1801-1848 Thomas Cole Galleries Thomas Cole (February 1, 1801 - February 11, 1848) was a 19th century American artist. He is regarded as the founder of the Hudson River School, an American art movement that flourished in the mid-19th century. Cole's Hudson River School, as well as his own work, was known for its realistic and detailed portrayal of American landscape and wilderness, which feature themes of romanticism and naturalism. In New York he sold three paintings to George W. Bruen, who financed a summer trip to the Hudson Valley where he visited the Catskill Mountain House and painted the ruins of Fort Putnam. Returning to New York he displayed three landscapes in the window of a bookstore; according to the New York Evening Post, this garnered Cole the attention of John Trumbull, Asher B. Durand, and William Dunlap. Among the paintings was a landscape called "View of Fort Ticonderoga from Gelyna". Trumbull was especially impressed with the work of the young artist and sought him out, bought one of his paintings, and put him into contact with a number of his wealthy friends including Robert Gilmor of Baltimore and Daniel Wadsworth of Hartford, who became important patrons of the artist. Cole was primarily a painter of landscapes, but he also painted allegorical works. The most famous of these are the five-part series, The Course of Empire, now in the collection of the New York Historical Society and the four-part The Voyage of Life. There are two versions of the latter, one at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., the other at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, New York. Cole influenced his artistic peers, especially Asher B. Durand and Frederic Edwin Church, who studied with Cole from 1844 to 1846. Cole spent the years 1829 to 1832 and 1841-1842 abroad, mainly in England and Italy; in Florence he lived with the sculptor Horatio Greenough.  Related Paintings of Thomas Cole :. | Expulsion from Garden of Eden | Italian Sunset | Mount Chocorua, New Hampshire | Voyage of Life | A View of the Two Lakes and Mountain House Catskill Mountains |
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John Kensett
1816-1872 John Kensett Art Galleries Artist John Frederick Kensett was born on March 22, 1816 in Cheshire, Connecticut, and died on December 14, 1872 in New York City. He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City. In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting. There he met and traveled with Benjamin Champney. The two sketched and painted throughout Europe, refining their talents. During this period, Kensett developed an appreciation and affinity for 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Kensett and Champney returned to the United States in 1847. After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe. Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England. He is most closely associated with the so-called "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Along with Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fitz Hugh Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade and others, the works of the "Luminists," as they came to be known, were characterized by unselfconscious, nearly invisible brushstrokes used to convey the qualities and effects of atmospheric light. It could be considered the spiritual, if not stylistic, cousin to Impressionism. Such spiritualism stemmed from Transcendentalist philosophies of sublime nature and contemplation bringing one closer to a spiritual truth. In 1851 Kensett painted a monumental canvas of Mount Washington that has become an icon of White Mountain art. Mount Washington from the Valley of Conway was purchased by the American Art Union, made into an engraving by James Smillie, and distributed to 13,000 Art Union subscribers throughout the country. Other artists painted copies of this scene from the print. Currier and Ives published a similar print in about 1860. This single painting by Kensett helped to popularize the White Mountain region of New Hampshire. Kensett's style evolved gradually, from the traditional Hudson River School manner in the 1850s into the more refined Luminist style in his later years. By the early 1870s Kensett was spending considerable time at his home on Contentment Island, on Long Island Sound near Darien, Connecticut.
Anthoni Schoonjans
(1655 - 13 August 1726) was a Flemish painter. He was born in Antwerp and became a pupil of Erasmus Quellinus II and his son Jan-Erasmus Quellinus. He travelled to Rome and like his teachers had done before him, joined the Bentvueghels with the nickname "Parrhasius" in 1674. In Rome he lived with Charles de Vogelaer in the via Margutta and later he lived from 1688-89 in the Corso, near the via di Ripetta. In 1695 he became court painter in Vienna, where he later died. During the course of his lengthy career he also worked in Antwerp, Riems, Lyon, Amsterdam, the Hague, Brno, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, and Berlin.He is known for portraits and historical allegories, and was the teacher of Georg Gsell.
Auguste Borget
Auguste Borget (1808-1877) was a French artist who is best known for his drawings and prints of exotic places, in particular China. He was born in 1808 in Issoudun, Indre. At age 21, he went to Paris where he became a close friend of Honore de Balzac. Borget periodically exhibited at the Paris Salon from 1836 to 1859. Beginning in 1836, he traveled through North and South America before stopping briefly in Honolulu in May, 1838, on board the ship "Psyche", on a world tour. He went to Canton in September 1838 and stayed in the region for 10 months. While in Canton, he met the English artist George Chinnery, and they went on sketching trips together. In July 1839 he visited Manila, Singapore and Calcutta. In 1840 he traveled widely in India, returning to Paris in the summer of that year. Borgetes sketches and watercolors from China were the basis for his most famous publication "Sketches of China and the Chinese", published in 1842. His book "La Chine ouverte" was illustrated with fine woodcut engravings. A major Salon of his original works, including watercolors and boldly executed oil paintings was held in Paris in 1843. Borget died in 1877.