Russian Painter, ca.1735-1808 Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov (Fedor Rokotov) (Russian: ?????????? ??????????́?????????? ????́??????????) (1736?C1809) was a distinguished Russian painter who specialized in portraits. Fyodor Rokotov was born into a family of peasant serfs, belonging to the Repnins. Much in his biography is obscure. He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom in the end of 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress (1770s, illustration, right). Rokotov avoided painting formal portraits with lots of adornments and decorations. Instead he was one of the first Russian painters advancing a psychological portrait with attention to optical and atmospheric effects.  Related Paintings of Fedor Rokotov :. | Alexandra Struyskaya | Portrait of Anna Yuryevna Kvashnina Samarina | Catherine II, | Lady in a White Cap. | Portrait of Nathalie Petrovna Golitsyn in a white cap |
Related Artists:
fredrika bremer
was a Swedish writer and a feminist activist. Fredrika Bremer was born in Åbo (Turku) in Finland but moved with her family to Stockholm when she was three years old. She grew up in Stockholm and in the manor Årsta outside Stockholm. Her father was described as somewhat of a house tyrant, and her mother was a socialite, and she and her sisters where brought up to marry in to the aristocracy; a trip on the continent 1821-1822 was the finishing touch of her upbringing before her debute. Bremer was not comfortable with this role, and was inflicted by a crisis, which she overcame by charitable work in the country around Årsta. In 1828, she debuted as a writer, anonomously, with a series of novels published until 1831, and was soon followed by others. Her novels were romantic stories of the time and concentrates on women in the marriage market; either beautiful and superficial, or unattractive with no hope of joining it, and the person telling the story and watching them is often an independent woman. She wanted a new kind of family life, not focused only on the men of the family, that would allow for women to develop their own talents and personality. By the 1840s, she was an acknowledged part of the culture life in Sweden and was translated to many languages. Politically, she was a liberal, but also felt symphaty for the socialism of the English working class movement
k. e. jansson
Karl Emanuel Jansson, född 7 juli 1846 i Finström, Åland, död 1 juni 1874 i Jomala, var en åländsk konstnär. Han var näst äldst av sju syskon. Han far, Jan Jansson, var en bonde i Pålsböle. Sina konstnärliga inspiration fick han av sockenmålaren G Kjellgren, vid sex-sju års ålder, när han där lärde sig att läsa och skriva. Efter avlutad skolgång sattes han i skomakarlära. Efter ett år drogs han till Kjellgren och fungerade som hans hjälpreda. Kyrkoherden Frans von Knorring såg i slutet av 1859 några av hans teckningar. Han sände några till Finska Konstföreningens direktion och lovordade Karl. Förening gav ett bidrag för att kunna studera vid Finska Konstföreningens ritskola i Åbo, under ledning av Robert Wilhelm Ekman. Av Ekman fick han husrum, rit- och målningsmaterial och en hel del extra undervisning. Karl gjorde stora framsteg under de 2 åren han målade med Ekman. Jansson flyttade hösten 1862 till Stockholm, för att kunna utvecklas mer som artist, och inskrevs som elev vid Kongl. Akademin för de fria konsterna. Han tog anatomiexamen 1863. Han levde under svåra ekonomiska förhållanden och hade svårt att sälja sina verk. Jansson fick hård kritik för de målningar han sände hem, exempelvis, Babian ätande en råtta, och konstföreningen betraktade dem med avsky. Han började då kritisera sig själv allt mer och mer, och den inställningen behöll han. Han fick inte den uppmärksammad han behövde. Tavlan Den förlorade sonens återkomst, belönades med ett pris. Han avslutade sin utbildning vid akademien 1867 med mycket beröm. Jansson lyckades utverka statsstöd för studier i Dusseldorf och reste dit på hösten 1868. Han åkte hem igen sommaren 1870 och tillbringade ett år på Åland innan han återvände till Dusseldorf. Han var nu märkt av en tilltagande lungsjukdom. De sista verk han fullbordade var Talmannen och En slant i håven. För att lindra sin sjukdom reste han till Rom i mars 1872. Efter några månader åkte han runt till olika kurorter (Davos, Meran) men inget förbättrade hans tillstånd. Efter en liten tid i D??sseldorf kom han hem till Åland sensommaren 1873. Karl flyttade in på Jomala gård, där lagman Lönnblad och hans fru tog hand om honom. Han målade några verk, vilka blev ofullbordade. På dödsbädden fick han veta att han belönats på världsutställningen i Wien för sina konstverk Klöveress och Talmannen, samt att han blivit medlem i konstakademin i Sankt Petersburg. Han dog 1 juni 1874, inte ens fylld 28 år.
Charles Wilson Peale
1741-1827 Charles Wilson Peale Galleries Finding that he had a talent for painting, especially portraitures, Peale studied for a time under John Hesselius and John Singleton Copley. Friends eventually raised enough money for him to travel to England to take instruction from Benjamin West. Peale studied with West for two years beginning in 1767, afterward returning to America and settling in Annapolis, Maryland. There, he taught painting to his younger brother, James Peale, who in time also became a noted artist. Peale's enthusiasm for the nascent national government brought him to the capital, Philadelphia, in 1776, where he painted portraits of American notables and visitors from overseas. His estate, which is on the campus of La Salle University in Philadelphia, can still be visited. He also raised troops for the War of Independence and eventually gained the rank of captain in the Pennsylvania militia by 1777, having participated in several battles. While in the field, he continued to paint, doing miniature portraits of various officers in the Continental Army. He produced enlarged versions of these in later years. He served in the Pennsylvania state assembly in 1779-1780, after which he returned to painting full-time. Peale painted in the trompe l'oeil style,[1] and was quite prolific as an artist. While he did portraits of scores of historic figures (such as John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton), he is probably best known for his portraits of George Washington. The first time Washington ever sat for a portrait was with Peale in 1772, and there would be six other sittings; using these seven as models, Peale produced altogether close to 60 portraits of Washington. In January 2005, a full length portrait of "Washington at Princeton" from 1779 sold for $21.3 million dollars - setting a record for the highest price paid for an American portrait. Peale had a great interest in natural history, and organized the first U.S. scientific expedition in 1801. These two major interests combined in his founding of what became the Philadelphia Museum, and was later renamed the Peale Museum. This museum is considered the first. It housed a diverse collection of botanical, biological, and archaeological specimens. Most notably, the museum contained a large variety of birds which Peale himself acquired, and it was the first to display North American mammoth bones. The display of the mammoth bones entered Peale into a long standing debate between Thomas Jefferson and Comte de Buffon. Buffon argued that Europe was superior to the Americas biologically, which was illustrated through the size of animals found there. Jefferson referenced the existence of these mammoths (which he believed still roamed northern regions of the continent) as evidence for a greater biodiversity in America. Peale's display of these bones drew attention from Europe, as did his method of re-assembling large skeletal specimens in three dimensions. The museum was among the first to adopt Linnaean taxonomy. This system drew a stark contrast between Peale's museum and his competitors who presented their artifacts as mysterious oddities of the natural world. The museum underwent several moves during its existence. At various times it was located in several prominent buildings including Independence Hall and the original home of the American Philosophical Association. The museum would eventually fail in large part because Peale was unsuccessful at obtaining government funding. After his death, the museum was sold to, and split up by, showmen P. T. Barnum and Moses Kimball.