French b.Aug. 30, 1748, Paris d.Dec. 29, 1825, Brussels Jacques-Louis David is famous for his huge, dramatic canvasses of Napoleon and other historical figures, including Oath of the Horatii (1784), Death of Marat (1793) and The Sabine Women (1799). Early in his career he was a leader in the neoclassical movement; later his subjects became more modern and political. David was himself active in the French Revolution as a supporter of Robespierre and is sometimes called the chief propagandist for the Revolution; after the Reign of Terror ended he was briefly imprisoned for his actions. When Napoleon took power David became his court painter and created several grand canvasses of the Emperor, including the heroic Napoleon Bonaparte Crossing the Alps (1801) and the enormous Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine (1807). David also painted Napoleon in His Study (1812), with its famous image of Napoleon with one hand tucked inside his vest. After Napoleon ouster David went in exile to Brussels, where he remained until his 1825 death  Related Paintings of Jacques-Louis David :. | Portrait of Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne Lavoisier | Count Potocki | Madame Recamier | Cupid and Psyche1 | St Roch Asking the Virgin Mary to Heal Victims of the Plague |
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Friedrich Hagedorn
(23 April 1708 - 28 October 1754), German poet, was born at Hamburg, where his father, a man of scientific and literary taste, was Danish minister. He was educated at the gymnasium of Hamburg, and later (1726) became a student of law at Jena. Returning to Hamburg in 1729, he obtained the appointment of unpaid private secretary to the Danish ambassador in London, where he lived till 1731. Hagedorn's return to Hamburg was followed by a period of great poverty and hardship, but in 1733 he was appointed secretary to the so-called "English Court" (Englischer Hof) in Hamburg, a trading company founded in the 13th century. He shortly afterwards married, and from this time had sufficient leisure to pursue his literary occupations till his death. Hagedorn is the first German poet who bears unmistakable testimony to the nation's recovery from the devastation wrought by the Thirty Years' War. He is eminently a social poet. His light and graceful love-songs and anacreontics, with their undisguised joie de vivre, introduced a new note into the German lyric; his fables and tales in verse are hardly inferior in form and in delicate persiflage to those of his master La Fontaine, and his moralizing poetry re-echoes the philosophy of Horace. He exerted a dominant influence on the German lyric until late in the 18th century. The first collection of Hagedorn's poems was published at Hamburg shortly after his return from Jena in 1729, under the title Versuch einiger Gedichte (reprinted by A. Sauer, Heilbronn, 1883). In 1738 appeared Versuch in poetischen Fabeln und Erzählungen; in 1742 a collection of his lyric poems, under the title Sammlung neuer Oden und Lieder; and his Moralische Gedichte in 1750. A collection of his entire works was published at Hamburg in 1757 after his death. The best is J.J. Eschenburg's edition (5 vols., Hamburg, 1800). Selections of his poetry with an excellent introduction in F. Muncker's Anakreontiker und preussisch-patriotische Lyriker (Stuttgart, 1894). See also H. Schuster, F. von Hagedorn und seine Bedeutung fer die deutsche Literatur (Leipzig, 1882); W. Eigenbrodt, Hagedorn und die Erzählung in Reimversen (Berlin, 1884).
Leon Kaplinski
(1824-1873) was a Polish painter and political activist. Born 1824 in Lisew not far from Warsaw, Leon was the son of a small landowner and an eminent freemason Jan Kaplieski. The Kaplieskis were a Frankist family; his grandfather Eliasz Adam Kaplieski was one of the last known Frankists. Leon Kaplieski studied law and philosophy in Warsaw and Wrocław (Breslau). He was engaged in revolutionary underground groups, fled from the part of Poland under Russian rule, was briefly held and interrogated by the Prussian police, and took part in the revolutionary movement in 1848. In the same year Kaplieski emigrated to Paris where he spent most of his remaining years. He took part in Polish emigre political activities, closely connected with the circle of Hotel Lambert and the Czartoryski family, accompanied the Count Witold Czartoryski during his trip to the Balkans and the Near East. Kaplieski also edited the periodical Ephemerides Polonaises. He was married to Helena Hryniewiecka. In 1871 he moved back to Poland, living mostly in Krakew, and died in 1873 in Milosław. He befriended several well-known Polish artists and writers, including Henryk Rodakowski, Jan Matejka, and Cyprian Kamil Norwid. Kaplieski studied art in Poland and later in Paris. His first known works are copies of paintings by famous Italian artists; later he became known and appreciated for his patriotic historical paintings as Wernyhora (1855). His best works are portraits: of his mother Julia (1860), the writer Bohdan Zaleski (1857), Count Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (about 1860), and an autoportrait as a Templar (about 1872). Many of his paintings and other works have perished or been lost. Mainly influenced by classical Italian art and his contemporary Rodakowski, L.K. continued the tradition of academic painting and had no interest for the emerging modernist tendencies of the mid-nineteenth century. He won some recognition in France, participating in the Paris art salons. L.K. wrote some poems and a short novel Nad Wisłą (On Wisla).
William Griffith
1866-1940