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 :. | Apostle St Peter | Agony in the Garden | The Entombment of Christ | The Agony in the Garden | st.joseph and the child |
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Otto Mueller
German Painter, 1874-1930 Otto Mueller was born on October 16, 1874, in Liebau, German Silesia. His mother had been adopted as a young girl, giving rise to the story that he was the son of a gypsy - a story he never denied. He was a cousin to the famous German writers and dramatists Gerhart and Carl Hauptmann (the latter's novel "Einhart der Lächler" is an imaginary portrait of the painter). After four years of apprenticeship with a lithographer, Mueller entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Dresden in 1894. He was dissatisfied with the conservative instructions and left after two years. The next several years he lived close to his influential cousins, and for a short while he went to Munich to study with the famous painter Franz von Stuck. Information about his life and work until 1908 - when he settled in Berlin - is sketchy, especially since the artist destroyed many of his earlier works. In Berlin Mueller met the expressionist sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, whose concept of the human form had a decisive influence on his own perception. When in 1910 his entries to the exhibition of the Berlin Secession were rejected he joined the members of the artist group "Die Brecke" (The Bridge) and exhibited with the New Secession and thus met Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ernst Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He became their lifelong friend, and, while only slightly influenced by their woodcut techniques, he contributed in return his experience in lithography and especially his techniques of distemper painting (colors bound by glue or size). This technique permits the quick coverage of large areas of the very rough canvas (burlap) which he preferred and adds a subdued luminosity. Since overpainting in distemper is not possible, the artist has to have a clear conception of his work before he begins. The technical devices strengthened the Brecke painters' desire to "flatten" the image on the canvas - following the examples of Paul Gauguin and even Edvard Munch and rejecting the academic preference for an emphasis on three-dimensionality of the subject. In his graphic works Mueller experimented with mixtures of woodcut and lithography, the rubbing of the printer's ink, frequently adding color in the form of watercolor or colored chalk, until he had the technical means of the Breslau Academy available to make true color lithographs. His "Gypsy-Portfolio" (nine color lithographs in a portfolio of 1927), which used as many as five stones, is one of his great achievements as a graphic artist. From 1916 to 1918 he served as a soldier in World War I, an experience which left no impact on his work. Shortly after his return he was appointed professor at the Breslau Academy of Art, where he taught until his death. Mueller's work shows only three motifs: landscapes, gypsies, and primarily nudes in landscapes. The last motif dominated his work. The earthen color of his mostly young, subtle but angular nude girls forms with the subdued and delicate greens of the landscape backgrounds a vision of a lost past. There is a frequently melancholic nostalgia in his works, presenting a harmony between nature and the human form which is not only opposite to the academic approach but also to that of the other Expressionists.
Jean Baptiste van Loo
Flemish Painter, 1684-1745 was a French subject and portrait painter. He was born in Aix-en-Provence, and was instructed in art by his father Louis-Abraham van Loo, son of Jacob van Loo. Having at an early age executed several pictures for the decoration of the church and public buildings at Aix, he was employed on similar work at Toulon, which he was obliged to leave during the siege of 1707. He was patronized by the prince of Carignan, who sent him to Rome, where he studied under Benedetto Luti. Here he was much employed on church pictures, and in particular executed a greatly praised Scourging of Christ for St Maria in Monticelli. At Turin he painted Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy and several members of his court. Then, moving to Paris, where he was elected a member of the Acad??mie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, he executed various altar-pieces and restored the works of Francesco Primaticcio at Fontainebleau. In 1737 he went to England, where he attracted attention by his portrait of Colley Cibber and of Owen McSwiny, the theatrical manager; the latter, like many other of van Loo's works, was engraved in mezzotint by John Faber Junior. He also painted Sir Robert Walpole, whose portrait by van Loo in his robes as chancellor of the exchequer is in the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the prince and princess of Wales. He did not, however, practise long in England, for his health failing he retired to Paris in 1742, and afterwards to Aix, where he died on 19 December 1745.
Theobald Chartran
French Academic Painter, 1849-1907, He was a classical French academic painter. As 'T', he was one of the artists responsible for occasional caricatures of Vanity Fair magazine, specializing in French and Italian subjects. His work for Vanity Fair included Pope Leo XIII, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Umberto I of Italy, William Henry Waddington, all in 1878, Charles Gounod, Giuseppe Verdi, Ernest Renan, Jules Grevy, Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, Victor Hugo, Marshal MacMahon, Granier de Cassagnac, Louis Blanc, and Alexandre Dumas, Fils, all in 1879.