by the privy council on a charge of treason. Mesmer and Brothers found in Sharp a stanch believer; and for long he maintained Joanna Southcott at his own expense. As an engraver he achieved a European reputation, and at the time of his death he enjoyed the honour of being a member of the Imperial Academy of Vienna and of the Royal Academy of Munich.
Marc Charles Gabriel Gleyre
Charles Gleyre (full name Marc Gabriel Charles Gleyre) (Chevilly, Vaud canton, 2 May 1806 - 5 May 1874), was a Swiss artist. He took over the studio of Paul Delaroche in 1843 and taught a number of younger artists who became prominent, including Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Self portraitHis father and mother died when he was eight or nine years of age; and he was brought up by an uncle in Lyon, France, who sent him to the industrial school of that city. Going to Paris in his late teens, he spent four years in intense artistic study. The following four years Gleyre spent in meditative inactivity in Italy, where he became acquainted with Horace Vernet and Louis Leopold Robert; and six years more were spent wandering in Greece, Egypt, Nubia and Syria. At Cairo he was attacked with ophthalmia, or inflammation of the eye, and in Lebanon he was struck down by fever. He returned to Lyons in shattered health. On his recovery he proceeded to Paris, and, establishing a modest studio in the rue de Universite, began carefully to work out the ideas which had been slowly shaping themselves in his mind. Mention is made of two decorative panels Diana leaving the Bath, and a Young Nubian as almost the first fruits of his genius; but these did not attract public attention until much later, and the painting by which he practically opened his artistic career was the Apocalyptic Vision of St John, sent to the Salon of 1840. This was followed in 1843 by Evening, which at the time received a medal of the second class, and afterwards became widely popular under the title Lost Illusions. It depicts a poet seated on the bank of a river, with his head drooping and a wearied posture, letting his lyre slip from a careless hand, and gazing sadly at a bright company of maidens whose song is slowly dying from his ear as their boat is borne slowly from his sight.
George Edmund Varian
American Artist 1865-1923