1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | Das gute Schicksal | Bubende Maria Magdalena | Young Christ with St.Joseph in the Capenter-s shop | The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds | St.Irene Removing Arrows from St.Sebastian's Leg |
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FOSCHI, Pier Francesco
Italian painter, Florentine school (b. 1502, Firenze, d. 1567, Firenze) was an Italian painter active in Florence in a Mannerist style. He was pupil of Andrea del Sarto and assisted Pontormo with his frescoes at Careggi in 1536. He completed 3 altarpieces, commissioned in 1540C1545 for the church of Santo Spirito in Florence: an Immaculate Conception, Resurrection , and a Transfiguration. Foschi was also influenced by and Il Bronzino. One of his pupils was Alessandro Fei. Also called Pier Francesco di Jacopo Foschi or Toschi. He was the son of Pierfrancesco di Jacopo Sandro Foschi, known for his Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John. (Utah Museum of Fine Arts). Foschi is best noted for his portraits painted between 1530 and 1540, including his Portrait of a Lady (Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza), Portrait of a Young Man Weaving a Wreath of Flowers (Utah Museum of Fine Arts), and his Portrait of a Man, (Uffizi Gallery). In his portraits he adhered to Mannerist style, utilizing a slight Contrapposto in the sitter with their head turned from the body. This pose gave the depiction a spontaneity and sense of movement for the innovative Mannerists, but was eventually so formulaic that it lost its intention of originality.
Thomas Frye
The Anglo-Irish painter Thomas Frye (c. 1710 - 3 April 1762 best known for his portraits in oil and pastel, including some miniatures and his early mezzotint engravings, was also the patentee of the Bow porcelain factory, London, and claimed in his epitaph to be "the inventor and first manufacturer of porcelain in England," though his rivals at the Chelsea porcelain factory seem to have preceded him in bringing wares to market. The Bow porcelain works did not long survive Frye's death; their final auctions took place in May 1764. Thomas Frye was born at Edenderry, County Offaly, Ireland, in 1710; in his youth he went to London to practice as an artist. His earliest work are a pair of pastel portraits of boys, one dated 1734 (Earl of Iveagh). For the Worshipful Company of Saddlers he painted a full-length portrait of Frederick, Prince of Wales (1736, destroyed 1940), which he engraved in mezzotint and published in 1741. With his silent partner, a London merchant Edward Heylyn, he took out a patent on kaolin to be imported from the English colony of Virginia in November 1745, and became manager of the Bow factory from its obscure beginnings in the 1740s. He retired to Wales in 1759 for the sake of his lungs, but soon returned to London and resumed his occupation as an engraver, publishing the series of life-size fancy portraits in mezzotint, by which he is most remembered. He died of consumption on 2 April 1762. Frye had five children; his two daughters assisted him in painting porcelain at Bow until their marriages. One of them, who married a Mr. Willcox, was employed by Josiah Wedgwood at the Wedgwood Etruria works in painting figure-subjects from 1759 to 1776, the year of her death.
Eric Forbes-Robertson
(1865-1935). a figure and landscape painter a figure and landscape painter.was a Scottish painter of landscapes, flowers, and foliage, with children. He was a cousin of James Hornell. He was born in Australia, of Scottish parents, and he was brought up and lived practically all his life in Scotland, at Kirkcudbright. He studied for three years at the art school at Edinburgh, and for two years at Antwerp under Professor Verlat. Returning from Antwerp in 1885, he met George Henry and associated himself with the Glasgow School. Hornel and Henry collaborated upon "The Druids Bringing In The Mistletoe" (1890), a procession of priests bringing in the sacred mistletoe, gorgeous with polychrome and gold. The two worked side by side to achieve decorative splendor of color, Hornel boldly and freely employing texture effects produced by loading and scraping, roughening, smoothing, and staining. In 1893-94 the two artists spent a year and a half in Japan, where Hornel learned much about decorative design and spacing. Towards the close of the nineties his colors, while preserving their glow and richness, became more refined and more atmospheric, and his drawing more naturalistic, combining sensuous appeal with emotional and poetic significance. In 1901 he declined election to the Royal Scottish Academy. In 1901 he acquired Broughton House, a townhouse and garden in Kirkcudbright, which was his main residence for the rest of his life.