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 :. | Evening | Portrait of Archduke Ferdinand (1769-1824) and Archduchess Maria Anna of Austria (1770-1809), children of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor | Maria Luisa von Parma Prinzessin von Asturien | Maria Luisa von Parma | The Judgment of Paris |
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Daniel Chodowiecki
(16 October 1726 - 7 February 1801) was a Polish - German painter and printmaker with Huguenot ancestry, who is most famous as an etcher. He spent most of his life in Berlin, and became the director of the Berlin Academy of Art. He was born in the city of Danzig in Poland, and in a letter in typical Berlin humor wrote, that he moved to Berlin, Germany, which shows for sure, that he is a 'genuine Pole'.[citation needed] He kept close to the Huguenot scene, due to his ancestry. A distant ancestor Bartholom us Chodowiecki had lived in the 16th century in Greater Poland . Gottfried Chodowiecki, Daniel's father, was a tradesmen in Danzig and his mother, Henriette Ayrer born in Switzerland, was a Huguenot. Daniel's grandfather Christian had been a tradesmen in the city as well. When his father died, both Daniel (aged 16) and his younger brother Gottfried Chodowiecki went to live with their uncle in Berlin, who offered to educate them, and where Daniel received an artistic training with the painter Haid in Augsburg. His brother also became a painter. Soon Daniel was able to earn a living by painting. He was admitted to the Berlin Academy in 1764 and became vice-director under Rhode in 1788. He had found his true calling and became the most famous German graphic artist of his time. His works include several thousand etchings, usually rather small, and many drawings and paintings. He illustrated nearly all of the great classics. His prints represent in great detail the life of the middle classes during the Zopfstil period, a time between Rococo and Classicism. In 1797 Chodowiecki was appointed director of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, where he died on 7 February 1801. The bulk of his work was in illustrating scientific books by Basedow, Buffon, Lavater, Pestalozzi and others. He also painted many portraits of Polish gentry and was interested in Huguenot and Polish history as well, making some paintings on the topic. He was in tune with the developing spirit of the age, and many works reflect the cult of sensibility, and then the revolutionary and German nationalist feelings of the end of the century.
Nahl, Charles Christian
German-born American Painter, 1818-1878 later known as Charles Nahl, Karl Nahl, Charles Christian Nahl or Charles C. Nahl, was a German-born painter who is called California's first significant artist.He came from a long line of artists and sculptors and was trained at the Cassel Academy. Unease over the political state of Hesse led him and his friend Frederick August Wenderoth (1819-1884) to Paris in 1846, where "Charles" enjoyed some success at the salon. The February Revolution prompted another move with his half-brother Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl (1833-1889) to Brooklyn, New York, where they heard of the gold strike. They had no luck along the Yuba River but opened a studio with Wenderoth in Sacramento
Charles Collins
British Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1873