British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | Portrait of Jane Fleming | miss kitty fisher in the character of cleopatra | Cupid Unfastens the Belt of Venus | miss mary pelham | Mrs John Hale |
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Johann Peter Krafft
(15 September 1780 - 28 October 1856) was a German-Austrian painter. Krafft was born in Hanau, Hesse. At the age of ten, he began his art studies at the Hanau Akademie. In 1799, he moved to Vienna and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts for three years under the tutelage of Heinrich Feger. From 1802 to 1808, he studied in Paris, with Jacques-Louis David and François Gerard, and then in Rome. On his return to Vienna, he became a successful professional painter, producing numerous portraits. In 1828, Krafft became director of the Imperial and Royal Picture Gallery in Belvedere Palace. Johann Peter Krafft died at the age of 76 in Vienna, where he was buried at the Zentralfriedhof.
Ramsay Richard Reinagle
British Painter, 1775-1862 was an English portrait, landscape, and animal painter, and son of Philip Reinagle. Ramsay Richard Reinagle was a pupil of his father, whose style he followed, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy as early as 1788. He afterwards went to Italy, and was studying in Rome in 1796. Subsequently he visited Holland in order to study from the Dutch masters. After his return home he painted for a time at Robert Barker's panorama in Leicester Square, and then entered into partnership with Thomas Edward Barker, Robert's eldest son, who was not himself an artist, in order to erect a rival building in the Strand. They produced panoramas of Rome, the Bay of Naples, Florence, Gibraltar, Algeciras Bay, and Paris, but in 1816 disposed of their exhibition to Henry Aston Barker and John Burford. In 1805 Reinagle was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Watercolours, and in 1806 a member. He became its treasurer in 1807, and was president from 1808 to 1812 Between 1806 and 1812 he sent to its exhibitions sixty-seven drawings, mostly Italian landscapes and scenery of the English lakes. During the same period he exhibited portraits and landscapes in oil at the Royal Academy, of which he became an associate in 1814, and an academician in 1823. He was a clever copyist of the old masters, and is said to have been much employed by a picture-dealer in restoring and 'improving ' their works.In 1848 he sent to the Royal Academy exhibition as his own work a small picture of 'Shipping a Breeze and Rainy Weather off Hurst Castle' painted by a young artist named J. W. Yarnold, which he had purchased at a broker's shop, and in which he had made some slight alterations. Attention was called to the imposition, and a full inquiry made by the academy resulted in his being called upon to resign his diploma as a royal academician. In 1850 he published in the 'Literary Gazzette' two letters in which he unsuccessfully endeavoured to exculpate himself.He continued to exhibit at the academy until 1857,
Carlo Maratta
(13 May 1625 - 15 December 1713) was an Italian painter, active mostly in Rome, and known principally for his classicizing paintings executed in a Late Baroque Classical manner. Although he is part of the classical tradition stemming from Raphael, he was not exempt from the influence of Baroque painting and particularly in his use of colour. His contemporary and friend, Giovanni Bellori, wrote an early biography on Maratta.