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 :. | Portrait of the 9th Duke of Marlborough with his family | Portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner | Mrs Hugh Hammersley | Oyster Gatherers of Cancale | Spanish Dancer by John Singer Sargent |
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Rachel Ruysch
Dutch 1664-1750 Rachel Ruysch (June 3, 1664 ?? Amsterdam, August 12, 1750) was a Dutch artist who specialized in still-life paintings of flowers. She was born in The Hague, but moved to Amsterdam when she was three. Her father Frederik Ruysch, a famous anatomist, and botanist, was appointed a professor there. He gathered a huge collection of rarities in his house. She assisted her father decorating the prepared specimen in a liquor balsamicum with flowers and lace. At fifteen Ruysch was apprenticed to Willem van Aelst, a prominent Delft painter, known for his flower paintings. In 1693, she married a portrait painter, Juriaen Pool (1666-1745), with whom she had ten children. Her sister Pieternel was married to Jan Munnicks, a young man who drew flowers in the Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam. In 1701 Ruysch was inducted into the painters' guild in The Hague. Several years later Ruysch was invited to work for the court in D??sseldorf and serve as court painter to Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine. She remained working for him and his wife from 1708 until the prince's death in 1716. Also Jan Weenix and Adriaen van der Werff were invited to deliver paintings, after Eglon van der Neer died. In 1723 she won the lottery. Ruysch kept painting for her prominent clients. Ruysch lived eighty-five years and her dated works establish that she painted from the time she was a young woman until she was an octogenarian. About a hundred paintings by her are known. The background of the paintings are usually dark. Ruysch was also noted for her paintings of detailed and realistic crystal vases.
camille saint
Period: Post-Romantic (1870-1909) Country: France Born: October 09, 1835 in Paris, France Died: December 16, 1921 in Algiers, Algeria Genres: Chamber Music, Choral Music, Concerto, Keyboard Music, Miscellaneous Music, Opera, Orchestral Music, Symphony
Floris Verster
1861-1927 Dutch Floris Verster Gallery Dutch painter. He trained first at the Ars Aemula Naturae school in Leiden under George Hendrik Breitner, then at The Hague Academie (1879-82) and the Brussels Academie (1882). In Leiden in 1882 he started painting landscapes in the style of the Hague school. From 1882 to 1892 he shared a studio in Leiden with the still-life painter Menso Kamerlingh Onnes (1860-1925), who was to become his brother-in-law. Influenced by Onnes and such French realists as Antoine Vollon and Theodule Ribot, in 1885 he turned to painting still-lifes in a mildly Impressionist style that by 1888-9 often attained monumental formats, as in Peonies (1.35*2.00 m, 1889; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.). He submitted some of these to exhibitions, where their reception was mixed; artists including Breitner, H. W. Mesdag and Jacob Maris were enthusiastic, but the critics quite often were not. He participated in a few exhibitions abroad, notably from 1890 to 1894 in Munich and in 1891 with Les XX in Brussels.