English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Tempt | THed Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons,16 October,1834 | Sea | Saltash,Cornwall (mk31) | Boat in the breezee |
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Michael Dahl
Swedish Baroque Era Painter, 1659-1743,Swedish painter, active in England. He studied under Martin Hannibal (d 1741) and later with David Kl?cker Ehrenstrahl. In 1682 he travelled to London, where he became acquainted with Godfrey Kneller and Henry Tilson, and in 1685 he left for Europe with the latter, working briefly in Paris before proceeding to Venice and Rome, where they stayed for about two years. In Rome Dahl converted to Roman Catholicism and gravitated towards the circle of Christina, former Queen of Sweden, who sat for him (Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincs). He returned to England with Tilson via Frankfurt and arrived in London in 1689; he stayed in England for the remainder of his career.
Jozsef Rippl-Ronai
Hungarian Painter, 1861-1927 After his studies at the highschool in Kaposvar he went to study to Budapest, where he got a degree in pharmacy. In 1884 he travels to Munich to study painting at the Academy. 2 years later he gets a grant and that makes him able to move to Paris and study by Munkacsy. In 1888 he meets with the members of Les Nabis and under their influence he paints his first important work The Inn at Pont-Aven, a very deep paining with dark atmosphere. His first big success was the paining My Grandmother (1894). Later he travels back to Hungary, first the critics does not accept him very warmly, but finally he celebrates a success with the exhibition Rippl-Ronai Impressions 1890-1900. He believes that for an artist there is important not only his work, but also how he lives and what he wears. That is why he becomes also a designer (Andrassy dining room and the window-pane in the Ernst Museum). His exhibitions in Frankfurt, Munich and Vienna have got a great success in 1911-1913. He paints his last big work in 1919 (portrait of his friend Zorka) and in 1927 dies in his villa Roma in Kaposvar.
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