French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | The Swing (nn03) | Madchen im Bett | The Swing | Portrait of a Singer | Die Musikstunde |
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Marianne Stokes
(1855 Graz, Styria - August 1927 London), born Marianne Preindlsberger in the Austrian province of Styria, was an Austrian painter. She settled in England after her marriage to Adrian Scott Stokes (1854-1935), the landscape painter, whom she had met in Pont-Aven. Marianne Stokes was considered one of the leading artists in Victorian England. Preindlsberger first studied in Munich under Lindenschmidt and having been awarded a scholarship for her first picture, 'Muttergluck', she worked in France under Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret (1852-1929), Colin and Gustave Courtois (1853-1923). She painted in the countryside and Paris, and, as with many other young painters, fell under the spell of the rustic naturalist Jules Bastien-Lepage. Her style continued to show his influence even when her subject matter changed from rustic to medieval romantic and biblical. While in France she met the Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, in whose company she visited Pont-Aven in 1883. Her first salon painting, 'Reflection', which had been painted in Brittany, was exhibited in 1885 at the Royal Academy. Her work was also shown at the Grosvenor Gallery, New Gallery, and the Society of British Artists and in 1885, a year after her marriage, she took to using the name 'Mrs. Adrian Stokes'. She held a joint exhibition with her husband at the Fine Art Society in 1900. The Stokes' lived in St Ives where Marianne was a member of the Newlyn School. Having no children, they regularly travelled abroad, frequently to the Tyrol, and in 1905 to Slovakia and the High Tatra. Here they spent about half a year sketching and painting in the villages of Važec, Mengusovce and Ždiar. Adrian Stokes concentrated on landscapes with images of hay-harvesting and picturesque cottages, while Marianne Stokes painted portraits showing fine detail of the garments. These paintings provide a valuable record of the Slovak culture. After abandoning oils, and inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite movement, she painted flat compositions in tempera and gesso, her paintings giving the impression of being frescoes on plaster surfaces. She was an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours.
Hans Olaf Heyerdahl
Swedish, 1857-1913 Norwegian painter. He was born into an enlightened but conservative family, his father being an engineer, occasional architect and writer of Nordic saga poetry, and he spent his childhood and youth in the rapidly expanding town of Drammen, 40 km from the capital Christiania. In 1873 he was admitted to the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, where he studied under Peder C. Thurmann, a landscape artist trained in Desseldorf. For more advanced training, Heyerdahl was obliged to go abroad, and in 1874 he enrolled at the Munich Akademie. He was encouraged by Professor Ludwig von Lefftz (1845-1910) to give up landscape in favour of history painting and portraits (e.g. the artists Christian Skredsvig, 1876, and Eilif Peterssen, 1877; both Oslo, N.G.). In 1877, under the guidance of Professor Wilhelm Lindenschmit (1829-95), Heyerdahl finished his most inventive and brilliant composition, the Expulsion from the Garden (Oslo, N.G.). Using over life-size figures, set in a barren tempestuous landscape, Heyerdahl skilfully contrasted the youthful rage of Adam with the resigned despair of Eve. This sombre work won him a third prize medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878.
studio of giotto
b. 1267, Vespignano, d. 1337, Firenze