(1831 - 1901) was a Polish painter and professor. Born in Warsaw, Gerson enrolled at the Warsaw Fine Arts Academy and graduated with honorable mention and a scholarship to St. Petersburg Academy of Arts where he studied historical painting under A. T. Markov. He graduated from St. Petersburg with a silver medal and returned to Warsaw. He left for Paris in 1850 and studied under Leon Cogniet. He travelled back to Warsaw in 1858, where he would live for the rest of his life. Gerson began to teach art in his own workshop in 1865. He trained many future Polish artists such as J??zef Chełmo??ski, Leon Wycz??łkowski, Władysław Podkowi??ski, and J??zef Pankiewicz. He was made a professor for the St. Petersburg Fine Arts Academy in 1878. Gerson also worked as an architect and art critic. He is known for his paintings of patriotism, country life, and mountain landscapes. Gerson died in Warsaw, aged 70.  Related Paintings of Wojciech Gerson :. | Lokietek pod Ojcowem | Wyschniety potok w Tatrach | Sigismund the Old with Staczyk at the Wawel Castle | Casimir the Restorer returning to Poland | The Assassination of Przemysl II in Rogozno. |
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LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas
English painter (b. 1769, Bristol, d. 1830, London). Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol on May 4, 1769. At Devizes, where his father was landlord of the Black Bear Inn, Thomas's talents first became known. Fanny Burney, a prodigy herself, reports that in 1780 Sir Joshua Reynolds had already pronounced Lawrence the most promising genius he had ever met. When Thomas was 10, his father moved the family to Oxford and then to Bath to take advantage of the portrait skill of his son. At the age of 17 Lawrence began to paint in oil, all his previous work having been in pastel. In 1787 the family moved to London, and by 1789 he was challenging Reynolds. When Reynolds died in 1792, Lawrence was appointed to the lucrative post of painter in ordinary to the king. He soon became the foremost portrait painter in England, a position he maintained until his death. His portraits of women are models of beauty and elegance, whether the sitter be a tragic actress like Mrs. Siddons, a social figure like the Princess de Lieven, or a personal friend. At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Lawrence was knighted and commissioned to paint the leading sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. When he returned to England in 1820, he was elected president of the Royal Academy; he handled the affairs of his office with tact and urbanity. He died on Jan. 7, 1830. Following the English masters of the 18th century, Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney, Lawrence carried on the great tradition of society portraiture and raised it to new heights of dash and elegance, though not of psychological penetration. He was by no means an artist of the astonishing insight of Gainsborough, and he did not have the occasionally disconcerting originality of Reynolds. Lawrence had their faults: all were affected by the distorting demands of their fashionable clientele, and all succumbed to them. He had the least to say, and he reflected his sitters' own best views of themselves, yet even they must sometimes have been surprised at their own magnificence. Handsome his portraits undoubtedly are; all the women are strikingly beautiful, the men brave and distinguished. Lawrence enjoyed his great success. He lived for his work, never married, and was a prodigious worker. He was of an exceptionally generous nature, as an artist and as a man, with a rare talent for appreciating and encouraging the talents of others. He was an ardent collector of Old Master drawings; his collection, which was dispersed after his death,
Franz Ludwig Catel
German Painter, 1778-1856,German painter. As a child, Catel helped carve small wooden figures in the toyshop owned by his father. With the encouragement of the printmaker Daniel Chodowiecki, Catel enrolled at the Berlin Kunstakademie, becoming a full member in 1806. In 1807, after already making a name for himself as a watercolourist and book illustrator, he began several years of study at the Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his main subject was oil painting. In 1811 he moved to Italy, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Initially he wavered between Joseph Anton Koch's classically heroic style of landscape painting and the Romantic lyricism of the Nazarenes. Eventually he found that he could best exercise his technical ability, and most quickly achieve fame and fortune, by producing Italian landscapes. He specialized in Neapolitan scenes depicting festive folk customs; and such paintings proved popular with the mass of wealthy travellers who came to Italy after the Napoleonic Wars.
Reinier Nooms
(c. 1623 - c. 1667), also known as Zeeman (Dutch for "sailor"), was a maritime painter known for his highly detailed paintings and etchings of ships. Nooms was born and died in Amsterdam. He started painting and drawing in his later years, following a rough, drunken life as a sailor. It is not known how he acquired his skill as an artist. His knowledge of ships is evident from his work: ships and foreign locations are depicted with high accuracy and in great detail, and served as an example to other artists of how to depict ships. A widely traveled artist, Nooms visited Paris, Venice and possibly Berlin, and also journeyed along the coast of North Africa. A favourite subject of his paintings were the Dutch victories in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. For instance, he painted the Amalia, the flagship of admiral Maarten Tromp, before the Battle of the Downs in 1639. This painting now hangs in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. His painting of the Battle of Leghorn in 1653 is in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In the 1650s, Nooms made a series of etchings of ships and topographical views characterized by a high degree of detail and precision. These etchings served as an example to many artists. The 19th century French etcher Charles Meryon was highly influenced by Noom, whose etchings of Paris cityscapes inspired Meryon to his own series of Paris etchings. Meryon even dedicated some of this work to Nooms in poetic form.