(born Niko Pirosmanashvili; May 5, 1862-1918) was a Georgian primitivist painter. Pirosmani was born in the Georgian village of Mirzaani to a pleasant family in the Kakheti province. His family owned a small vineyard. He was later orphaned and put in the care of his two elder sisters. He moved with them to Tbilisi in 1870. In 1872 he worked as a servant for wealthy families and learned to read and write Russian and Georgian. In 1876 he returned to Mirzaani and worked as a herdsman. Pirosmani gradually taught himself to paint. One of his specialties was painting directly into black oilcloth. In 1882 he opened a workshop in Tbilisi which was unsuccessful. In 1890 he worked as a railroad conductor, and in 1895 worked creating signboards. In 1893 he co-founded a dairy farm in Tbilisi which he left in 1901. Throughout his life Pirosmani, who was always poor, was willing to take up ordinary jobs including housepainting and whitewashing buildings. Although his paintings had some local popularity (about 200 survive) his relationship with professional artists remained uneasy; making a living was always more important to him than abstract aesthetics.  Related Paintings of Niko Pirosmanashvili :. | A Family Celebration | A Black Wild Boar | The Russo-Japanese War | The Ferry at Didubeh | Boy Delivering Lunch |
Related Artists:
Henri-Edmond Cross
(May 20, 1856 - May 16, 1910) was a French pointillist painter. Cross was born in Douai and grew up in Lille. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. His early works, portraits and still lifes, were in the dark colors of realism, but after meeting with Claude Monet in 1883, he painted in the brighter colors of Impressionism. In 1884, Cross co-founded the Societe des Artistes Independants with Georges Seurat. He went on to become one of the principal exponents of Neo-Impressionism. He began his Pointillist period after spending time with Paul Signac in 1904. His later works are Fauvist, perhaps influenced by his acquaintance with Henri Matisse. His final years, plagued by rheumatism, were spent in Saint-Clair[disambiguation needed ], where he died in 1910. His pieces include The Church of Santa Maria degli Angely Near Assisi (1909) and Landscape with Stars. The Allen Memorial Art Museum (Oberlin College, Ohio), the Block Museum of Art (Northwestern University, Illinois), The Art Institute of Chicago, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Harvard University Art Museums, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Kröller-Meller Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Grenoble (Grenoble, France), Musee d'Orsay (Paris), Musee Malraux (Le Havre, France), Musee Richard Anacreon (Granville, France), the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), New Art Gallery (Walsall, England), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum (Madrid), are among the public collections holding works by Henri-Edmond Cross.
LA TOUR, Georges de
French Baroque Era Painter, 1593-1652 French painter. He was well known in his lifetime, especially for his depictions of candlelit subjects, then was forgotten until the 20th century, when the identification of works previously misattributed established his reputation as a giant of French painting. His early works were painted in a realistic manner and influenced by the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. The paintings of La Tour's maturity are marked by a startling geometric simplification of the human form and by the depiction of interior scenes lit only by the glare of candles or torches. His religious paintings done in this manner have a monumental simplicity and a stillness that expresses both contemplative quiet and wonder. Little is known of his life, and only four or five of his paintings are dated.
Francois Louis Thomas Francia
French, 1772-1839 was a French painter born in Calais and famous for his shore landscapes. He was the master of the young British painter Richard Parkes Bonington. This article about a French painter is a stub.