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 :. | Isaac van Amburgh and his Animals | The Cat's Paw | monarch of the glen | Monarch of the Glen | Death of the Wild Bull |
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Alexei Jawlensky
1864-1941 Russian Alexei Jawlensky Galleries Alexej von Jawlensky was born in Torzhok, a town in the department of Tver, Russia, as the fifth child of Georgi von Jawlensky and his wife Alexandra (n??e Medwedewa). His family was aristocratic. At the age of ten he moved with his family to Moscow. After a few years of military training, he became interested in painting, visiting the Moscow World Exposition c. in 1880. In 1896 he moved to Munich where he studied in the private school of Anton Azbe. In Munich he met Wassily Kandinsky, and Marianne von Werefkin, other Russian artists and helped form the Neue Kunstlervereinigung M??nchen. His work in this period was lush and richly coloured, but later moved towards abstraction with a simplified and formulaic style in a search to find the spiritual. Alexej von Jawlensky. Abstract Head, c. 1928He died in Wiesbaden, Germany on 15 March 1941.
After Peter Paul Rubens
Sir Peter Paul Rubens (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈrybə(n)s]; 28 June 1577 - 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasised movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England.
Edgar Payne
American Painter, ca.1882-1947 was an American Impressionist painter best remembered for his impressionist landscapes. Born in Chicago, Illinois, his art education included training at the Art Institute of Chicago (where he enrolled at Saturday classes at the age of 11), the Art Students League of New York, and in the atelier of William Merritt Chase. He spent much of his early career working in Paris, France. He served in the US Army as an aerial photographer during World War I. [1]In 1920 he and his wife relocated to Pasadena, California. He taught fine art at Occidental College, and was director of the Stickney Memorial School of Art in Pasadena.