1803-1874 British Sir Edwin Landseer Galleries Landseer was something of a child prodigy whose artistic talents were recognized early on; he studied under several artists, including his father John Landseer, an engraver, and Benjamin Robert Haydon, the well-known and controversial history painter who encouraged the young Landseer to perform dissections in order to fully understand animal musculature and skeletal structure. At the age of just 13, in 1815, Landseer exhibited works at the Royal Academy. He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy at the age of 24, and an Academician of the Royal Academy five years later in 1831. He was knighted in 1850, and although elected President of the Royal Academy in 1866 he declined the invitation. Landseer was a notable figure in 19th century British art, and his works can be found in Tate Britain, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Kenwood House and the Wallace Collection in London. He also collaborated with fellow painter Frederick Richard Lee. Windsor Castle in Modern Times (1841-1845) Queen Victoria and her family at Windsor Castle.Landseer's popularity in Victorian Britain was considerable. He was widely regarded as one of the foremost animal painters of his time, and reproductions of his works were commonly found in middle-class homes. Yet his appeal crossed class boundaries, for Landseer was quite popular with the British aristocracy as well, including Queen Victoria, who commissioned numerous portraits of her family (and pets) from the artist. Landseer was particularly associated with Scotland and the Scottish Highlands, which provided the subjects (both human and animal) for many of his important paintings, including his early successes The Hunting of Chevy Chase (1825-1826) and An Illicit Whiskey Still in the Highlands (1826-1829), and his more mature achievements such as the majestic stag study Monarch of the Glen (1851) and Rent Day in the Wilderness (1855-1868). Saved (1856) Landseer's paintings of dogs were highly popular among all classes of society.So popular and influential were Landseer's paintings of dogs in the service of humanity that the name Landseer came to be the official name for the variety of Newfoundland dog that, rather than being black or mostly black, features a mix of both black and white; it was this variety Landseer popularized in his paintings celebrating Newfoundlands as water rescue dogs, most notably Off to the Rescue (1827), A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society (1838), and Saved (1856), which combines Victorian constructions of childhood with the appealing idea of noble animals devoted to humankind ?? a devotion indicated, in Saved, by the fact the dog has rescued the child without any apparent human direction or intervention. In his late 30s Landseer suffered what is now believed to be a substantial nervous breakdown, and for the rest of his life was troubled by recurring bouts of melancholy, hypchondria, and depression, often aggravated by alcohol and drug use (Ormond, Monarch 125). In the last few years of his life Landseer's mental stability was problematic, and at the request of his family he was declared insane in July 1872. Landseer's death on 1 October 1873 was widely marked in England: shops and houses lowered their blinds, flags flew at half-staff, his bronze lions at the base of Nelson's column were hung with wreaths, and large crowds lined the streets to watch his funeral cortege pass (Ormond, Monarch 135). Landseer was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, London .  Related Paintings of Sir Edwin Landseer :. | The Sanctuary (mk25) | Lady Blessinghtam's Dog | The Cats Paw | Isaac van Amburgh and his Animals | The Arab Tent |
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Camille Pissaro
1830-1903 French Camille Pissarro Locations Painter and printmaker. He was the only painter to exhibit in all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886, and he is often regarded as the father of the movement. He was by no means narrow in outlook, however, and throughout his life remained as radical in artistic matters as he was in politics. Thadee Natanson wrote in 1948: Nothing of novelty or of excellence appeared that Pissarro had not been among the first, if not the very first, to discern and to defend. The significance of Pissarro work is in the balance maintained between tradition and the avant-garde. Octave Mirbeau commented: M. Camille Pissarro has shown himself to be a revolutionary by renewing the art of painting in a purely working sense; at the same time he has remained a purely classical artist in his love for exalted generalizations, his passion for nature and his respect for worthwhile traditions.
lyonel feininger
Painter, printmaker and illustrator. Although he was sent to Germany as a teenager to study music, a drawing class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Hamburg instead sparked an interest in art, which led to further training at the Akademie der K-nste in Berlin and in 1892-3 at the Acad?mie Colarossi in Paris. Returning to Berlin, he was a prominent illustrator by the mid-1890s for Ulk, Lustige Bl?tter and other leading German satirical magazines. His work also appeared in the USA, first for Harper's Round Table in 1894 and 1895 and in 1906-7 in the comic strips 'The Kin-der-Kids' and 'Wee Willie Winkie's World' for the Chicago Sunday Tribune, by which time he was again in Paris. There he was also in contact with Wilhelm Uhde, Jules Pascin and other members of the circle that met at the Caf- du D?me and produced a series of drawings for Le T-moin. While often alluding to serious contemporary issues, the style of his illustrations and drawings was fanciful rather than grotesque.
Andrea Vanni
Italian Byzantine Style Painter , ca.1332-1414 was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance. He was born in Siena, and in conjunction with Bartolo di Maestro Fredi, began to paint in 1353. He seems to have been important in Siena, having been elected a member of the Great Council in 1370, Gonfaloniero in 1371, sent as Envoy to the Pope at Avignon in 1372, on a mission to Florence in 1373, and again as Envoy to the Pope at Naples in 1384. Many examples exist of his paintings between 1353 and 1414 in Naples and its vicinity. At the chapel of St. Catherine of Siena, in the church of San Domenico, Naples, can be found the remains of a fresco painted by him to commemorate the life of that saint, who was a correspondent and perhaps a relation of his own. A letter from St. Catherine to Vanni survives. About the year 1400,