1776-1857 Russian painter. He was born a serf and in 1790 was apprenticed to a pastrycook in St Petersburg. From 1793 he attended classes at the Academy of Art there, in 1799 becoming a pupil of the portrait painter Stepan Shchukin (1762-1828). In 1804 he was sent to work as a pastrycook and manservant on an estate in the Ukraine owned by his master, General Morkov. Tropinin's Ukrainian period (1804-21) was interrupted by frequent, often protracted, visits to Moscow. During these years he copied a great deal, drew landscapes from nature and also painted religious subjects. His early style is painterly and distinguished by freedom of execution and skill in the use of colour, but the compositions are derivative and the drawing weak: The Spinner (1820s), The Lacemaker (1823), Wedding in the Village of Kukavka, Podolsky Province and Girl with a Bird (all Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.). Portraiture, however, began to take on a more important place in his work; the best of this period is the Portrait of Arseny, the Artist's Son (1818; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.), especially notable for its use of colour. Tropinin captured perfectly the child's spontaneous vision of the world, his sensitive spirit and openness. While in Moscow from 1813 to 1818, he portrayed a series of important cultural figures that brought him great popularity. He was freed from serfdom on 8 May 1823 and shortly thereafter he became a nominee to the Academy for his paintings The Lacemaker  Related Paintings of Vasily Tropinin :. | Ustym Karmeliuk, | The Gold-Embroideress, | Family portrait of counts Morkovs, | Portrait of Arseny Tropinin, son of the artist, | Portrait of Alexander Pushkin, |
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Kitty Kielland
Norwegian Painter, 1843-1914 was a Norwegian landscape painter. Kielland was born to an affluent family in Stavanger, the older sister of Alexander Kielland. Kielland's mutual interactions with her brother would be important to shaping her as an artist. Although she received some training in drawing and painting, it was not until she turned thirty that she was allowed to train as a professional artist. In 1873 she traveled to Karlsruhe where she was trained by Hans Gude. As a woman Kielland was forced to take private lessons from Gude instead of joining his landscape painting class. Gude's adherence to realism left a lasting impression on Kielland that was visible in her later works.[
Nicolae Grigorescu
Romanian Painter, 1838-1907 From 1848 he trained in Bucharest with various church painters, producing icons and religious mural decorations. These works, which soon attracted attention, were influenced in style by the Viennese classicism widespread in the Romanian principalities in the early 19th century and by the Italian academicism established there after 1850 by Gheorghe Tattarescu. The earliest of his known paintings are in the church of SS Constantin and Elena at Baicoi, where his signature can be seen beside that of Nita Pereescu on the icon of St George (1853). He subsequently painted a series of icons (1854-5) at Caldarusani Monastery. In the later ensembles he was assisted by his older brother Georghe Grigorescu, who participated under his direction in the decoration of churches, such as those of the Zamfira (1856-8) and Agapia (1858-60) monasteries. In Nicolae's paintings at Agapia, classicism in Romanian art reached its highest point. The royal icons are distinguished for the elegance of the figures, both in their attitudes and in their drapery.
Alfred Jacob Miller
American Painter, 1810-1874 1810?C74, American artist, b. Baltimore, studied under Thomas Sully and in Europe. In 1837 he joined an expedition to the American West and was probably the first artist to depict the Rocky Mts. On that trip he produced his most important works, chiefly studies of Native American and frontier life, valuable for their documentary detail. These sketches and watercolors were entirely forgotten for nearly a century until they were rediscovered in a storeroom of the Peale Museum, Baltimore.