Anton Raphael Mengs
1728-1779
Dutch
Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery
Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome.
In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agust??n Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings.
Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand.
In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning.
His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism.
Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni. Related Paintings of Anton Raphael Mengs :. | Portrait of Infante Antonio Pascual of Spain | Diana as Personification of the Night by Anton Raphael Mengs. | Portrait of Maria Luisa of Spain | Self-portrait | portrait | Related Artists: BAUGIN, LubinFrench painter. He became a master in the painters' guild of Saint-Germain-des-Pr?s in 1629. From c. 1636 he was in Italy, but he is known to have been in Paris again in 1641; in 1645 he became a member of the Acad?mie de St Luc, and in 1651 he was also a member of the Acad?mie Royale after the temporary amalgamation of the two institutions. Like many of his generation he was deeply influenced by the art of the Fontainebleau school. The Mannerist tendency of his style
Hugh Carroll Frazer(February 22, 1891 - July 9, 1975) was born in the Martinsburg, West Virginia. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1912. He received the Medal of Honor for actions at the United States occupation of Veracruz, 1914. Frazer was a World War I veteran. Solon H. BorglumAmerican Sculptor, 1868-1922,was an American sculptor. Born in Ogden, Utah, he was the younger brother of Gutzon Borglum and uncle of Lincoln Borglum of Mount Rushmore fame. The son of Danish immigrants who settled on the great plains, Solon Borglum spent his early years as a rancher in western Nebraska. Though he later lived in Paris and New York and achieved a reputation as one of America's best sculptors, it was his depiction of frontier life, and especially his experience with cowboys and native American peoples, on which his reputation was founded. Borglum studied under Louis Rebisso in Cleveland and in Paris. He specialized in depicting people and scenes of the American West. He moved to the Silvermine neighborhood of New Canaan, Connecticut, where he helped found the "Knockers Club" of artists. His brother, Gutzon, lived in nearby Stamford,
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