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 :. | The Infant Hercules Strangling Serpents in his Cradle | Lady Elizabeth Delme and her Children | BurgoyneByReynolds | A Young Black | commodore augustus keppel |
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Peter Isaacz

Wojciech Gerson
(1831 - 1901) was a Polish painter and professor. Born in Warsaw, Gerson enrolled at the Warsaw Fine Arts Academy and graduated with honorable mention and a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy of Arts where he studied historical painting under A. T. Markov. He graduated from St. Petersburg with a silver medal and returned to Warsaw. He left for Paris in 1850 and studied under Leon Cogniet. He travelled back to Warsaw in 1858, where he would live for the rest of his life. Gerson began to teach art in his own workshop in 1865. He trained many future Polish artists such as J??zef Chełmo??ski, Leon Wycz??łkowski, Władysław Podkowi??ski, and J??zef Pankiewicz. He was made a professor for the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Academy in 1878. Gerson also worked as an architect and art critic. He is known for his paintings of patriotism, country life, and mountain landscapes. Gerson died in Warsaw, aged 70.
Frederick Mccubbin
Australian Painter, 1855-1917 By the early 1880s, his work began to attract considerable attention and won a number of prizes from the National Gallery, including a 30-pound first prize in 1883 in their annual student exhibition, and by the mid-1880s began to concentrate more on the works of the Australian bush which made him most famous. In 1883, he received first prize in the first annual Gallery students' exhibition, for best studies in colour and drawing. In 1888, he became instructor and master of the School of Design at the National Gallery. In this position he taught a number of students who themselves became prominent Australian artists, including Charles Conder and Arthur Streeton. He continued to paint through the first two decades of the 20th century, though by the beginning of World War I his health began to fail. He travelled to England in 1907 and visited Tasmania, but aside from these relatively short excursions lived most of his life in Melbourne. McCubbin married Annie Moriarty in March, 1889. They had seven children, of whom their son Louis also became an artist. In 1901 McCubbin and his family moved to Mount Macedon, where he was inspired by the surrounding bush and has experimented with the light and its effects on colour in nature. In 1912,