English Rococo Era Painter, 1723-1792 English painter, collector and writer. The foremost portrait painter in England in the 18th century, he transformed early Georgian portraiture by greatly enlarging its range. His poses, frequently based on the Old Masters or antique sculpture, were intended to invoke classical values and to enhance the dignity of his sitters. His rich colour, strong lighting and free handling of paint greatly influenced the generation of Thomas Lawrence and Henry Raeburn. His history and fancy pictures explored dramatic and emotional themes that became increasingly popular with both artists and collectors in the Romantic period. As first president of the Royal Academy in London, he did more than anyone to raise the status of art and artists in Britain. His Discourses on Art, delivered to the students and members of the Academy between 1769 and 1790,  Related Paintings of REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua :. | Admiral the Honourable Samuel Barrington | Mrs. Musters as Hebe f | Georgiana,Countess spencer,and Her daughter Georgiana,Later duchess of Devonshire | Portrait of Edward Boscawen | Richard Paul Jodrell |
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Richard Parkes Bonington
1802-1828 Richard Parkes Bonington Locations English painter. His father, also called Richard (1768-1835), was a provincial drawing-master and painter, exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Liverpool Academy between 1797 and 1811. An entrepreneur, he used his experience of the Nottingham lace-manufacturing industry to export machinery illegally to Calais, setting up a business there in late 1817 or early 1818. In Calais the young Richard Parkes Bonington became acquainted with Louis Francia, with whom he consolidated and expanded whatever knowledge of watercolour technique he had brought with him from England. Under Francias direction Bonington left Calais for Paris where, probably not before mid- or late 1818, he met Eugene Delacroix. The latters recollection of Bonington at this time was of a tall adolescent who revealed an astonishing aptitude in his watercolour copies of Flemish landscapes. Once in Paris Bonington embarked on an energetic and successful career, primarily as a watercolourist. In this he was supported by his parents who sometime before 1821 also moved to Paris, providing a business address for him at their lace company premises.
Petrus Christus
Flemish 1415-1473 Petrus Christus Locations South Netherlandish painter. His known artistic career began in Bruges on 6 July 1444 when, as the Poorterboek (citizens register) for that day reveals, he purchased his citizenship ... in order to be a painter. Town records show that he and his wife became members of the Confraternity of the Dry Tree c. 1462; that in 1463 he and another painter, Pieter Nachtegale, were paid for the construction of a Tree of Jesse (destr.) and for the cost of assistants employed on the day of the religious procession in which it was used; and that on 19 March 1472 he served as a representative of the painters guild in a dispute with another painter, Jehan de Hervy the elder ( fl 1472-1507). These and a few other scattered references comprise the existing documentation for Christusa life and work.
Theodore Rousseau
1812-1867 French Theodore Rousseau Galleries Rousseau's pictures are always grave in character, with an air of exquisite melancholy which is powerfully attractive to the lover of landscapes. They are well finished when they profess to be completed pictures, but Rousseau spent so long a time in working up his subjects that his absolutely completed works are comparatively few. He left many canvases with parts of the picture realized in. detail and with the remainder somewhat vague; and also a good number of sketches and water-color drawings. His pen work in monochrome on paper is rare; it is particularly searching in quality. There are a number of fine pictures by him in the Louvre, and the Wallace collection. contains one of his most important Barbizon pictures. There is also an example in the Ionides collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum.