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 :. | Standing nude modeling | Woman before an Aquarium (mk35) | Nature Morte aux trois vases | Reclining Nude Backview (mk35) | Zorah on the Terrace |
Related Artists:
Klimt, Gustav
Austrian Art Nouveau Painter, 1862-1918 Artist Gustav Klimt, like composer Gustav Mahler, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and big-time thinker Sigmund Freud, was a hotshot of Vienna's glory days as it ushered in the 20th century. Influenced by Impressionism, Symbolism and Art Nouveau, Klimt founded the Vienna Secession (1898), an avant-garde art movement that included a broad base of artisans and craftsmen as well as painters. Klimt himself was known more for elaborate graphic schemes than "painterly" work -- his most famous piece, The Kiss (1908), shows his distinctive gold-encrusted decorations over a semi-realistic portrait of an embracing couple. He used the framework of myth and allegory and he painted women, in ornate portraits and erotic exposures that were scandalous by Victorian-era standards. He also had time for more than painting -- after his death he was credited with as many as 14 illegitimate children. A big influence on the decorative arts in Austria, his most famous paintings include Salome
Federico Faruffini
Italian, 1831-1869
Robert Havell Jr Prints
1793-1878 Engraver and painter, cousin of William Havell. He learnt the art of aquatint engraving from his father, Robert Havell I. He worked first in the family engraving business and then c. 1825-7 with Colnaghi in London. In 1827 he undertook the execution in aquatint of the plates for John James Audubon Birds of America, published in parts in London between 1827 and 1838. Havell engraved 425 of the plates and reworked the ten that had been engraved by William Home Lizars in Edinburgh. Havell father printed and coloured some of the double elephant folio sheets in 1827-8 after which Havell took on those tasks himself, establishing himself as a master of aquatint. Among his other important works in the medium are the plates for Mrs E. Bury Selection of Hexandrian Plants (London, 1831-4). In 1839, at Audubon invitation, Havell moved with his family to New York and embarked on a new career as a landscape painter in the style of the Hudson River school, while also working as an engraver. He settled in the Hudson River villages of Ossining (1841) and Tarrytown (1857) but painted throughout north-eastern America. View of Deerfield, Massachusetts (1847; Hist. Deerfield, MA) is characteristic of his quietly romantic idealization of his subjects. Niagara Falls from the Chinese Pagoda (1845; New York, Pub. Lib.), engraved by Havell after one of his paintings, is among the best known of his American aquatints. Though his reputation rests largely on his work for Audubon, his original subjects gave him greater opportunities to display the full range of his aquatint technique. Part of the Havell family