French Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1665 French painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. His supreme achievement as a painter lies in his unrivalled but hard-won capacity to subordinate dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. The development of his art towards this end was focused on the search for a point of equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s. Poussin did not aspire to the classicism of Raphael's idealized human forms or Michelangelo's re-embodiment of the physical splendours of the antique world, nor did he attempt to vie with the bravura and energy of Annibale Carracci's treatment of Classical mythology in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Equally he was not concerned with the illusionistic effects and heightened emotionalism of Baroque artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. He was concerned above all with interpreting his subject-matter, whether Classical or religious, and telling a story with the greatest possible concentration of emotional response,  Related Paintings of POUSSIN, Nicolas :. | The Triumph of Neptune (detail) af | Landscape with the Gathering of the Ashes of Phocion by his Widow af | The Nurture of Bacchus | Moise changeant en serpent la verge d'Aaron | The Death of Germanicus af |
Related Artists:
Frederico Bartolini
British, 1854-1941
Pierre Albert Marquet Prints
French 1875- 1947 Marquet was born in Bordeaux. In 1890 he moved to Paris to attend the Decorative Arts School, where he met Henri Matisse. They were roommates for a time, and they influenced each other's work. Marquet began studies in 1892 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Gustave Moreau, a symbolist artist who was a follower of the Romantic tradition of Eug??ne Delacroix. In these years, Marquet exhibited paintings at the Salon des Ind??pendants. Although he did not sell many paintings, the artistic community of Paris became aware of his work. His early compositions were characterised by a clear and painterly Fauvist approach, in which he had a fine control of the drawing and responded to light, not only by intensifying the strongest tones, but also by seeing the weaker ones in coloristic terms. In 1905 he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne where his paintings were put together with those of Henri Matisse, Maurice de Vlaminck, Andr?? Derain, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Henri Manguin, Georges Braque, Louis Valtat and Jean Puy. Dismayed by the intense coloration in these paintings, critics reacted by naming the artists the "Fauves", i.e. savage beasts. Although Marquet painted with the fauves for years, he used less bright and violent colours than the others, and emphasized less intense tones made by mixing complementaries, thus always as colors and never as grays. At the end of 1907 he stayed in Paris and dedicated himself, together with Henri Matisse, to a series of city views. The fundamental difference between the two is that while Matisse used strong colours, Marquet favored grayed yellows, greyed violets or blues. Black was usually used as a violent contrast to light colors for such forms as bare tree trunks or calligraphically drawn people contrasted with very light, often yellow or orange streets and sidewalks. Another difference is that Marquet used an approximation of traditional perspective, although his colors and compositions constantly referred to the rectangle and cut its plane with their calligraphy. From 1907 to his death, Marquet alternated between working in his studio in Paris and many parts of the European coast and in North Africa. He was most involved with Algeria and Algiers and with Tunisia. In his voyages he painted the sea and ships, but also the lights and animated life of the city, especially cities on the waterfront, like Algiers. Among European cities Marquet remained impressed particularly with Naples and Venice where he painted the sea and boats, accenting the light over water. He adopted a technique nothing like the Impressionists', painting water as a large area of simple tone which held the plane of the water surface without illusionistic perspective, from which the ships arise into a different plane. His views of the lagoon in Venice do this very economically. The water stays at a right angle to the picture plane and the large ships float with ease, with their reflections exactly the correct tone to project the required space. His color is much like Matisse of the 1920s, here. His contrasts of vivid colors describe the waves of the sea with simple drawing which accompany the exactly observed color tones, giving a scene of placid movement. The human figures are much simplified, calligraphically drawn in a way related to Japanese Shijo style work. Matisse is said to have called him "our Hokusai". During his voyages to Germany and Sweden he painted the subjects he usually preferred: river and sea views, ports and ships, but also cityscapes. Over the course of his career he often returned to the same subjects, even years later, recording subtle differences in the light. He painted a few portraits, and between 1910 and 1914 he painted a series of nudes in whorehouses, and prepared the illustration of a work on lesbian lovers. But he is best known for his many landscapes. Unlike Matisse, there are no obvious periods of change in his work. To the end he was one of Matisse's closest friends, and they discussed each other's work with the greatest openness. His death was unexpected and sudden, from a gall bladder attack and subsequently discovered cancer, for which at that time there was no therapy. Marquet died in Paris, on 14 June 1947.
Ferdinand Hodler
1853-1918 Swiss Ferdinand Hodler Galleries Hodler was born in Berne and grew up in poverty. His father, Jean Hodler, made a meager living as a carpenter; his mother, Marguerite (n??e Neukomm), was from a peasant family. By the time Hodler was eight years old, he had lost his father and two younger brothers to tuberculosis. His mother remarried to a decorative painter, but in 1867 she too died of tuberculosis. Before he was ten, Hodler received training in decorative painting from his stepfather, and was subsequently sent to Thun to apprentice with a local painter, Ferdinand Sommer. Hodler's earliest works were conventional landscapes, which he sold in shops and to tourists. In 1871, at the age of 18, he traveled on foot to Geneva to start a career as a painter. The works of Hodler's early maturity consisted of landscapes, figure compositions and portraits, treated with a vigorous realism. He made a trip to Basel in 1875, where he studied the paintings of Hans Holbein??especially Dead Christ in the Tomb, which influenced Hodler's many treatments of the theme of death. In the last decade of the 19th century his work evolved to combine influences from several genres including symbolism and art nouveau. He developed a style which he called Parallelism, characterized by groupings of figures symmetrically arranged in poses suggesting ritual or dance. In 1884 Hodler met Augustine Dupin (1852?C1909), who became his companion and model for the next several years. Their son, Hector Hodler, was born in 1887. In 1889 Hodler married Bertha Stucki; they were divorced in 1891. Hodler's work in his final phase took on an expressionist aspect with strongly coloured and geometrical figures. Landscapes were pared down to essentials, sometimes consisting of a jagged wedge of land between water and sky. However, the most famous of Hodler's paintings portray scenes in which characters are engaged in everyday activities, such as the famous woodcutter (Der Holzfaller, Mus??e d'Orsay, Paris). This picture went on to appear on the back of the 50 Swiss Franc bank note issued by the Swiss National Bank. In 1898, Hodler married Berthe Jacques. In 1914 he condemned the German atrocities conducted using artillery at Rheims. In retaliation for this, German art museums excluded Hodler's work. In 1908 he met Valentine Gode-Darel, who became his mistress. She was diagnosed with cancer in 1913, and the many hours Hodler spent by her bedside resulted in a remarkable series of paintings documenting her disintegration. Her death in January 1915 affected Hodler greatly. He occupied himself with work; a series of about 20 introspective self-portraits date from 1916. By late 1917 his declining health led him to thoughts of suicide. He died on May 19, 1918 in Geneva leaving behind a number of unfinished works portraying the city.