American Hudson River School Painter, 1816-1872 He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City. In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting. There he met and traveled with Benjamin Champney. The two sketched and painted throughout Europe, refining their talents. During this period, Kensett developed an appreciation and affinity for 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Kensett and Champney returned to the United States in 1847. After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe. Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England. He is most closely associated with the so-called "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Along with Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fitz Hugh Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade and others, the works of the "Luminists," as they came to be known, were characterized by unselfconscious, nearly invisible brushstrokes used to convey the qualities and effects of atmospheric light. It could be considered the spiritual, if not stylistic, cousin to Impressionism. Such spiritualism stemmed from Transcendentalist philosophies of sublime nature and contemplation bringing one closer to a spiritual truth.  Related Paintings of John Frederick Kensett :. | Lake Champlain | Rock Pool | Lake George | English Landscape | Lake Champlain |
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Merson, Luc-Olivier
French Painter, 1846-1920 French painter and illustrator. He was the son of the painter and art critic Charles-Olivier Merson (1822-1902) and trained initially at the Ecole de Dessin in Paris under Gustave Adolphe Chassevent (1818-1901) and then at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Isidore-Alexandre-Augustin Pils. He made his d?but at the Salon in 1867 and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1869 with the melodramatic work, the Soldier of Marathon (1869; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). As a prizewinner he then spent five years in Italy, where he was impressed and influenced by the works of the Italian Primitives, as is apparent in such works as St Edmund, King and Martyr (1871; Troyes, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.), with its muted colours and rigid composition. In the Salon of 1875 he exhibited Sacrifice for the Country, St Michael, which had been commissioned as a design for a Gobelins tapestry for the Salle des Ev?ques in the Panth?on, Paris. Soon afterwards he was chosen to decorate the Galerie de St Louis in the Palais de Justice, Paris, with scenes from the life of Louis IX. This resulted in two large works, Louis Opening the Doors of the Gaols on his Accession and Louis Condemning Sire Enguerrand de Coucy (both 1877). He also used historical, often religious, subjects for his smaller-scale works, as in St Francis of Assisi Preaching to the Fish (1880; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.).
Pratt, Matthew
American Colonial Era Painter, 1734-1805 .American painter. One of ten children of a goldsmith, he was apprenticed at 15 to his uncle, James Claypoole. He spent almost seven years as an apprentice and eight as a painter of portraits and signs for taverns, shops and counting houses. In 1764 he went to England,
Friedrich Carl Groger
(14 October 1766, Plön - 9 November 1838, Hamburg) was a north-German portrait painter and lithographer. One of the most respected portraitists of his time in northern Germany, his works are to be found in several museums, including the Hamburger Kunsthalle, as well as in north German, Holstein and Danish private collections. Gröger was the son of a tailor in Plön, where he grew up in modest circumstances. His parents wanted him to become a tailor or wood turner and opposed his early artistic activities. He was largely self taught in painting, though he had some contact in Lebeck with Tischbein and in 1785 was in the city of Lebeck, where he met Heinrich Jacob Aldenrath, his first, loyalest and lifelong friend - the Grögersweg in Hamburg-Barmbek named after him links the Tischbeinstraße with the Aldenrathsweg. From 1789 he studied at Berlin's Akademie der Kenste. He and Aldenrath then went together to Hamburg, then on a joint study trip to Dresden and Paris, then back to Lebeck, where he worked until 1807. They then alternated between Hamburg, Copenhagen, Kiel and Lebeck, before finally settling in Hamburg in 1814. In 1792 Gröger was made an honorary member of the Gesellschaft zur Beförderung gemeinnetziger Tätigkeit‎ in Lebeck. Gröger developed from a miniature painter into a portrait painter, who towards the end of his life preferred three quarter bust portraits. Aldenrath took over the miniature painting side of their joint business. After lithography developed in northern Germany, they both worked in this medium individually as well as jointly under the business name Firma Gröger & Aldenrath.