1738-1820 Benjamin West Locations Benjamin West RA (October 10, 1738 ?C March 11, 1820) was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. He was the second president of the Royal Academy serving from 1792 to 1805 and 1806 to 1820. In 1760, sponsored by Smith and William Allen, reputed to be the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, West traveled to Italy where he expanded his repertoire by copying the works of Italian painters such as Titian and Raphael. As painted by Gilbert Stuart, 1783-84West was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait he painted. Franklin was also the godfather of West's second son, Benjamin. In 1763, West moved to England, where he was commissioned by King George III to create portraits of members of the royal family. The king himself was twice painted by him. He painted his most famous, and possibly most influential painting, The Death of General Wolfe, in 1770, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771. Although originally snubbed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy, and others as over ambitious, the painting became one of the most frequently reproduced images of the period. In 1772, King George appointed him historical painter to the court at an annual fee of £1,000. With Reynolds, West founded the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. He was the second president of the Royal Academy from 1792 to 1805. He was re-elected in 1806 and was president until his death in 1820. He was Surveyor of the King's Pictures from 1791 until his death. Many American artists studied under him in London, including Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully. [3] West is known for his large scale history paintings, which use expressive figures, colours and compositional schemes to help the spectator to identify with the scene represented. West called this "epic representation". He died in London.  Related Paintings of Benjamin West :. | Prince Edward and William IV of the United Kingdom. | Treatly | Self-portrait | Cicero and the magistrates discovering the tomb of Archimedes. | Prince Edward and William IV of the United Kingdom. |
Related Artists:
PEETERS, Clara
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1657
Amandus Adamson
(12 November 1855, Uuga-Rätsepa, near Paldiski -26 June 1929, Paldiski) was an Estonian sculptor and painter. Born into a seafaring family, Adamson excelled in wood carving as a child. He moved to St. Petersburg in 1875 to study at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Alexander Bock. After graduation he continued to work as a sculptor and teacher in St. Petersburg, with an interruption from 1887 through 1891 to study in Paris and Italy, influenced by the French sculptors Jules Dalou and Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. Adamson produced his best-known work in 1902. His Russalka Memorial, dedicated to the 177 lost sailors of the Ironclad warship Russalka, features a bronze angel on a slender column. The other work is architectural. His four allegorical bronzes for the Eliseyev department store in St. Petersburg (for architect Gavriil Baranovsky), and the French-style caryatids and finial figures for the Singer House (for architect Pavel Suzor) are major components of the "Russian Art Nouveau" visible along Nevsky Prospekt.
GHEERAERTS, Marcus the Younger
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1561-1636 was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter. He became a fashionable portraitist in the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth I under the patronage of her champion and pageant-master Sir Henry Lee, introducing a new aesthetic in English court painting that captured the essence of a sitter through close observation. He became a favorite portraitist of James I's queen Anne of Denmark, but fell out of fashion in the later 1610s. Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger was the son of the artist Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder and his wife Johanna. Hardly anything is known of the paintings of the elder Gheeraerts, although his work as a printmaker reached around Europe. Like other Protestant artists, Gheeraerts the Elder fled to England with his son to escape persecution in the Netherlands under the Duke of Alva. His wife was a Catholic and remained behind; she is assumed to have died a few years later. Father and son are recorded living with a Dutch servant in the London parish of St Mary Abchurch in 1568. On 9 September 1571, the elder Gheeraerts remarried. His new wife was Susanna de Critz, a member of an exiled family from Antwerp. It is uncertain by whom young Marcus was trained, although it is likely to have been his father; he was possibly also a pupil of Lucas de Heere. Records suggest that Marcus was active as a painter by 1586 In 1590 he married Magdalena, the sister of his stepmother Susanna and of the painter John de Critz.