Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1697-1768
Italian painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was the most distinguished Italian view painter of the 18th century. Apart from ten years spent in England he lived in Venice, and his fame rests above all on his views (vedute) of that city; some of these are purely topographical, others include festivals or ceremonial events. He also painted imaginary views (capriccios), although the demarcation between the real and the invented is never quite clearcut: his imaginary views often include realistically depicted elements, though in unexpected surroundings, and in a sense even his Venetian vedute are imaginary. He never merely re-created reality. He was highly successful with the English, helped in this by the British connoisseur JOSEPH SMITH, whose own large collection of Canaletto works was sold to King George III in 1762. The British Royal Collection has the largest group of his paintings and drawings. Related Paintings of Canaletto :. | Eton College | Riva degli Schiavoni: Looking East df | London: Westminster Bridge under Repair vv | Dolo on the Brenta df | Rome The Arch of Constantine (mk25) | Related Artists:
Henry Ossawa TannerAfrican-American Realist Painter, 1859-1937
American painter. He was one of the foremost African American artists, achieving an international reputation in the early years of the 20th century for his religious paintings. The son of an African Methodist Episcopal bishop, he studied art with Thomas Eakins from 1880 to 1882 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. He then worked in Philadelphia and Atlanta, GA, where he ran a photography studio and taught at Clark College.
Alexander NasmythScottish Painter,
1758-1840
was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the father of Scottish landscape painting". Edinburgh Castle and Nor'Loch, circa 1780.Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the Royal High School and the Trustees Academy under Alexander Runciman, and, having been apprenticed as an heraldic painter to a coachbuilder, he, at the age of sixteen, attracted the attention of Allan Ramsay, who took the youth with him to London, and employed him upon the subordinate portions of his works. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh in 1778, and was soon largely patronized as a portrait painter. He also assisted Mr Miller of Dalswinton, as draughtsman, in his mechanical researches and experiments; and, this gentleman having generously offered the painter a loan to enable him to pursue his studies abroad, he left in 1782 for Italy, where he remained two years. Robert Burns, 1787.On his return he painted the excellent portrait of Robert Burns, now in the Scottish National Gallery, well known through Walker's engraving. Political feeling at that time ran high in Edinburgh, and Nasmyth's pronounced Liberal opinions, which he was too outspoken and sincere to disguise, gave offence to many of his aristocratic patrons, and led to the diminution of his practice as a portraitist. In his later years, accordingly, he devoted himself mainly to landscape work, and did not disdain on occasion to set his hand to scene-painting for the theatres. He has been styled, not unjustly, the father of Scottish landscape arte His subjects are carefully finished and coloured, but are wanting in boldness and freedom.
John Wootton1682 - 1764
English painter. He probably received some instruction from Jan Wyck in the 1690s, and he was possibly patronized from an early age by the aristocratic households of Beaufort and Coventry (as was Wyck), perhaps while working as a page to Lady Anne Somerset at Snitterfield House, Warwicks. However, there seems to be no real evidence for this save his early painted view of the house and the family's later acquisition of many of his works. Joseph Farington saw a painting of Diana and the Nymphs (1707; untraced) at Antony House, Cornwall, but Wootton's earliest extant dated work is the horse portrait Bonny Black (1711; Belvoir Castle, Leics). By this time he had begun to establish himself in London, having moved there before his first marriage, to Elizabeth Walsh, in 1706.