1869-1952 was an American painter. Gray was born into a San Francisco family endowed with a broad literary and artistic background. He studied under Arthur Frank Mathews at the San Francisco School of Design and later under William Merritt Chase. While he had some early Impressionistic tendencies, his primary expression was under the Tonalism Mathews had brought back from Paris. He is known for his extraction of beauty from the Northern California landscape. Alexander Gray, Percy's father, was born in England, but found his way to a successful insurance business in San Francisco. As the byproduct of a childhood illness, Percy realized he had talents in art. From 1886 to 1888 he attended the California School of Design, then led by Mathews. From there he went on to become a newspaper illustrator, obtaining a job with the New York Journal. In New York he also studied at the Art Students League. He was dispatched from New York to cover the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but decided to remain in his native city where he would then take up his painting career. Gray's first pieces, headland seascapes, were exhibited in 1907; soon thereafter he addressed in watercolor eucalyptus groves and fields of California wildflowers. These subjects would become signatures of his work. Originally Gray's works were oils; however, he eventually developed an allergy to oil paints, and therefore switched to using watercolors as his primary medium. [1] From early on the critics marvelled at his ability to infuse realistic depictions of nature with a mystical and poetic quality. He was clearly applying the precepts of his mentor William Merritt Chase in exaggeration of light and color. From 1912 to 1923 Gray lived in Burlingame, California about twenty miles south of San Francisco, while keeping his studio in the city itself. At the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition he won a bronze medal for his watercolor Out of the Desert, Oregon. Having been a bachelor for 53 years, Gray surprised his friends by marrying. He and his bride moved to the Bonificio Adobe in Monterey, where seascapes and cypress dominated his later works.   Related Paintings of Percy Gray :. | Mt Tamalpais (mk42) | Casa Serrano (mk42) | The Gypsy Girl (mk42) | Trees on a Hillside (mk42) | Path to the Blue Mountains |
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Wille Pierre Alexandre
French Painter , 1748--Paris 1821 Painter, son of Jean-Georges Wille. Between 1761 and 1763 he trained under Jean-Baptiste Greuze, who was a friend of his father, and later under Joseph-Marie Vien. Approved by the Acad?mie Royale in 1774, he devoted himself to painting sentimental genre scenes, such as the Last Moments of a Beloved Wife (1784; Cambrai, Mus. Mun.), in Greuze's manner. He also executed paintings for his father to engrave, including French Patriotism (1781) and the Double Reward of Merit (1785; both Bl?rancourt, Cheteau, Mus. N. Coop. Fr.-Amer.).
Aert de Gelder
Dutch 1645-1727 Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was the son of a wealthy Dordrecht family and probably became a pupil of Samuel van Hoogstraten in 1660. Apparently on the advice of van Hoogstraten, de Gelder moved to Amsterdam and entered Rembrandt workshop, possibly c. 1661. It is commonly assumed that he stayed there about two years. He was Rembrandt last pupil. After completing his apprenticeship, de Gelder returned to Dordrecht, where he worked for the rest of his long career. Considering that de Gelder was active for more than half a century, his output of just over 100 paintings seems low, probably because he was financially independent. Of those paintings accepted as by him, only 22 are dated, creating considerable problems in establishing a chronology.
Thomas Beach
British Painter, 1738-1806,English painter. He studied with Joshua Reynolds from 1760 until early in 1762, during which time he was also a student at the St Martin's Lane Academy, London. He probably settled in Bath; his recorded portraits of the 1760s are all of sitters from Dorset or Somerset, and he sent two portraits from an address in Bath to the Society of Artists exhibition of 1772. He exhibited with the Society until 1783, becoming its vice-president (1782) and president (1783) he also exhibited at the Royal Academy (1785-90, 1797). He probably divided his mature practice between London and Bath. His early reliance on Reynolds's ideas of propriety gave way to a more direct approach, seen at its best in such group portraits as The Stapleton Family (1789; U. Bath, Holburne of Menstrie Mus.). In this work, the four children are shown in costume, as a fortune-teller and her customers. The theatrical element in Beach's work, reflecting his interest in the stage, is seen most strikingly in Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble in 'Macbeth' Act 2, Scene ii (1786; London, Garrick Club). Beach's diary for 1798, the only one to have survived, chronicles what appears to have been an annual tour of the west country; that year he completed 31 portraits between June and December. Beach was able to capture a strong likeness and this, despite a certain naivety and awkwardness in composition, was enough to establish his reputation in moderately fashionable provincial circles. His last recorded work is a Self-portrait