English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Cover | Fishermen at Sea | Unstable | Gray | Landscape with Juntion of the Severn and the Wye |
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kees van dongen
kees van dongen,(1877 to 1968),French painter and printmaker of Dutch birth. He took evening classes in geometric drawing from 1892 to 1897 at the Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Rotterdam. In 1895 he began working intermittently for the newspaper Rotterdamsche Nieuwsblad, for which he made, among other things, a series of bright watercolour drawings of Rotterdams red-light district and illustrations of Queen Wilhelminas coronation. Van Dongen first paintings used dark tones in imitation of Rembrandt, who remained the most important model for his work; his later book on Rembrandt was, in fact, a projection of his own life. By the mid-1890s he was using more vivid contrasts of black and white, for example in Spotted Chimera (1895; priv. col., see Chaumeil, pl. 1), his palette soon becoming brighter and his line more animated. In Le Muet Windmill (1896; priv. col., see Chaumeil, pl. 7), a red ochre monochrome painting, he successfully enlivened the colour by means of broad, energetic brushstrokes.
Vicente Lopez
1772-1850 Spanish Vicente Lopez Gallery was an Argentine writer and politician who acted as interim President of Argentina from July 7, 1827 to August 18, 1827. He also wrote the lyrics of the Argentine National Anthem adopted in May 11, 1813. Lopez began his primary studies in the San Francisco School, and later studied in the Real Colegio San Carlos, today the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires. He obtained a doctorate of laws in the University of Chuquisaca. He served as a captain in the Patriotic Regiment during the English invasions. After the Argentine victory he composed a poem entitled El triunfo argentino (The Argentine Triumph). He participated in the Cabildo Abierto of May 22, 1810 and supported the formation of the Primera Junta. He had good relations with Manuel Belgrano. When the royalist members of the city government of Buenos Aires were expulsed, he was elected mayor of the city; he was an enemy of the party of Cornelio Saavedra and one of the creators of the First Triumvirate, of which he was the Treasurer. Lopez was a member of the Constituent Assembly of year XIII, representing Buenos Aires. At the request of the Assembly, he wrote the lyrics to a "patriotic march", which eventually became the Argentine National Anthem. It was a military march, whose music was composed by the Catalan Blas Parera; it was approved on March 11, 1813. The first public reading was at a tertulia on May 7 in the house of Mariquita Sanchez de Thompson. It displaced a different march, written by Esteban de Luca, which would have been the hymn if not for the more militaristic Lopez.
Francois-Marius Granet
1775-1849 French Francois Marius Granet Gallery French painter; student of J. L. David. Granet is known for his depictions of church interiors, among them his numerous versions of the Choir of the Capuchin Monastery, one of which is in the Metropolitan Museum. He bequeathed much of his own best work and also his fine collection of paintings to the museum of his native Aix-en-Provence.