1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | The Breakfast Table (mk18) | Mrs Hugh Hammersley | Alice Wernher born Alice Sedgwick Mankiewicz | Dolce Far Niente | Village Children (mk18) |
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Felicien Rops
Belgian Symbolist Engraver, 1833-1898 was a Belgian artist, and printmaker in etching and aquatint. Rops was born in Namur in 1833, and was educated at the University of Brussels. Rops's forte was drawing more than painting in oils; he first won fame as a caricaturist. He met Charles Baudelaire towards the end of Baudelaire's life in 1864, and Baudelaire left an impression upon him that lasted until the end of his days. Rops created the frontispiece for Baudelaire's Les Épaves, a selection of poems from Les Fleurs du mal that had been censored in France, and which therefore were published in Belgium. Rops's association with Baudelaire and with the art he represented won his work the admiration of many other writers, including Theophile Gautier, Alfred de Musset, St phane Mallarm, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly, and Josephin Peladan. He was closely associated with the literary movement of Symbolism and Decadence. Like the works of the authors whose poetry he illustrated, his work tends to mingle sex, death, and Satanic images.
Maratta, Carlo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1625-1713 was an Italian painter of the High Baroque period, active mostly in Rome. Born in Camerano, then part of the Papal States. He came as a boy of 12 to apprentice in the studio of Andrea Sacchi. Like Sacchi, his paintings have a classicizing tone, inspired by the works of the great painters from Parma and Bologna: Carracci, Guercino, and Lanfranco. He developed a close relationship with Sacchi till the death of his master in 1661. He worked alongside Francesco Cozza, and Domenico Maria Canuti in the decoration of the Palazzo Altieri. His first prominent work is an Adoration of the Shepherds for San Giuseppe die Falegnami in 1650. He came to establish one of the most prominent art studios in Rome of his time. Other major works are the The Mystery of the Trinity Revealed to St. Augustine (c. 1655) painted for the church of Santa Maria dei Sette Dolori, The Appearance of the Virgin to St. Philip Neri (c. 1675) now in the Pitti Palace of Florence, The Virgin with Saints Carlo Borromeo and Ignatius of Loyola and Angels (c. 1685) for the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella, and The Assumption of the Virgin with Doctors of the Church (1689) for Santa Maria del Popolo, . His numerous depictions of the Virgin earned him the nickname Carluccio delle Madonne (Little Carlo of the Madonnas). The style of Maratta is a classicized Baroque, more restrained and composed than the styles of Cortona and Carracci, thus more allied to the traditions of Sacchi, Albani, and Reni. He was one of the artists favored by Giovanni Bellori. Maratta was known for his insightful portraiture. In 1650, Maratta was introduced to pope Alexander VII, who commissioned many paintings including one of his greatest works, a painting of Constantine destroying the idols for the Baptistry of the Lateran. This work brought Maratta increased fame in the Vatican, and in 1704 Maratta was knighted by pope Clement XI. Other works include an altarpiece in the San Francesco Saverio Chapel of the Church of the Gesu, in the right transept. In 1679 or 1680, a daughter, Faustina Maratti Zappi was born to Maratta by a mistress,
Brocky, Karoly
1807-1855