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.  Related Paintings of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros :. | Bonaparte on the Bridge at Arcola on 17 November 1796 (mk05) | Das Rob Mustapha Paschas | Portrait du second lieutenant Charles Legrand | Napoleon Bonaparte Visiting the Plague-stricken at Jaffa | Portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte |
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Peeter Danckers de Rij
Pieter, Peeter, or Peter Danckerts de Rij, Dankers de Ry, or Peteris Dankersas (1605, Amsterdam - 9 August 1661, Rudnik) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He was the son of Cornelis Danckerts de Ry, member of a large family of printers, painters and engravers. Adam Kazanowski - by Peeter Danckers de Rij. Example of Dankerts-Sandrart collaboration in print of PC Hooft. This 1642 engraving was painted by Sandrart, etched by Reinier van Persijn, and printed by Danckerts. The poem in Latin at the bottom was written by Caspar Barlaeus.Cornelis is mentioned in Houbraken's Schouburg as being one of the many teachers of Joachim von Sandrart in 1640-41, though considering Sandrart's age and experience (he had just returned to the North from his Grand Tour to Italy), this was more of a collaboration. Since Filippo Baldinucci later wrote a biograhical sketch on Pietro Danckerse de Ry in his list of artists called the Notizie, it is possible that Danckerts visited Italy at some time. In any case Sandrart engraved some of Peter's paintings after this period. Peter was active until 1640 in Amsterdam, and then he moved to Warsaw, Danzig, and Vilnius in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was active in Poland as the court painter and architect of the Polish King Władysław IV Vasa. According to Houbraken a poem was written in his honor that applauds his work in Poland. He died as the result of a highway robbery in the Redininkai Forest near Vilnius, Lithuania.
Juana Romani
was an Italian painter, student and model of Ferdinand Roybet and Jean-Jacques Henner. Romani was born in Velletri, near Rome in Italy, but moved with her family to France as a child.
Wilhelm Hammershoi
Danish 1864-1916 The son of a well-to-do merchant, Christian Hammershøi and his wife, Frederikke (n??e Rentzmann), Vilhelm studied drawing from the age of eight with Neils Christian Kierkegaard and Holger Grønvold, 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 Krøyer at the Independent Study Schools, then debuted in the Charlottenborg Exhibition in the spring of 1885 with Portrait of a Young Girl (his sister, Anna; Pierre Auguste Renoir is reported to have admired this painting). Hammershøi married Ida Ilsted in 1891.