1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | Study for a Foreground,a Bank with Weeds and Thistles | Lady and Gentleman in a Landscape | Portrait of The Hon,Richard Savage Nassau | The Honorable Mrs Graham | Cottage Girl with Dog and pitcher |
Related Artists:
hedvig eleonoras
Hedvig Eleonora av Holstein-Gottorp, född 23 oktober 1636, död 24 november 1715, var svensk drottning och riksföreståndare, dotter till Fredrik III av Holstein-Gottorp och Marie Elisabeth av Sachsen och gift i november 1654 med Karl X Gustav. Hon var med honom i Polen 1656 och i Danmark 1658. Hon var Sveriges drottning i sex år, men de facto "första dam" till sin död 1715, i femtiofem års tid. Hon blev änka 1660 och levde som änkedrottning i ytterligare 55 år. Kung Karl II av England friade till henne något år efter makens död, men hon tackade nej, med den formella motiveringen att hon önskade vara sin döde make evigt trogen. Hon satt i förmyndarregeringarna för både sin son Karl XI och sin sonson Karl XII, 1660-1672 samt 1697, och sedan i rådet 1700-1713, men hade i verkligheten aldrig så mycket att göra med politik, utan var nöjd med att formellt presidera över regeringen och hovet som monarkins symboliska överhuvud och representant. Hon stödde dock den profranska och antidanska policy som fördes av regenterna. Hennes son var djupt beroende av henne i hela sitt liv; då han blev gammal nog att sitta med vid regeringens sammanträden, talade han inte direkt till ledamöterna, han viskade i stället vad han ville veta till riksänkedrottningen, och Hedvig Eleonora frågade sedan regeringen med hög röst vad han ville veta. Då sorgeperioden formellt bröts år 1663 var hon värdinna för omfattande festligheter, och det var i hennes namn Sveriges första fasta teater öppnades i Stora Bollhuset och Lejonkulan 1667. Hedvig Eleonora, "Riksänkedrottningen", hade en dominant och temperamentsfull personlighet och dominerade det svenska hovet totalt fram till sin död. Även efter sin sons giftermål 1680 och fram till sin död 1715 var hon den verkliga drottningen och behöll sin position som "första dam"; sonen kallade henne "drottningen" och sin fru för "min fru". Under stora nordiska kriget var hon 1700-13 representant för kungen, men intresserade sig inte heller nu mycket för politik- vid audienser för utländska sändebud kunde antingen "moltiga" eller gapskratta åt dem. Hon intresserade sig för kortspel och arkitektur. Hon kunde spela kort till inpå småtimmarna. Drottningholms slott samt Strömsholms slott påbörjades av henne. Vid båda slotten lät hon anlägga stora parker i tidens stil.
Friedrich overbeck
1789-1869 German religious painter. Expelled from the Vienna Academy because of his opposition to its classicism, he went to Rome and with Peter von Cornelius, Veit, Schadow-Godenhaus, and others, formed the group known as the Nazarenes. His first real successes were his frescoes for the Casa Bartholdy (now in Berlin) and for the Villa Massimo. Among his notable paintings are Christ's Entry into Jerusalem and Christ's Agony in the Garden. Overbeck sought to make his art serve religion.
John Trumbull
1756-1843 John Trumbull Gallery Trumbull was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, to Jonathan Trumbull, who was Governor of Connecticut from 1769 to 1784. He entered the 1771 junior class at Harvard University at age fifteen and graduated in 1773. Due to a childhood accident, Trumbull lost use of one eye, which may have influenced his detailed painting style. As a soldier in the American Revolutionary War, Trumbull rendered a particular service at Boston by sketching plans of the British works, and witnessed the famous Battle of Bunker Hill. He was appointed second personal aide to General George Washington, and in June 1776 deputy adjutant-general to General Horatio Gates, but resigned from the army in 1777. In 1780 he traveled to London where he studied under Benjamin West, who suggested to him that he paint small pictures of the War of Independence and miniature portraits, of which he produced about 250 in his lifetime. On September 23, 1780 and October 2, 1780, British agent Major John Andr?? was, respectively, captured and hanged as a spy in America. News reached Europe, and as an officer of similar rank as Andr?? in the Continental Army, Trumbull was imprisoned for seven months in London's Tothill Fields Bridewell. In 1784 he was again in London working under West, in whose studio he painted his Battle of Bunker Hill and Death of Montgomery, both of which are now in the Yale University Art Gallery. In 1785 Trumbull went to Paris, where he made portrait sketches of French officers for The Surrender of Cornwallis, and began, with the assistance of Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, well-known from the engraving by Asher Brown Durand. This latter painting was purchased by the United States Congress along with his Surrender of General Burgoyne, Surrender at Yorktown, and Washington Resigning his Commission, and these paintings now hang in the United States Capitol. Trumbull's The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar, 1789, owned by the Boston Athenaeum, is now in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.