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 :. | Smart dog children | Meditation | Pink bed | Breakfast Milk Cup | Park |
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Pradilla, Francisco
Spanish, 1848-1921 Spanish painter and museum official. He first studied in Saragossa with the stage designer Mariano Pescador (d 1886), and in 1866 moved to Madrid where he began to work with the stage designers and decorators Ferri and Busato. He entered the Escuela Superior de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado and also attended the Academia de Acuarelistas. In 1873 Pradilla and his fellow student Casto Plasencia (1846-90) won history painting scholarships to study at the newly founded Academia Espaola de Bellas Artes in Rome. In 1874 he sent from Rome a copy of Raphael's Dispute over the Holy Sacrament, a work Pradilla completed in collaboration with Alejandro Ferrant (b 1844), another Spanish scholarship holder. During Pradilla's second and third years abroad he travelled through France, visiting the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1875, and Italy, where he was particularly impressed by Venice and the works of Veronese, Titian and Jacopo Tintoretto. Pradilla won a major prize in 1878 at the Exposicien Nacional de Bellas Artes in Madrid; as a result of this success he received the commission for another large picture on a historical theme, the Surrender of Granada (1882; in situ) for the Palacio del Senado (now Pal. de las Cortes) in Madrid. This work shows Pradilla's concern to paint from life in his treatment of the landscape of Granada. He produced other paintings on related subjects, including Mad Queen Joanna Imprisoned at Tordesillas (priv. col., see Pardo Canalis, pl. xviii) and the Sigh of the Moor (Madrid, Rodriguez Bauze priv. col., Pardo Canalis, pl. xvii). Pradilla also painted lively scenes of local life and colour. The years of his stay in Rome, where he was director of the Academia Espa?ola between 1881 and 1883,
Meade, Francis
American, Approx. 1807-1870
Gottlieb Schick
romanticism artist. German, 1776-1812 German painter. He trained at the H?he Karlsschule in Stuttgart (1795-7) under the classically-orientated painter Philipp Friedrich von Hetsch (1758-1839), a pupil of David. Schick also took private lessons (1797-8) with the sculptor Johann Heinrich von Dannecker. From 1799 to 1802 Schick studied in Paris under David, and he soon became one of David's favourite students. He made two unsuccessful attempts to win the Prix de Rome with compositions that derived from the style of David. However, greater independence is seen in his life-size painting Eve (1800; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), a magnificent allegory of Beauty synthesizing a classically-orientated reinterpretation of ancient art and a proto-Romantic interpretation of biblical subject-matter, inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost. As Schick himself stated (letter to Dannecker, 10 July 1800), he had tried to emulate both the Medici Venus and the female figures of Raphael. In 1802, on a pension from Frederick II, Duke of Werttemburg, Schick moved to Rome and for almost a decade played a leading role in Roman artistic life. His friendship with Joseph Anton Koch led to mutual influence in the work of the two artists. Koch was indebted to Schick for invaluable hints on oil painting and for choice of subjects. For a fortnight in July 1805, Schick exhibited in the Pantheon his large oil painting The Sacrifice of Noah (2.50*3.27 m, 1804; Stuttgart, Staatsgal.). The work was inspired by Raphael's Old Testament frescoes in the Vatican Loggie; and it brought Schick enormous success. Despite financial hardship, Schick continued to work indefatigably, and without waiting for commissions, on a wide variety of projects. These included biblical and mythological subjects as well as portraits. Between 1806 and 1808 he completed his Apollo among the Shepherds (Stuttgart, Staatsgal.), a subject he had attempted while still in Paris and then again in Rome in 1805. The second Rome version had clearly gained through Schick's concentrated thought over a period of several years, and the result represented an avowal of faith both in the artist's own gifts and in German Classicism.