French Fauvist Painter and Sculptor, 1869-1954
Henri Matisse is considered the most important French artist of the 20th century and, along with Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential modernist painters of the last century. Matisse began studying drawing and painting in the 1890s. A student of the masters of Post-Impressionism, Matisse later made a reputation for himself as the leader of a group of painters known as Les Fauves. An ironic label given to them by a critic, the name reflected Matisse's aggressive strokes and bold use of primary colors. In 1905 Matisse gained sudden fame with three paintings, including Woman with the Hat, purchased by the wealthy American ex-patriot Gertrude Stein. Beyond painting, he worked with lithographs and sculpture, and during World War II he did a series of book designs. Later in his career he experimented with paper cutouts and designed decorations for the Dominican chapel in Vence, France. Along with Picasso, Related Paintings of Henri Matisse :. | Odalisque | Luxe Calme et Volupte (mk35) | The Yellow Curtain, | Read | Mirror | Related Artists:
Mary BealeEnglish Baroque Era Painter, 1633-1699
was an English portrait painter. She became one of the most important portrait painters of 17th century England, and has been described as the first professional female English painter. Beale was born in Barrow, Suffolk, the daughter of John Cradock, a Puritan rector. Her mother, Dorothy, died when she was 10. She married Charles Beale, a cloth merchant from London, in 1652, at the age of 18. Her father and her husband were both amateur painters, her father being a member of the Painter-Stainers' Company, and she was acquainted with local local artists, such as Nathaniel Thach, Matthew Snelling, Robert Walker and Peter Lely. She became a semi-professional portrait painter in the 1650s and 1660s, working from her home, first in Covent Garden and later in Fleet Street. The family moved to a farmhouse in Allbrook, Hampshire in 1665 due to financial difficulties, her husband having lost his position as a clerk of patents, and also due to the Great Plague in London. For the next five years, a 17th-century two storey timber-framed building was her family home and studio. She returned to London in 1670, where she established a studio in Pall Mall, with her husband working as her assistant, mixing her paints and keeping her accounts. She became successful, and her circle of friends included Thomas Flatman, poet Samuel Woodford, Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson, and Bishops Edward Stillingfleet and Gilbert Burnet. She became reacquainted with Peter Lely, now Court Artist to Charles II. Her later work is heavily influenced by Lely, being mainly small portraits or copies of Lely's work. Her work became unfashionable after his death in 1680.
Horace VernetFrench Academic Painter, 1789-1863, Painter, son of Carle Vernet. He was born in his father's lodgings at the Palais du Louvre, where his grandfather Joseph Vernet also lived; his maternal grandfather was Jean-Michel Moreau. To these antecedents and influences are ascribed the supreme ease of his public career, his almost incredible facility and his fecundity. His early training in his father's studio was supplemented by formal academic training with Franeois-Andre Vincent until 1810, when he competed unsuccessfully for the Prix de Rome. He first exhibited at the Salon in 1812. In 1814 Vernet received the Legion d'honneur for the part he played in the defence of Paris, which he commemorated in the Clichy Gate: The Defence of Paris, 30 March 1814
Paul TrogerAustrian Painter, 1698-1762
was an Austrian painter, draughtsman and printmaker of the late Baroque period. Troger's illusionistic ceiling paintings in fresco are notable for their dramatic vitality of movement and their palette of light colors. Paul Troger??s style, particularly in his frescoes, dominated Austrian painting until the end of the 18th century and profoundly influenced significant artists of the next generation, notably Franz Anton Maulbertsch, Josef Ignaz Mildorfer, Johann Wenzel Bergl. Paul Troger was born on October 30, 1698, in Welsberg, in the Puster Valley of Tyrol (now Bolzano-Bozen, Italy). At the age of 16, under the patronage of the aristocratic Tyrolean von Firmian family, he visited Fiume and became a pupil of Giuseppe Alberti.[2] He painted his first fresco ??Three Angels with the Cross and Putti??, in the Chiesa del Calvario, Kaltern am See/Caldaro al Lago, Bolzano, Italy (1722). In 1722, the prince-bishop of Gurk sent Paul Troger to Venice, where he discovered the works of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, and Giovanni Battista Pittoni. Troger also studied in Rome with Sebastiano Ricci, in Naples with Francesco Solimena and in Bologna, the leading artistic centers of Italy at the time. On his return to Austria, Troger first worked in Salzburg from 1726 to 1728, where he painted the "Glory of Saint Cajetan" on the ceiling of St. Cajetan??s Church, Salzburg (1728). He afterwards established himself in Vienna, where the art of ceiling frescoes was, however, dominated by Johann Michael Rottmayr and Daniel Gran. Paul Troger became the favourite fresco painter in Lower Austrian monasteries in collaboration with the architect Josef Munggenast. In 1753, he joined the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts.