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 | Landscape Capriccio with Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii, and the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli | Ceyx and Alcyone | Portrait of Francesco Zuccarelli (1702-1788), Italian painter | The Temple of the Sybil and the Campagna, |
Related Artists:
Aurelio de Figueiredo
painted Girl at the piano in 1892
Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky
(Russian: July 24 O.S. 1757 - April 6 O.S. 1825) was a Ukrainian-born painter who dominated Russian portraiture at the turn of the 19th century. ladimir Borovikovsky was born dymyr Borovyk in Myrhorod (now Ukraine) on July 24, 1757. His father, Luka Borovyk was a Ukrainian Cossack and an amateur icon painter. According to the family tradition, all four of Borovyk's sons served in Myrhorod regiment, but Volodymyr retired early at the rank of poruchik and devoted his life to art mostly icon painting for local churches. Borovikovsky may have lived the remainder his life as an amateur painter in a provincial town if not for an unexpected event. His friend Vasyl Kapnist was preparing an accommodation for Empress Catherine II in Kremenchuk during her travel to newly conquered Crimea. Kapnist asked Borovikovsky to paint two allegoric paintings (Peter I of Russia and Catherine II as peasants sowing seeds and Catherine II as a Minerva) for her rooms. The paintings so pleased the Empress that she requested that the painter move to Saint Petersburg. Portrait of Maria Lopukhina, 1797After September 1788 Borovikovsky lived in Saint Petersburg where he changed his surname from the Cossack "Borovyk" to the more aristocratic-sounding "Borovikovsky". For his first ten years in Saint Petersburg, he lived in the house of the poet, architect, musician and art theorist, Prince Nikolay Lvov, whose ideas strongly influenced Borovikovsky's art. At 30-years-old, he was too old to attend Imperial Academy of Arts, so he took private lessons from Dmitry Levitzky and later from Austrian painter Johann Baptist Lampi.
Isidre Nonell
(November 30, 1873, Barcelona, Spain - February 21, 1911, Barcelona) a Catalonian painter and drawer belonging to post-impressionism known for his expressive portrayal of the socially marginalized of Barcelona society. (He is also said to belong to modernism and postmodernism.) Isidre Nonell was born in 1872 (not in 1873 as indicated by some biographers). His parents, Isidre Nonell i Torras de Arenys de Mar and Àngela Monturiol i Franc of Barcelona, owned a small but prosperous factory of soup noodles. Together with his childhood friend, Joaquim Mir, with whom he attended the same school in the neighborhood of Sant Pere in the old part of town in Barcelona, he developed artistic ambitions at an early age. His early teachers included Josep Mirabent, Gabriel Martenez Alt and Llu Graner. From 1893 to 1895 he studied at the Escola de Belles Arts de Barcelona (Fine Arts School of Barcelona). He met Ricard Canals, Ramen Pichot, Juli Vallmitjana, Adrie Gual, and Joaquin Sunyer with whom he developed an interest in landscape painting, studying light. The study of sunlight and its effects on color were a main part of Impressionism, which was then active. They were called the "Saffron Group" for the warm tones they used, as well as the "Sant Marte Group" after the town they painted in. In 1894, he began producing illustrations for La Vanguardia. He later drew for other periodicals, including LeEsquella de la Torratxa, Barcelona Cemica, Pel & Ploma, and Forma. In 1896, Nonell went with Ricard Canals and Juli Vallmitjana to the spa town of Caldes de Boe in the Catalonian Pyrenees to work at the spa run by Vallmitjana's family. There, he saw a large number of people suffering from the illness of cretinism, which became a subject of his paintings. In February 1897, he went to Paris with Ricard Canals. There he exhibited and shared a studio with Picasso. He returned to Barcelona in 1900. At the beginning of 1901, he made paintings of women, such as gypsy and working-class women, and still lifes. He exhibited in the Sala Par in Barcelona twice, in 1902 and 1903. The reaction to his works of poor gypsy women was very hostile.