July 29, 1817 C May 5, 1900) was a Russian painter of Armenian descent, most famous for his seascapes, which constitute more than half of his paintings.Aivazovsky was born in the town of Feodosiya, Crimea, to a poor Armenian family. His parents family name was Aivazian. Some of artist's paintings bear a signature, in Armenian letters, "Hovhannes Aivazian" (Յովհաննէս Այվազեան). His talent as an artist earned him sponsorship and entry to the Simferopol gymnasium ??1 and later the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts, from which he graduated with the gold medal. Earning awards for his early landscapes and seascapes, he went on to paint a series of portraits of Crimean coastal towns before traveling throughout Europe. In later life, his paintings of naval scenes earned him a longstanding commission from the Russian Navy. In 1845, Aivazovsky went to Istanbul upon the invitation of Sultan Abdelmecid, a city he was to travel to eight times between 1845-1890.   Related Paintings of Ivan Aivazovsky :. | Lake Maggiore in the Evening | Storm | Exploding Ship | Storm | Shipwreck on the Black Sea |
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Jan Gerritsz. van Bronckhorst
(1603-1661) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and engraver. He is considered today to be a minor member of the Utrecht Caravaggisti group. According to Houbraken, van Bronckhorst apprenticed as an eleven-year-old with the glass engraver Verburgh in Utrecht. He worked with him for 6 months and worked with two other Utrecht glassworkers before embarking on a Grand Tour in 1620. He did not get far before he was offered work in Arras by the glassworker Peeter Matthys. After six months, he continued on to Paris in 1620, where he worked with the glassworker Chamu. He returned to Utrecht in 1622, where Cornelis Poelenburg taught him to paint. He married Catalijntje van Noort in 1626. He frequented the studio of Gerard van Honthorst. In 1647 he moved to Amsterdam where he created the stained glass windows and the organ doors (almost the only area in a Calvinist church where figurative painting was sometimes allowed) of the Nieuwe Kerk (finished in 1655). He has been described as the last of the great stained glass painters in Holland.. Unlike his work for churches, his secular paintings show the influence of Caravaggio, and also show a striking appeal to sensuality. Among his pupils are counted his sons Jan Jansz and Gerrit Jansz, and Cesar van Everdingen.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882 Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci. Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately. In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices. Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix. These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess.
Axel Borg
Sweden (1847-1916 ) - Painter