(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 :. | Sarkis Pouring Wine | The Russo-Japanese War | A Doe Walking | Molokani Carousing | A Family Celebration |
Related Artists:
Isaac Cruikshank
English Illustrator, ca.1756-1811 Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh. His sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856) and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist. Cruikshank is known for his social and political satire. His parents were Elizabeth Davidson (b. c.1725), daughter of a gardener, and Andrew Crookshanks (c.1725 Cc.1783), a former customs inspector dispossessed for his role in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. He studied with a local artist, possible John Kay (1742 C1826), and travelled with his master to London in 1783. He married Mary MacNaughton (1769 C1853) in 1788 and the couple had five known children, two of whom died in infancy. A daughter, Margaret Eliza, also a promising artist, died at the age of eighteen. Cruikshank's first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh "types", from 1784. He produced illustrations for books about the theatre, did the frontispiece for Witticisms and Jests of Dr Johnson (1791), and illustrated George Shaw's extensive General Zoology (1800 C26). His watercolours were exhibited, but in order to make a living it was more lucritive to produce prints and caricatures. He was responsive to the marketplace but firm in his dislikes of Napoleon and political radicals. He and Gillray developed the figure of John Bull, the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman. Publisher John Roach was a friend and patron, and he later worked with print dealer S. W. Fores and Johnny Fairburn. He also collaborated, with G. M. Woodward, and later, with his son George. Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning at the age of fifty-five as a result of a drinking contest and is buried near his home in London.
Alonso Cano
(19 March 1601 - 3 September 1667) was a Spanish painter, architect and sculptor born in Granada. He learned architecture from his father, Miguel Cano; painting in the academy of Juan del Castillo, and from Francisco Pacheco the teacher of Velezquez; and sculpture from Juan Martenez Montañ's. As a sculptor, his most famous works are the Madonna and Child in the church of Lebrija (also called Nebrija), and the colossal figures of San Pedro and San Pablo. He was made first royal architect, painter to Philip IV, and instructor to the prince, Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias.The King gave him the church preferment of a canon of the Granada Cathedral (1652), in order to take up a position as chief architect of the cathedral, where his main achievement in architecture was the façade, designed at the end of his life and erected to his design after his death. Ideal portrait of a Spanish King.He was notorious for his ungovernable temper; and it is said that once he risked his life by committing the then capital offence of dashing to pieces the statue of a saint, when in a rage with the purchaser who begrudged the price he demanded. According to another story, he found his house robbed after coming home one evening, his wife murdered, and his Italian servant fled. Notwithstanding the presumption against the fugitive, the magistrates condemned Cano, because he was of a jealous temper. Upon this he fled to Valencia, but afterwards returned to Madrid, where he was put to the torture, which he endured without incriminating himself, and the king received him into favour. After the death of his wife he took Holy Orders as a protection from farther prosecution, but still continued his professional pursuits. He died in 1676. In his last moments, when the priest held to him a crucifix, he told him to take it away; according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, this was because the priest gave the Sacrament to conversos.
Gerhard Munthe
1849 (1929) was a Norwegian painter and illustrator.Munthe was born in Elverum to physician Christopher Pavels Munthe (1816 C 1884) and his wife Christine Margrethe Pavels Aabel (1827 C 1887). He was a brother of historian and military officer Hartvig Andreas Munthe, writer Margrethe Munthe and military officer Carl Oscar Munthe. He was also an nephew of historian and cartographer Gerhard Munthe and an uncle of genealogist Christopher Morgenstierne Munthe, librarian Wilhelm Munthe and painter Lagertha Munthe. Through his mother he was a nephew of Andreas Leigh Aabel and Oluf Andreas Aabel, and a first cousin of Hauk Aabel. In December 1886 he married Sigrun Sandberg (1869 C 1957). Between 1886 and 1890 Bjørn Bjørnson was his stepfather-in-law. Munthe and Sandberg settled in Sandvika and later Lysaker. Also, Munthe had a studio at Ringstabekk for a short period.The couple divorced in 1919, the same year she married Fridtjof Nansen.