English Painter, 1734-1802 The son of a cabinetmaker, George Romney was born in Dalton, Lancashire. He was apprenticed in 1755 to Christopher Steele, a provincial portrait painter, but was largely self-taught. Romney's ambition was to become a history painter. In 1762 he moved to London, where he studied the Duke of Richmond's collection of casts of antique sculpture and established himself as a portraitist. He went to Italy in 1773, and after his return in 1775 he became the favorite painter of high society. Morbidly sensitive and retiring, Romney kept aloof from the social world of his sitters and from the Royal Academy. By 1782 he was under the spell of Emma Hart, later Lady Hamilton and the mistress of Nelson, who sat for him as Circe, a Bacchante, Cassandra, the Pythian Priestess, Joan of Arc, St. Cecilia, Mary Magdalene, and other impersonations he suggested. In the 1780s he executed a number of Eton leaving portraits, which established him as the supreme interpreter of aristocratic adolescence in his age. For much of his life in London, Romney was under the wing of the poet William Hayley, who encouraged him in the choice of subjects from Milton and Shakespeare as well as the Bible and Greek tragedy. Romney's history paintings are today chiefly known from engravings, like the dramatic Tempest (1787-1790) commissioned for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. A large number of drawings for these projects survive. Romney had married early in life an uneducated woman whom he did not bring to London but to whom he returned when his health finally gave way. Ill health and the facility with which he converted his early realistic style into a fashionable sketchlike formula for idealizing his sitters probably account for an unevenness of execution that has partially justified his critics. Unlike Joshua Reynolds, Romney did not enter into the character of his sitters, unless they possessed nervous traits like his own, for example, the moving portrait William Cowper. But he was psychologically involved with the generalized charms of youth, beauty, and breeding that he admired in his aristocratic sitters, and by combining a neoclassic purity of line with free but masterly brushwork he achieved a number of incomparable images which transcend the realism of portraiture.   Related Paintings of ROMNEY, George :. | Miss Constable | Sidonian Recollections | The Leigh Family d | Recollections | Lady in a Brown Robe s |
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Juliusz Kossak
(Nowy Wiśnicz, 15 December 1824 - 3 February 1899, Krakew) was a Polish historical painter and master illustrator who specialized in battle scenes, military portraits and horses. He was the progenitor of an artistic family that spanned four generations. father of painter Wojciech Kossak and grandfather of painter Jerzy Kossak. Juliusz Kossak grew up in Lwew during the military partitions of Poland. He obtained a degree in law at the Lwew University encouraged by his mother. At the same time he studied painting with Jan Maszkowski and Piotr Michałowski. Beginning in 1844 Kossak worked on commissions for the local aristocracy in Malopolska, Podolia and Wolyn. He married Zofia Gałczyka in 1855 and together they left for Paris where they spent five years. His sons were born there, the twin brothers: Wojciech and Tadeusz (on New Year's Eve 1856-1857) and the younger Stefan in 1858. The family came to Warsaw in 1860 where Kossak obtained a position as the head illustrator and engraver for Tygodnik Illustrowany magazine. They moved to Munich for a year and in 1868 settled in Krakew blessed with five children already. Kossak bought a small estate there, known as Kossakewka, famed for artistic and literary salon frequented by Adam Asnyk, Henryk Sienkiewicz, Stanisław Witkiewicz, Jezef Chełmoki and many others. Juliusz Kossak lived and worked there till the end of his life. In 1880 he was awarded the Cross of Order of Merit by Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary for his lifetime achievements as an artist.
Jan van Bijlert
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1597-1671 Dutch painter. He was the son of the Utrecht glass painter Herman Beerntsz. van Bijlert (c. 1566-before 1615). Jan must have trained first with his father but was later apprenticed to the painter Abraham Bloemaert. After his initial training, he visited France and travelled to Italy, as did other artists from Utrecht. Jan stayed mainly in Rome, where he became a member of the Schildersbent; he returned to Utrecht in 1624. In Rome he and the other Utrecht artists had come under the influence of the work of Caravaggio; after their return home, this group of painters, who became known as the UTRECHT CARAVAGGISTI, adapted the style of Caravaggio to their own local idiom. The Caravaggesque style, evident in van Bijlert's early paintings, such as St Sebastian Tended by Irene (1624; Rohrau, Schloss; see fig.) and The Matchmaker (1626; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.), is characterized by the use of strong chiaroscuro, the cutting off of the picture plane so that the image is seen close-up and by an attempt to achieve a realistic rather than idealized representation.
Ernst Gustav Doerell
painted A View of the Doubravka from the Teplice Chateau Park in 1832 - 1877