American Realist Painter, 1844-1916. Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 ?C June 25, 1916) was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".  Related Paintings of Thomas Eakins :. | Home Scene | Elizabeth at the Piano | Portrait of Alice Kurtz | Landscape of Biglin | The Veiled Nude-s sitting Position |
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Hans von Aachen
was a German mannerist painter. His name is derived from the birth place of his father, Aachen in Germany. Other variations of the name include Johann von - and - von Achen and various concisions like Janachen, Fanachen, Abak, Jean Dac, Aquano, van Aken etc. Hans von Aachen began painting in Germany as a pupil of the Flemish master E. Jerrigh. He then moved to Italy in 1574 to study further. He toured Rome and Florence, but eventually settled in Venice. He initially became a pupil of Kaspar Rems, but soon decided to develop his own mannerist technique, by studying Tintoretto and Michelangelo's followers. However, during all of his life he was influenced by the style of Bartholomeus Spranger and Hendrick Goltzius who dominated the art scene in Germany at the time. He returned to Germany in 1588 where he became well known as a painter of portraits for noble houses. He painted several works for Duke William V of Bavaria. He married Regina, the daughter of the composer Orlando di Lasso in Munich. In Munich he came into contact with the Imperial Court in Prague. In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor. However, Von Aachen only moved to Prague in 1601, where he stayed painting commissions from Emperor Rudolph II, and later from Matthias I. Amongst van Aachens pupils were Peter Isaak and Joseph Heinz. His works have been copied by Wolfgang Kilian, Dominicus Custos and Jan Sadeler.
Antonio Pollaiolo
Italian Early Renaissance Painter and Sculptor, ca.1432-1498
EYBL, Franz
1805, Vienna - 1880, Vienna,Austrian painter and lithographer. He entered the Vienna Akademie at the age of ten, studying sculpture under Josef Klieber and landscape painting (1817-20) with Joseph Messmer (1780-1845), from whom he also learnt the new technique of lithography. He then spent three years with Johann Baptist Lampi (i) and Franz Caucig (1762-1828), drawing after antique statues and casts. He studied history painting (1823-8), during which period he came under the influence of Johann Peter Krafft, who introduced him to the principles of realism, suggesting that he work directly from nature and reflect contemporary, everyday subject-matter in his painting. Together with Josef Danhauser and Matthias Ranftl (1805-54), Eybl was among the most significant followers of Krafft's ideas,