1757-1825,Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Along with Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky, Borovikovsky is one of the three great Russian portrait painters of the second half of the 18th century. He was trained by his father and brothers, who were icon painters. His early works were also icons, such as the Mother of God (1784; Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.) and King David (1785; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.); they are archaic in style and resemble portraits produced by Ukrainian folk artists. At the end of the 1780s Borovikovsky moved to St Petersburg and took up portrait painting. He was aided by advice from Levitsky and took lessons from Johann Baptist Lampi (i). He soon became established, gaining a reputation as a brilliant colourist, and he received many commissions. Throughout his career, however, he continued to paint icons from time to time. In 1795 he became a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts; he was also closely connected with many of the chief exponents of Russian culture in the city. The number of his surviving works is large (at least 400 portraits). He had his own workshop, and he would often rely on assistants to paint the less important parts of a portrait. His sitters included members of the imperial family, courtiers, generals, many aristocrats and figures from the Russian artistic and literary worlds. Most of his portraits are intimate in style. A particularly touching example is the portrait of Ol ga Filippova, the wife of a close friend (c. 1790; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), who is seen in a white peignoir with a park in the background. The portrait is painted in a flowing style; the combination of light, subdued tones, typical of Borovikovsky, gives an impression of tender femininity and quiet contemplation.   Related Paintings of Vladimir Borovikovsky :. | Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow | Portrait of Maria Lopoukhina | Portrait of Maria Lopukhina | Princess Margaret Dolgorukaya | Portrait of Prince Alexander Kourakine |
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Nuncques, William Degouve de
Belgian Symbolist Painter, 1867-1935 was a Belgian painter. He was born at Montherme, the Ardennes, France, of an old aristocratic family, After the Franco-Prussian war (1870C71), his parents settled in Belgium, and he taught himself to paint. In 1894 he married fellow artist Juliette Massin, who introduced him to the circle of Symbolist poets, who had a considerable influence on his style. He belonged to the avant-garde group Les XX and later exhibited at La Libre Esthetique. He travelled widely and painted views of Italy, Austria and France, often of parks at night. His best-known pictures, Pink House (1892), The Angels (1894), and Peacocks (1896), demonstrate the magical quality of his work. Pink House is thought to have been a major influence on Surrealism, especially the paintings of Rene Magritte. He is supposed to have said "To make a painting, all you need to do is to take some paints, draw some lines, and fill the rest up with feelings." A regular exhibitor in Paris, he was championed by Puvis de Chavannes and Maurice Denis. From 1900 to 1902 he and his wife lived in the Balearic Islands, where he painted the rugged coastline and the orange groves. After suffering a religious crisis around 1910, he painted pictures that revealed his tormented state of mind, and during World War I, while a refugee in the Netherlands, he produced only minor works. In 1919 he was overwhelmed by the death of his wife and lost the use of one hand. In 1930 he married the woman who had helped him through the crisis.
Felix Nussbaum
1904-44 Nussbaum was born in Osnabreck, Province of Hanover, as the son of Rahel and Phillip Nussbaum. Phillip was a World War I veteran and German patriot before the rise of the Nazis. He was an amateur painter when he was younger, but was forced to pursue other means of work for financial reasons. He therefore encouraged his son's artwork passionately. Nussbaum was a lifelong student, beginning his formal studies in 1920 in Hamburg and Berlin and continuing as long as the current political situation allowed him. In his earlier works, Felix was heavily influenced by Vincent Van Gogh and Henri Rousseau and he eventually pays homage to Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carre as well. Carl Hofer's expressionist paineng influenced Felix's careful approach color. In 1933, Nussbaum was studying on scholarship in Rome at the Berlin Academy of the Arts when the Nazis gained control of Germany.
John Smibert
1688-1751 John Smibert Gallery John Smybert (or Smibert) (1688 - 1751), Scottish American artist, was born in Edinburgh and died in Boston, Massachusetts. He studied under Sir James Thornhill, and in 1728 accompanied Bishop Berkeley to America, with the intention of becoming professor of fine arts in the college which Berkeley was planning to found in Bermuda. The college, however, was never established, and Smybert settled in Boston, where he married in 1730. In 1731 he painted "Dean George Berkeley and His Family," also called "The Bermuda group", now in the Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, a group of eight figures; it is maintained that the person furthest to the left is actually the artist himself. He painted portraits of Jonathan Edwards and Judge Edmund Quincy (in the Boston Art Museum), Mrs Smybert, Peter Faneuil and Governor John Endecott (in the Massachusetts Historical Society), John Lovell (Memorial Hall, Harvard University), and probably one of Sir William Pepperrell; and examples of his works are owned by Harvard and Yale Universities, by Bowdoin College, by the Massachusetts Historical Society, and by the New England Historical and Genealogical Society. Portrait of Edmund Quincy, attributed to John Smybert Plaque at Granary Burying Ground in Boston commemorating SmybertBetween 1740-42, he served as architect for the original Faneuil Hall, which he designed in the style of an English country market. The hall burned down in 1761 but was restored, and then in 1806 greatly expanded and modified by Charles Bulfinch. His son Nathaniel was also a painter. Smybert lies in an unmarked grave in the Granary Burying Ground in Boston.