Welsh Romantic Painter, ca.1713-1782 was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' Wilson is considered to be the father of landscape painting in Britain. The son of a clergyman, Wilson was born in Penegoes, Montgomeryshire. The family was an old and respected one, and Wilson was first cousin to Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. In 1729 he went to London where he began as a portrait painter, under the apprentership of an obscure artist, Thomas Wright. From 1750 to 1757 he was in Italy and adopted landscape on the advice of Francesco Zuccarelli. Painting in Italy and afterwards in England, he was the first major British painter to primarily concentrate on landscape. He composed well, but saw and rendered only the general effects of nature thereby creating a personal, ideal style influenced by Claude Lorrain and the Dutch landscape tradition. According to John Ruskin, he "paints in a manly way, and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of colour." He concentrated on painting Italianate landscapes and landscapes based upon classsical literature, but when his painting The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (c.1759-60) won high acclaim he gained many commissions from wealthy families seeking classical potrayals of their estates.   Related Paintings of Richard Wilson :. | the destruction of the children of niobe | Lake Avernus I, by Richard Wilson, | Hounslow Heath | Meleager and Atalanta | Ariccia, umgesturtzter Baum |
Related Artists:
Karl Hagemeister
German, 1848-1933,German painter. He studied from 1871 at the Kunstschule in Weimar under Friedrich Preller, who introduced him to the principles of classical landscape painting. In 1873 he began to develop a more modern approach when he met Carl Schuch at the Hintersee, near Berchtesgaden; he immediately became his pupil and later wrote Schuch's biography. Schuch introduced Hagemeister to the Leibl circle (see LEIBL, WILHELM). He travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium (1873-4), Italy (1876) and France (1884-5), often accompanying Schuch and, in the early journeys, Wilhelm Trebner. His approach to landscape changed from classical Naturalism to 'pure painting', a more formalist approach in which purely pictorial qualities were given priority over naturalistic representation, as in Lake Shore (c. 1900; Schweinfurt, Samml. Schefer). His brushwork became broader, his depiction of objects became increasingly summary, and his colours lighter and cooler. Absorbing the influence of Japanese art through the interpretations of the French Impressionists, and following trends in international Art Nouveau, Hagemeister developed an individual variant of Jugendstil. His pictures were composed in accordance with decorative rather than naturalistic principles and became primarily ornamental, as in White Poppy
Emanuel de Witte
(1617 - 1692) was a Dutch perspective painter. In contrast to Pieter Jansz Saenredam, who emphasized architectural accuracy, De Witte was more concerned with the atmosphere of his interiors. Though few in number, de Witte also produced genre paintings. De Witte was born in Alkmaar and learned geometry from his father, a schoolmaster. He joined the local Guild of St Luke in 1636. After a stay in Rotterdam, he moved to Delft and studied with Evert van Aelst. In 1651 de Witte settled in Amsterdam where his first wife, Geerje Arents, died in 1655. He then married a 23-year-old orphan, Lysbeth van der Plas, who exercised a bad influence on de Witte's adolescent daughter. In December 1659 both were arrested for theft from a neighbor.Lysbeth, pregnant, had to leave the city for a period of six years; she lived outside the city walls and died in 1663. Following the arrest of his wife and child, de Witte was forced to indenture himself to the Amsterdam notary and art dealer Joris de Wijs, surrendering all of his work in exchange for room, board, and 800 guilders annually. De Witte broke the contract, was sued by the dealer, and forced to indenture himself further as a result. Several patrons provided de Witte with support, but these relations did not work out well, for he tended to shout at his clients and at people watching him at work in churches. Records tell of his gambling habit and a fight with Gerard de Lairesse. According to Arnold Houbraken, after an argument about the rent, de Witte hanged himself from a canal bridge in 1692. The rope broke and de Witte drowned. Because the canal froze that night, his corpse was not found until eleven weeks later
Thomas Blinks
British 1860-1912