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 with mackerels,Lemons and Tomatoes (nn04) | Self-Portrait (nn04) | Village at Sunset (nn04) | Still Life, arranged by Anton Mauve and executed | Pieta | Related Artists: Thomas NastSeptember 27, 1840 ?C December 7, 1902,Illustrator Thomas Nast was the first American celebrity cartoonist, famous for helping to turn out New York corrupt politicians and for creating peristent iconographic images of Santa Claus. Nast, from a family of German immigrants, began working in New York City as a cartoonist at the age of 15. He had a long association with Harper Weekly (1861-86), during which his battlefield illustrations and skilled caricatures made him famous in the U.S. and abroad (Van Gogh was a collector). Nast was an opinionated, progressive Republican, and his illustrated attacks on the leader of New York Democrats, William Boss Tweed, are said to have helped bring down an era of government corruption. One of the most influential caricaturists of his time, he is credited with creating the image of Santa as a chubby fellow in a red suit. Nast also came up with the image of an ass to represent Democrats (around 1870) and an elephant to represent Republicans (1874). His popularity waned in the 1880s, and he parted ways with Harper Weekly over political and artistic differences. Failing to succeed with his own publication or as a painter, he managed to be appointed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 to a diplomatic position in Ecuador, where he contracted yellow fever and died. Now officially embraced icons, the animal symbols of the two political parties were meant by Nast to be unflattering. lesueurCharles Alexandre Lesueur (Le Havre, January 1, 1778 - Le Havre, December 12, 1846) was a French naturalist, artist and explorer.
Pictured here is the oil portrait by Charles Willson Peale of Charles-Alexandre Lesueur. The original hangs in the reading room of the of Ewell Sale Stewart Library in the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia.
In 1801 he traveled to Australia as artist on the expedition of Nicolas Baudin. With François Peron he took over the duties as naturalist after the death of the expedition's zoologist Rene Mauge. Together they collected over 100,000 zoological specimens.
Between 1815 and 1837 he lived in the United States In 1833, he visited Vincennes, Indiana where he sketched the first known drawing of Grouseland, the mansion of William Henry Harrison. The mansion is today a National Historic Landmark.
In the years 1825-1837 Lesueur lived in New Harmony, Indiana, where he filled sketchbooks full of the finds discovered during the utopian adventure funded by his friend William Maclure. He drew the boat "Philanthropist", which arrived full of intellectuals who came to live in the small town of New Harmony, on the Wabash River. He took research trips and sketched the people and the small towns in the area. He was in New Harmony when Prince Maximilian, Prince of Wied-Neuweid, Germany, and artist Karl Bodmer came to spend five months there in 1832-1833. Prince Maximilian said of Bodmer "He had explored the country in many directions, was acquainted with everything remarkable, collected and prepared all interesting objects and had already sent considerable collections to France" (Elliott Johansen, p. 6) Indeed, LeSeur sent specimens of unique fish, animals and fossils, as well as artifacts he had dug from the Indian Mounds in New Harmony back to France, where they remain.
LeSeur returned to France in 1837, only after his friends Thomas Say and Joseph Barabino had died and William MacClure had returned to Philadelphia, accompanied by many of his fine books. He had spent 21 years in the United States, but continued his scholarly studies and activities in France, where he resumed his occupation of artist-naturalist and began to catalogue his extensive research and artwork. At last, he was awarded the honor of Chevalier de l??Ordre Royal de la L??gion d'honneur for his long years of work in the sciences Victor Gilbert1847-1935
French
Victor Gilbert Gallery
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