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 :. | Butterfly cents | Swallow | Smart dog children | Spanish style scarf | White and Black |
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Jacques Blanchard
(1600 - 1638), also known as Jacques Blanchart, was a French baroque painter who was born in Paris. He was raised and taught by his uncle, the painter Nicolas Bollery (ca. 1560-1630). Jacques's brother and son, Jean-Baptiste Blanchard (after 1602-1665) and Gabriel Blanchard (1630-1704), respectively were also painters. Jacques spent the years from 1624 to 1628 studying in Bologna and Venice. After briefly working in Turin at the court of the Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy (ca. 1628) he returned to France and set himself up in Paris in 1629. Jacques Blanchard is best known for his small religious and mythological paintings. He died in Paris in 1638. This painter should not be confused with the French sculptor of the same name who lived from 1634 to 1689. Nothing seems to be known of his work before he left for Rome at the age of twenty-four. After two years he moved to Venice, where he remained for two more years. It was there that his style was formed. He then went to Turin, where he worked for the Dukes of Savoy, before returning to France 1628. It is from the brief but productive period after his return that all his dated works survive. They show him to stand quite apart from his contemporaries, not only in his painting style but also in his choice of sensual subject-matter, for example the Bacchanal at Nancy. The chief influences were the sixteenth century painters, especially Titian and Tintoretto with their rich, warm colours, and Veronese, whose blond and silvery colour and limpid light he used most effectively in his small religious and mythological subjects. The several versions of Charity, depicted as a young woman with two or three children, are excellent examples of his tenderness of colour handling, and of a softness of sentiment nearer to the 18th than to the 17th century.
Montald, Constant
Belgian Painter, 1862-1944 Belgian painter, illustrator and teacher. He studied at the Koninklijke Academie of Ghent, and first made his mark by winning the Prix de Rome in 1886 with Diagorus Borne in Triumph. This success allowed him to travel throughout Europe and the Near East. In 1896 he took part in the first Salon d'Art Id?aliste, organized by Jean Delville, and exhibited there regularly. In the same year he became professor of decorative art at the Acad?mie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, a post he held for the next 37 years. He was a founder-member of L'Art Monumental in 1920