Russian Rococo Era Painter , 1727/1729-1802 Russian painter and teacher. He came from a family of serfs, belonging to the Counts Sheremetev, that produced several painters and architects. In about 1746-7 he was a pupil of Georg Christoph Grooth (1716-49), who painted portraits of the Sheremetev family. With Grooth, Argunov worked on the decoration of the court church at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). A full-length icon of St John of Damascus (1749; Pushkin, Pal.-Mus.), in Rococo style, is distinguished by its secular, decorative character. The Dying Cleopatra (1750; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.) is typical of Rococo decorative painting of the mid-18th century, with its striking combination of light, soft tones. Argunov subsequently painted in a quite different style, mainly producing portraits, of which about 60 are known. Among the first of these are pendant portraits of Ivan Lobanov-Rostovsky and his wife (1750 and 1754; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), in which the sitters are idealized, as in ceremonial court portraits.   Related Paintings of Ivan Argunov :. | Portrait of P.B. Sheremetev | Portrait of Peasant Woman in Russian Costume | Portrait of an Unknown Woman in Russian Costume | Portrait of Countess Tolstaya, nee Lopukhina | Portrait of Countess Tolstaya |
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Pieter de Ring
(1615/1620 - 22 September 1660, Leiden) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes. became famous for his opulent, flashy still lifes or banquet pieces with fruit, a lobster, a goblet, shrimps, oysters, a rug and Chinese porcelain. His signature is often a painted ring or with the Latinised form of his name, P.Ab.Annulo. De Ring was born either in Leiden, or in Ypres in Flanders, but there is no trace of his birth in the Leiden archives, and the Ypres Archives were destroyed in August 1914. Pieter de Ring started as a mason and painted still lifes in the evening. When the hall was filled with paintings he became a pupil of Jan Davidsz. de Heem, until 1635 living in Leiden. His father Daniel died in 1648; in 1657 his mother lived in Amsterdam. De Ring himself lived in a house at Hogewoerd. There are no records in the Leiden Archive on his marriage or children. He appears not to have bought a house there nor wrote a will. What is known is that he became one of the founders a member and of the Guild of St. Luke in 1648, De Ring was buried in the Pieterskerk, Leiden on 22 September 1660 and taken to church from a house in the Nonnensteeg. If he had his studio there he probably had a view on the Leiden Academy building. If he lived on the east side of the alley he had a beautiful view on the Hortus Botanicus of Leiden, the work of Clusius.
John Morgan
British 1823-1886
James Mcneill Whistler
American Painter and Printmaker, 1834-1903 James Abbott McNeill Whistler's deft brushwork and mighty ego made him one of London's best-known painters in the second half of the 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, Whistler spent most of his adult life in England and France, in an era when an American artist in Europe was something of a rarity. He specialized in landscapes and (especially later in his career) portraits; stylistically he is often linked with Claude Monet and August Renoir, though he was not exactly part of the Impressionist movement. His etchings also are highly regarded. Witty, cranky and a bit of a devil, Whistler was a regular gadabout in British society. He had a famous long-running feud with the playwright Oscar Wilde, each of them trying to outwit the other with cutting public remarks. Some critics of the era considered Whistler's work to be smudgy and too radical; after viewing Whistler's 1875 study of fireworks over the Thames, Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket, John Ruskin wrote: "I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler successfully sued Ruskin for libel but was awarded only a farthing in damages,