French (1880-1950) Louis Icart was born in Toulouse, France. He began drawing at an early age. He was particularly interested in fashion, and became famous for his sketches almost immediately. He worked for major design studios at a time when fashion was undergoing a radical change-from the fussiness of the late nineteenth century to the simple, clingy lines of the early twentieth century. He was first son of Jean and Elisabeth Icart and was officially named Louis Justin Laurent Icart. The use of his initials L.I. would be sufficient in this household. Therefore, from the moment of his birth he was dubbed 'Helli'. The Icart family lived modestly in a small brick home on rue Traversi??re-de-la-balance, in the culturally rich Southern French city of Toulouse, which was the home of many prominent writers and artists, the most famous being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Icart fought in World War I. He relied on his art to stem his anguish, sketching on every available surface. It was not until his move to Paris in 1907 that Icart would concentrate on painting, drawing and the production of countless beautiful etchings, which have served (more than the other mediums) to indelibly preserve his name in twentieth century art history. When he returned from the front he made prints from those drawings. The prints, most of which were aquatints and drypoints, showed great skill. Because they were much in demand, Icart frequently made two editions (one European, the other American) to satisfy his public. These prints are considered rare today, and when they are in mint condition they fetch high prices at auction. Art Deco, a term coined at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, had taken its grip on the Paris of the 1920s. By the late 1920s Icart, working for both publications and major fashion and design studios, had become very successful, both artistically and financially. His etchings reached their height of brilliance in this era of Art Deco, and Icart had become the symbol of the epoch. Yet, although Icart has created for us a picture of Paris and New York life in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in his own style, derived principally from the study of eighteenth-century French masters such as Jean Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honor?? Fragonard. In Icart's drawings, one sees the Impressionists Degas and Monet and, in his rare watercolors, the Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. In fact, Icart lived outside the fashionable artistic movements of the time and was not completely sympathetic to contemporary art. Nonetheless, his Parisian scenes are a documentation of the life he saw around him and they are nearly as popular today as when they were first produced. In 1914 Icart had met a magical, effervescent eighteen-year-old blonde named Fanny Volmers, at the time an employee of the fashion house Paquin. She would eventually become his wife and a source of artistic inspiration for the rest of his life.   Related Paintings of Louis Lcart :. | Place de la Concorde | Black Dog | Our best friend | Butterfly Women | Vine Flower |
Related Artists:
HALS, Dirck
Dutch painter (b. 1591, Haarlem, d. 1656, Haarlem). Brother of Frans Hals. From 1618 to 1624 and again in 1640 he was an amateur of the Haarlem chamber of rhetoric known as De Wijngaertrancken, to which Frans also belonged. He was enrolled in the Guild of St Luke in Haarlem from 1627 to his death. As Blade has established on stylistic grounds, Dirck collaborated with the architectural painter Dirck van Delen from that year until 1634, with Hals painting the figures. On 4 April 1634 a lottery of paintings was announced, organized by Dirck Hals (who sent some of his own pictures) and Cornelis van Kittensteijn in the inn De Basterdpijp in Haarlem. The following year, on 20 June 1635, the notary van Leeuwen at Leiden authorized Dirck Hals to collect moneys for Pieter Jansz. van den Bosch of Leiden in connection with the proceeds of paintings sold at Haarlem. On 2 March 1643 Dirck Hals signed as a witness in the presence of the notary Willem van Vredenburch at Leiden.
Robert Lefevre
(24 September 1755, Bayeux - 3 October 1830, Paris) was a French painter of portraits, history paintings and religious paintings. He was heavily influenced by Jacques-Louis David and his style s reminiscent of the antique. Robert Lefevre made his first drawings on the papers of a procureur to whom his father had apprenticed him. With his parents' consent, he abandoned this apprenticeship and walked from Caen to Paris to become a student of Jean-Baptiste Regnault (in whose studio he met and became friends with Charles Paul Landon). At the 1791 Paris Salon he exhibited his Dame en velours noir, the point of departure for his reputation. Lefevre made 1805 the portait empress Josephine. 1807 manufactured the counterpart of emperor Napoleon Louis-Andre-Gabriel Bouchet. Napoleon gave both paintings to the city Aachen 1807, where they are today in the city hall and decorate the entrance hall. His other portraits of Napoleon, Josephine, Madame Laetitia, Guerin, Carle Vernet (a portrait which is now at the Louvre) and pope Pius VII made him a fashionable portrait artist and one of the main portraitists of the imperial personalities, a reputation sealed by his portrait of Napoleon's new wife Marie Louise.
BONSIGNORI, Francesco
Italian painter, Veronese school (b. 1455, Verona, d. 1519, Caldiero) Italian painter. His father, Albertus Bonsignori, was reputedly an amateur painter; and besides Francesco, the oldest and most talented of his children, three other sons, including Bernardino (c. 1476-c. 1520) and Girolamo (b c. 1479), are also recorded as painters. Barely 20 paintings and fewer than a dozen drawings have been attributed to Francesco Bonsignori.