French Post-Impressionist Painter, 1839-1906 During the second half of the 19th century French impressionism created a dramatic break with the art of the past. In conception and appearance the style was radically new and, although it initially inspired public ridicule, it soon affected nearly every ambitious artist in western Europe. The new vision emerged during the 1870s, chiefly in the art of Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. For each of these artists impressionism was an illusionistic style which differed from the tradition of Renaissance illusionism in its greater emphasis upon vibrant, natural color and on an immediate confrontation with the phenomena of the visible world. As the style developed during the 1880s, however, it increasingly became characterized by paintings which were flat rather than illusionistic. In other words, the impressionists insistence upon a direct application of pigment to canvas resulted in surfaces which declared themselves first of all as surfaces - and, consequently, in paintings which declared themselves first of all as paintings rather than as windows which looked out upon the natural world. The tendency toward flatness persisted into the last years of the 19th century, its pervasiveness giving the impression that illusionistic space - fought for, won, and defended since the very beginning of the Renaissance - had finally been sacrificed by the medium of painting. Paul C??zanne worked within and finally emerged from this trend. As a painter, he matured slowly, his greatest works coming during the last 25 years of his life. During this period he scored a remarkable and heroic achievement: he restored to painting the space and volume that had seemingly been lost to it. But he did it in a totally unprecedented way: not by return to the illusionism of the past but by the creation of a spatial illusionism that did not violate flatness. C??zanne was born on Jan. 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence. His father, Philippe Auguste, was the cofounder of a banking firm which prospered throughout the artist life, affording him financial security that was unavailable to most of his contemporaries and eventually resulting in a large inheritance. In 1852 C??zanne entered the Coll??ge Bourbon, where he met and became friends with Émile Zola. This friendship was decisive for both men: with youthful romanticism they envisioned successful careers in the Paris art world, C??zanne as a painter and Zola as a writer. Consequently, C??zanne began to study painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix in 1856. His father opposed the pursuit of an artistic career, and in 1858 he persuaded C??zanne to enter law school at the University of Aix. Although C??zanne continued his law studies for several years, he was simultaneously enrolled in the School of Design in Aix, where he remained until 1861. In 1861 C??zanne finally convinced his father to allow him to go to Paris. He planned to join Zola there and to enroll in the École des Beaux-Arts. But his application was rejected and, although he had gained inspiration from visits to the Louvre, particularly from the study of Diego Vel??zquez and Caravaggio, C??zanne experienced self-doubt and returned to Aix within the year. He entered his father banking house but continued to study at the School of Design. The remainder of the decade was a period of flux and uncertainty for C??zanne. His attempt to work in his father business was abortive, and he returned to Paris in 1862 and stayed for a year and a half. During this period he met Monet and Pissarro and became acquainted with the revolutionary work of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. C??zanne also admired the fiery romanticism of Eug??ne Delacroix paintings. But he was never entirely comfortable with Parisian life and periodically returned to Aix, where he could work in relative isolation. He retreated there, for instance, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).  Related Paintings of Paul Cezanne :. | The Hermitage at Pontoise | A Modern Olympia | The Feast | Fonte des neiges a l Estaque | Farm Courtyard in Auvers |
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Jan Kupecky
(in German: Johann Kupetzky, in Hungarian: Kupecky Jenos, or Kupeczky Jenos, 1667, Bazin, Royal Hungary (today Slovakia) - 1740, Nernberg, Germany) was a Czech and Slovak portrait painter during the baroque. He was active in Hungary, Slovakia, Vienna and Nernberg. Kupecký, like many people at that time, was the son of Protestant (Czech Brethren) parents from the Czech lands (Mlade Boleslav) who sought refuge in Slovakia (constituting the core of Royal Hungary at that time) from religious persecution by the Catholics. He was born in Pezinok - a town near Bratislava. According to the sources he began his studies with the Swiss painter Benedikt Klaus, who was active in both Vienna and in Royal Hungary. At the age of twenty, Kupecký went on a long Italian study trip. In Rome Prince Aleksander Benedykt Sobieski, the son of the Polish king John III Sobieski, helped him to become famous. He returned to Vienna in 1709, after twenty-two years spent in Venice and Rome. We know very little of his Italian activity as well as his early works and his setting in Vienna. According to his contemporary biographer, the Swiss Johann Caspar Fessli, the Protestant Kupecký, who faithfully clung to his ancestor's religion, remained withdrawn and isolated in Vienna's Catholic milieu, which was under the influence of the court and the aristocracy. However this concept is partly contradicted by the fact that the master had significant courtly commissions while working in Vienna. He painted portraits of various members of the dynasty, Prince Eugene of Savoy, several aristocrats, and, in Karlovy Vary, even of the Russian Czar Peter I. The rich ceuvre of this period comprises a series of gorgeous portraits of Kupecky's family, friends and the painter himself, as well as several persons, whose identity in unknown. In 1733 Kupecký, fearing religious persecution, fled from Vienna to Nernberg with his family and worked there until his death in 1740. As the most significant portrait painter of contemporary Germany, he was commissioned by a large number of German princes, church dignitaries rich merchants and scholars, and his works were popularized by engravings even during his lifetime. Through his pupils and followers Kupecký's influence and artistic example remained alive and widespread for a long time.
Woolner, Thomas
1825 - 1892,English sculptor and poet. He ranks with John Henry Foley as the leading sculptor of mid-Victorian England. He trained with William Behnes and in 1842 enrolled as a student at the Royal Academy, London. In 1844 he exhibited at Westminster Hall, London, a life-size plaster group, the Death of Boadicea (destr.), in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain sculptural commissions for the Houses of Parliament. His earliest important surviving work is the statuette of Puck (plaster, 1845-7; C. G. Woolner priv. col.), which was admired by William Holman Hunt and helped to secure Woolner's admission in 1848 to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The work's Shakespearean theme and lifelike execution, stressing Puck's humorous malice rather than traditional ideal beauty, made it highly appealing. Although eclipsed by Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Woolner was an important figure in the Brotherhood. He contributed poetry to its journal, The Germ (1850), and his work was committed to truthfulness to nature more consistently than that of any other Pre-Raphaelite, except for Hunt. This is evident in Woolner's monument to William Wordsworth (marble, 1851; St Oswald, Grasmere, Cumbria).
AUGUSTIN, Jacques-Jean-Baptiste
French miniaturist (b. 1759, Saint-Di? d. 1832, Paris) 1832). French painter. After receiving instruction in art from Jean Girardet (1709-78) and Jean-Baptiste-Charles Claudot (1733-1805), he went to Paris in 1781, where he won recognition as a miniature painter. The miniatures he painted in the 1790s, for example his portrait of Mme Vanh?e, n?e Dewinck (1792; Paris, Louvre), are among his most animated works; often portraying figures in a landscape setting, they develop the exuberant style of Niclas Lafrensen and Peter Adolf Hall. He also admired the work of Jean-Baptiste Greuze, whose Bacchante (Waddesdon Manor, Bucks, NT) in his own collection he copied in miniature (London, Wallace) and in enamel (Paris, Louvre).