Swedish Realist Painter, 1853-1919
Swedish painter, illustrator and printmaker. He came from a poor family and studied (1866-76) at the Konstakademi in Stockholm, supporting himself throughout this period. From 1871 to 1878 he contributed illustrations to the comic journal Kaspar and the Ny illustrerad tidning. From 1875, for several decades, he was a prolific book illustrator, his most renowned work in this field being his drawings for Föltskärns beröttelser ('The Barber-surgeon's tales'; pubd 1883-4) by Zacharius Topelius, and the Rococo-inspired watercolours for the Samlade skaldeförsök ('Collected attempts at poetry'; pubd 1884) by the 18th-century Swedish author Anna Maria Lenngren. Related Paintings of Carl Larsson :. | appelblom | sjalvportratt | Ehrenstrahl painting Karl XII-s Portrait | pa juldagsmorgonen | The Old man and the New Trees | Related Artists:
William Morris Hunt1824- 1879
William Morris Hunt Gallery
Hunt's father's family were among Vermont's founders and largest landowners; his mother's a family of wealth and prominence in Connecticut. Hunt attended Harvard but withdrew in his junior year.
Following the untimely death of his Congressman father from cholera, Hunt's mother Jane took him and his brothers to Switzerland, the South of France and to Rome, where Hunt studied with Couture in Paris and then came under the influence of Jean-François Millet, from whom he learned the principles of the Barbizon school. The Hunt family remained in Europe for a dozen years.
Afterwards, leaving Paris, he painted and established art schools at Newport, Rhode Island, where he had relatives, Brattleboro, Vermont, Faial Island in the Azores, where he had family connections and finally at Boston, where he painted, taught art and became a popular portrait painter.
The companionship of Millet had a lasting influence on Hunt's character and style, and his work grew in strength, in beauty and in seriousness. He was among the biggest proponents of the Barbizon school in America, and he more than any other turned the rising generation of American painters towards Paris.
On his return in 1855 he painted some of his most handsome canvases, all reminiscent of his life in France and of Millet's influence. Such are The Belated Kid, Girl at the Fountain, Hurdy-Gurdy Boy, and others ?C but the public called for portraits, and it became the fashion to sit for Hunt; among his best paintings of this genre are those of William M. Evarts, Mrs Charles Francis Adams, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, William H. Gardner, Chief Justice Shaw and Judge Horace Gray.
Sadly, many of Hunt's paintings and sketches, together with five large Millets and other art treasures collected by him in Europe, were destroyed in the Great Boston Fire of 1872.
Sigmund FreudenbergerSwiss, 1745-1801,Swiss painter, draughtsman and engraver. In 1761 he went to work for the portrait painter Emanuel Handmann in Basle, where he stayed for three years. In 1765, with Adrian Zingg (1734-86), he left for Paris, where he trained with Jakob Schmutzer (1733-1811) and frequented the studio of Jean Georges Wille, the celebrated engraver. He worked as a book illustrator during this period. The work of Boucher, whom he met, and of Greuze and Fragonard had a significant influence on his artistic development. Freudenberger returned in 1773 to Berne, where he undertook several portraits. He became friendly with Johann Ludwig Aberli, with whom he travelled the countryside, which he recorded in numerous drawings, watercolours and engravings. He specialized in genre scenes, rustic still-lifes and portrayals of Bernese peasant life, which became very popular. In some works, such as a red chalk drawing of A Woman Playing the Harp (1778; Zurich, Schweizer. Landesmus.), he continued the gallant style he had learnt from Boucher. His watercolours were frequently engraved, either individually or in series, and hand-coloured. His style is characterized by detailed and careful execution and by an intimate, narrative approach, although he tended to idealize his rustic subject-matter. His work was significant in introducing genre subjects in Switzerland, where artists had tended to concentrate on pure landscape. He ran a large studio where Daniel Lafond (1763-1831), Niklaus Kenig and Georg Mind (1768-1814) were pupils. The French Revolution was disastrous for his art and his business and clouded the last years of his life.
Louis Le Nain1593-1648
French
Louis Le Nain Gallery
French family of painters. Antoine Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 26 May 1648) and his brothers Louis Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1600; bur Paris, 24 May 1648) and Mathieu Le Nain (b Laon, c. 1607; bur Paris, 26 April 1677) lived together and shared a studio in Paris. Since the studio was headed by Antoine, he is assumed to have been older than Louis. The brothers reputation rests on a number of paintings signed Le Nain, on the basis of which other paintings (but no drawings) have also been attributed to them. None of the signed paintings bears a Christian name, and there is no secure way of attributing works to the individual brothers, although many attempts have been made. Eighteenth-century sale catalogues, fearful of anonymity, effectively chose from the three names at random. Since the writings of Witt (1910) and Jamot (1922) in particular, it has been habitual to ascribe small paintings on copper to Antoine, and austere, larger peasant scenes to Louis. This division of hands will be found in almost all the subsequent literature on the artists, although it must be stressed that there is no evidence at all to support it. Great efforts have also been made to identify works by Mathieu, since he survived his brothers by nearly 30 years and presumably continued to paint after their deaths in 1648. However, no such activity after 1648 is securely documented, and none of the surviving works bears a date later than 1647; and the arguments for a separate Mathieu oeuvre, though cogent, should not be regarded as conclusive. The outstanding feature of the work of the Le Nain brothers, and the basis of their celebrity since the mid-19th century, is the artists treatment of the poor.