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 :. | Portrait of Henry Ossawa Tanner | Arcadia | The Dean's Roll Call | Chess Player | William-s Wife |
Related Artists:
Charles Harold Davis
1856-1933 He was born at Amesbury, Massachusetts. A pupil of the schools of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, he was sent to Paris in 1880. Having studied at the Acad??mie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger, he went to Barbizon and painted much in the forest of Fontainebleau under the traditions of the men of thirty. In 1890, Davis returned to the U.S., settling in Mystic, Connecticut. He shifted to Impressionism in his style, and took up the cloudscapes for which he became best-known. He eventually became a leading figure in the art colony that had developed in Mystic, and founded the Mystic Art Association in 1913. He became a full member of the National Academy of Design in 1906, and received many awards, including a silver medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1889. He is represented by important works in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; the Pennsylvania Academy, Philadelphia, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Jan Van Kessel
1626-1679 Dutch Jan Van Kessel Gallery Dutch painter and draughtsman. He was a follower, and probably a pupil, of Jacob van Ruisdael and covered the same range of subjects painted by Ruisdael, with the exception of marine paintings. However, van Kessel is best known for his townscapes and panoramic views, as exemplified by the Sluice and the New City Ramparts of Amsterdam in Winter (Amsterdam, Hist. Mus.) and the Bleaching Grounds near Haarlem (Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). He imitated the water-mills and village scenes of his friend Meindert Hobbema, as well as the waterfalls of Allaert van Everdingen, the wooded landscapes of Jan Wijnants and the winter scenes of Jan van de Cappelle. Many of van Kessel's 120 surviving pictures, including The Avenue (Stuttgart, Staatsgal.) and the Ford in the Woods (Dresden, Gem?ldegal. Alte Meister), were once attributed to van Ruisdael and these other masters (often with an authentic signature covered by the better-known name). Van Kessel is also frequently confused with other minor artists in van Ruisdael's circle, especially Jan Vermeer van Haarlem the younger, Isaac Koene (1637/40-1713), Jacob Salomonsz. van Ruysdael (1629/30-1681) and Anthonie van Borssom. As a draughtsman, van Kessel emulated van Ruisdael's mature style, working almost exclusively in black chalk and grey wash. The best of his 70 drawings are townscapes, although his studies of trees and depictions of farmsteads are noteworthy. A number of correlations exist between his sketches and paintings. There is no known relationship with the Flemish artists of the same name.
WOENSAM VON WORMS, Anton
before 1500 - before 1541 in Cologne