Vincent Van Gogh
Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890
Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art.
Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide.
The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists. Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Still life:Pink Roses (nn04) | The Arena in Arles | Haystacks under a Rainy Sky (nn04) | Wild flowers and thistles in a vase | Village at Sunset (nn04) | Related Artists: Enoch SeemanEnoch Seeman the Younger was born in Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland, around 1694. His father, also Enoch was born around 1661, and the Seeman family were painters.
Having been brought to London from his home of Flanders by his father in 1704, the younger Seeman's painting career as we know it began with a group portrait of the Bisset family in the style of the portraitist Godfrey Kneller, now held at Castle Forbes in Grampian, Scotland, and dated by an inscription 1708.
As a painter to the British royal court Seeman the Younger completed portraits of George I, in 1730, in the robes of his coronation and of George II some years later. The first of these pictures is held at the Middle Temple in London, England, and the second is at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England, part of the royal collection.
In 1734, Seeman painted a portrait of Jane Pratt Taylor, daughter of Lord Chief Justice John Pratt. The portrait was sent to William Byrd, II of Westover, in Virginia, where it became part of the largest colonial portrait collection of the early eighteenth-century. The painting is now part of the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.
The Yale University Art Gallery owns a portrait of Elihu Yale in 1717 by Seeman and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA owns his rendering of Sir James Dashwood, described by the Grove Dictionary of Art as 'Exceptionally lively'. Also by Seeman the younger, Abraham Tucker in 1739 at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, and various copies of sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits. The National Trust owns two examples of this set of his work - at Dunham Massey in Cheshire, England, a copy of a portrait of Lady Diana Cecil, and at Belton House in Lincolnshire, England, of Lady Cust and her Nine Children. Henry Wyatt(1460-1537) was an English courtier.
A Lancastrian supporter against Richard III, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London. On the accession of Henry VII, he was released and assumed high places at court. He acted as Henry's agent in Scotland.
He was admitted to the privy council, and remained high in the royal favour. He was one of Henry VII's executors, and one of Henry VIII's guardians. He was admitted to the privy council of the new king in April 1509, and became a knight of the Bath on 23 July of the same year. In 1511 he was made jointly with Sir Thomas Boleyn constable of Norwich Castle, and on 29 July of the same year was granted an estate, Maidencote, at Estgarstone in Berkshire. At the battle of the Spurs he served in the vanguard (16 August 1513).
Odilon RedonFrench Symbolist Painter, 1840-1916
Bertrand-Jean Redon, better known as Odilon Redon (April 20, 1840 ?C July 6, 1916) was a Symbolist painter and printmaker, born in Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France. Odilon was a nickname derived from his mother, Odile.
Redon started drawing as a young child, and at the age of 10 he was awarded a drawing prize at school. At age 15, he began formal study in drawing but on the insistence of his father he switched to architecture. His failure to pass the entrance exams at Paris?? Ecole des Beaux-Arts ended any plans for a career as an architect, although he would later study there under Jean-L??on Gerôme.
Back home in his native Bordeaux, he took up sculpture, and Rodolphe Bresdin instructed him in etching and lithography. However, his artistic career was interrupted in 1870 when he joined the army to serve in the Franco-Prussian War.
At the end of the war, he moved to Paris, working almost exclusively in charcoal and lithography. It would not be until 1878 that his work gained any recognition with Guardian Spirit of the Waters, and he published his first album of lithographs, titled Dans le R??ve, in 1879. Still, Redon remained relatively unknown until the appearance in 1884 of a cult novel by Joris-Karl Huysmans titled, À rebours (Against Nature). The story featured a decadent aristocrat who collected Redon's drawings.
In the 1890s, he began to use pastel and oils, which dominated his works for the rest of his life. In 1899, he exhibited with the Nabis at Durand-Ruel's. In 1903 he was awarded the Legion of Honor. His popularity increased when a catalogue of etchings and lithographs was published by Andr?? Mellerio in 1913 and that same year, he was given the largest single representation at the New York Armory Show. In 1923 Mellerio published: Odilon Redon: Peintre Dessinateur et Graveur. An archive of Mellerio's papers is held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In 2005 the Museum of Modern Art launched an exhibition entitled "Beyond The Visible", a comprehensive overview of Redon's work showcasing more than 100 paintings, drawings, prints and books from The Ian Woodner Family Collection. The exhibition ran from October 30, 2005 to January 23, 2006.
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