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 :. | Coral Jewelry | Portrait | May morning-s park | The Dean's Roll Call | Rassle |
Related Artists:
Theophanes the Cretan
active 1527-1559,was a leading icon painter of the Cretan school in the first half of the sixteenth century, and in particular the most important figure in Greek wall-painting of the period. He was born in Heraklion (date unknown), and no doubt trained there, but all his known work was done in mainland Greece. Frescoes bearing his signature survive in the Greek monasteries of Mt. Athos, especially Stavronikita monastery and Lavra, and Meteora which has his earliest dated work, from 1527. He also did many panel icons, either for iconostases or small portable works. Theophanes was active from about 1527-48, and trained his sons and several pupils, often themselves Cretan. By 1535 both he and his two sons had become monks in the Lavra monastery of Mount Athos, where many of his best works remain. Theophanes returned to Crete before his death in 1559. Two detached wallpaintings attributed to Theophanes are in the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. Like most Cretan painters of this date, his work shows some influence from Western painting, but less in his case than with many artists. Some faces are personalised or looking out to the viewer, and his figures are modelled to convey volume. His work is more conscious of visual perspective than older Byzantine artists, but he does not use the geometrical perspective schemes by then standard in the West. He uses traditional Byzantine compositions, in a rather austere and powerful manner. He should not be confused with Theophanes the Greek (Feofan Grek), an icon painter who worked in Muscovite Russia in the late fourteenth century.
gosta adrian-nilsson
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, GAN, född 2 april 1884 i Lund, död 29 mars 1965 i Stockholm, svensk konstnär och författare. Räknas som en betydande pionjär inom den svenska modernistiska konsten. GAN debuterade som konstnär 1907 med en utställning på Lunds universitets konstmuseum. Efter studier i bl.a. Köpenhamn for han 1913 till Berlin för att studera modernismen. I Berlin kom han genom författaren Herwarth Waldens galleri Der Sturm i kontakt med futurism, expressionism och kubism. Influerad av dessa ismer skapade GAN sedan sin nya, modernistiska stil. 1916 flyttade han till Stockholm där han genom sin modernistiska konst och sin propaganda för den nya konsten, väckte stor uppmärksamhet. Att GAN var homosexuell avspeglas i flera av hans verk. Till exempel var han periodvis nästan maniskt fixerad vid sjömän och han dyrkade maskulin kraft. Andra favoritmotiv var manliga idrottsutövare. Samtidigt var den homosexuella erotiken både förbjuden och tabubelagd och GAN tvingades att leva ett dubbelliv. Mellan 1920 och 1925 bodde och arbetade GAN i Paris där han kom i kontakt med Fernand L??ger. Kontakten med denne ledde till att GAN:s inriktning mot kubismen förstärktes. Under 1930-talet anslöt han sig till surrealismen. Förutom oljemålningar finns akvareller med folkvisemotiv samt gobelängkartonger bland hans verk. Dessa "säljbara" verk gjorde GAN dock i de flesta fall av ekonomiska skäl snarare än konstnärliga. Han skrev även dikter, noveller och barnböcker.
CIGNANI, Carlo
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1628-1719 Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading master in Bologna during the later decades of the 17th century, commanding a position of authority comparable to that of Carlo Maratti in Rome. He bore the title of Conte, and his biographer Giovan Pietro Zanotti wrote that he 'always worked for glory, not for need'. Zanotti's emphasis on Cignani's 'new manner' refers to the reflective, intimate mood of his art, presaged in the later pictures of Guido Reni and Guercino, and in those of Simone Cantarini. This gentle manner, which prevailed in the second half of the 17th century,