French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | The Post of Woman | Bathers | The Landscape of Port en bessin | Grassy Riverbank | Piling Farmer |
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Hans von Aachen
was a German mannerist painter. His name is derived from the birth place of his father, Aachen in Germany. Other variations of the name include Johann von - and - von Achen and various concisions like Janachen, Fanachen, Abak, Jean Dac, Aquano, van Aken etc. Hans von Aachen began painting in Germany as a pupil of the Flemish master E. Jerrigh. He then moved to Italy in 1574 to study further. He toured Rome and Florence, but eventually settled in Venice. He initially became a pupil of Kaspar Rems, but soon decided to develop his own mannerist technique, by studying Tintoretto and Michelangelo's followers. However, during all of his life he was influenced by the style of Bartholomeus Spranger and Hendrick Goltzius who dominated the art scene in Germany at the time. He returned to Germany in 1588 where he became well known as a painter of portraits for noble houses. He painted several works for Duke William V of Bavaria. He married Regina, the daughter of the composer Orlando di Lasso in Munich. In Munich he came into contact with the Imperial Court in Prague. In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor. However, Von Aachen only moved to Prague in 1601, where he stayed painting commissions from Emperor Rudolph II, and later from Matthias I. Amongst van Aachens pupils were Peter Isaak and Joseph Heinz. His works have been copied by Wolfgang Kilian, Dominicus Custos and Jan Sadeler.
William Ritschel
1864-1949 William Frederic Ritschel (1864-1949) was an impressionist painter who was born in Nuremberg, Germany on July 11, 1864. As a youth, he worked as a sailor and began sketching seascapes. He studied art under Karl Raupp (1837-1918) and Wilhelm von Kaulbach (1805-1874) at the Royal Academy in Munich before immigrating to New York City in 1895. In 1911, he settled in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California and began painting Monterey Peninsula. He died in Carmel in 1949. The Arizona State University Art Museum (Tempe, Arizona), the Art Institute of Chicago, the Crocker Art Museum (Monterey, California), the Davenport Museum of Art (Davenport, Iawa), Fisher Gallery (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Irvine Museum (Irvine, California), the Monterey Museum of Art (Monterey, California), the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah), the Newark Museum (Newark, New Jersey), the Oakland Museum of California (Oakland, California), the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia), the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D. C.), Springville Museum of Art (Springville, Utah), and the University of Arizona Museum of Art (Tucson, Arizona) are among the public collections holding works by William Frederic Ritschel
Cimabue
Italian b1240 - d1302 Cimabue Location Italian painter and mosaicist. His nickname means either bull-head or possibly one who crushes the views of others (It. cimare: top, shear, blunt), an interpretation matching the tradition in commentaries on Dante that he was not merely proud of his work but contemptuous of criticism. Filippo Villani and Vasari assigned him the name Giovanni, but this has no historical foundation. He may be considered the most dramatic of those artists influenced by contemporary Byzantine painting through which antique qualities were introduced into Italian work in the late 13th century. His interest in Classical Roman drapery techniques and in the spatial and dramatic achievements of such contemporary sculptors as Nicola Pisano, however, distinguishes him from other leading members of this movement. As a result of his influence on such younger artists as Duccio and Giotto, the forceful qualities of his work and its openness to a wide range of sources, Cimabue appears to have had a direct personal influence on the subsequent course of Florentine, Tuscan and possibly Roman painting.