Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614
Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures.
In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals. Related Paintings of El Greco :. | Christ on the Cross Adored by Two Donors (mk05) | St. John the Evangelist | St Paul (df01) | Antonio de Covarrubias y Leiva | The Adoration of the Shepherds | Related Artists:
Robert Braithwaite MartineauEnglish genre and portrait Painter, 1826-1869
was an English painter. He first trained as a lawyer and later entered the Royal Academy where he was awarded a silver medal. He studied under Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt and once shared a studio with him. He died at the age of 43. He married Maria Wheeler and had two children with her. His most famous painting, "The Last Day in the Old Home" portrays a man who has brought ruin upon his family and can be seen at the Tate Gallery in London. Other paintings were bequeathed to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and Liverpool Art Gallery by his daughter Helen. Other less well known paintings include "Kit's First Writing Lesson" and "Picciola".
George Cattermole1800-1868
English painter and illustrator. From the age of 14 Cattermole worked with his brother Richard (?1795-1858) for the antiquarian John Britton, producing architectural drawings. This training equipped him with a repertory of accurate architectural backgrounds, and from the later 1820s his work shifted from delineations of historic buildings to imaginative depictions in watercolour of episodes from literature and history and genre subjects with historical settings. He became the foremost historical watercolour painter, recreating the medieval, Elizabethan and 17th-century past. The intimate history pictures of Richard Parkes Bonington were undoubtedly influential, while Cattermole's bold and loose handling of watercolour owed much to David Cox, an admirer of his work. As an illustrator, his works included The Great Civil War of Charles I and Parliament (written by his brother Richard and published in two volumes in 1841 and 1855) and Evenings at Haddon Hall (1846).
Hans BaluschekGerman, 1870-1935,German illustrator, painter, and writer, known for his graphic depictions of the proletarian milieu and hard life in big cities. Baluschek was also a renowned illustrator of fairy tales and produced superb illustrations for five books in the series Deutsche Marchenbucherei published by the Klemm Verlag between 1878 and 1923: Peterchens Mondfahrt (Little Peter's Flight to the Moon, 1915), Pips der Pilz. Ein Wald?\ und Weihnachtsmarchen (Pips the Mushroom: A Forest and Christmas Fairy Tale, 1920), Prinzessin Huschewind (Princess Hush Wind, 1922), and Ins Marchenland (Into Fairyland, 1922). He employed aquarelles and oils to form unusual and bizarre characters and also used ink to create the text.