1815-1879 French Thomas Couture Location French painter and teacher. A student of Antoine-Jean Gros in 1830-38 and Paul Delaroche in 1838-9, he demonstrated precocious ability in drawing and was expected to win the Prix de Rome. He tried at least six times between 1834 and 1839, but achieved only second prize in 1837 (entry untraced). Disgusted with the politics of the academic system, Couture withdrew and took an independent path. He later attacked the stultified curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and discouraged his own students from entering this institution. He first attained public notoriety at the Paris Salon with Young Venetians after an Orgy (1840; Montrouge, priv. col., see Boime, p. 85), the Prodigal Son (1841; Le Havre, Mus. B.-A.) and the Love of Gold (1844; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). These early canvases are treated in a moralizing and anecdotal mode; the forms and compositional structures, like the debauched and corrupt protagonists, are sluggish and dull. Yet what made his work seem fresh to the Salon audience was his use of bright colour and surface texture derived from such painters as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Eugene Delacroix, while his literary bent and methodical drawing demonstrated his mastery of academic tradition. The critics Thophile Gautier and Paul Mantz (1821-95) proclaimed him as the leader of a new school that mediated between the old and the new, and looked to him for a revitalization of Salon painting. The air of compromise his works projected made him appear a cultural representative of the juste milieu policies of Louis-Philippe.  Related Paintings of Thomas Couture :. | The Romans of the Decadence | The Thorny Path | Little Bather | The Romans of the Decadence | The Romans of the Decadence |
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Josef Wilhelm Wallander
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Frank Bernard Dicksee
(b. London, 27 November 1853 - 17 October 1928) was an English Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic historical and legendary scenes. He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time. Dicksee's father, Thomas Dicksee, was a painter who taught Frank as well as his brother Herbert and his sister Margaret from a young age. Dicksee enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1870 and achieved early success. He was elected to the Academy in 1891 and became its President in 1924. He was knighted in 1925, and named to the Royal Victorian Order by King George V in 1927. Dicksee painted the piece 'The Funeral of a Viking' in 1893, which now resides in Manchester City Art Gallery, having been there since 1928 when it was presented by Arthur Burton ESQ in memory of his mother to the Corporation of Manchester. Victorian critics gave it both positive and negative reviews, for its perfection as a showpiece and for its dramatic and somewhat staged setting, respectively. The painting was used by Swedish Viking/Black metal band Bathory for the cover of their 1990 album, Hammerheart.
Lydia Emmett
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