Bruno Andreas Liljefors (1860-1939) was a Swedish artist, the most important and probably the most influential wildlife painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[1] He also drew some sequential picture stories, making him one of the early Swedish comic creators. Liljefors is held in high esteem by painters of wildlife and is acknowledged as an influence, for example, by American wildlife artist Bob Kuhn.[1] All his life Liljefors was a hunter, and he often painted predator-prey action, the hunts engaged between fox and hare, sea eagle and eider, and goshawk and black grouse serving as prime examples.[1] However, he never exaggerated the ferocity of the predator or the pathos of the prey, and his pictures are devoid of sentimentality. The influence of the Impressionists can be seen in his attention to the effects of environment and light, and later that of Art Nouveau in his Mallards, Evening of 1901, in which the pattern of the low sunlight on the water looks like leopardskin, hence the Swedish nickname Panterfällen.[1] Bruno was fascinated by the patterns to be found in nature, and he often made art out of the camouflage patterns of animals and birds. He particularly loved painting capercaillies against woodland, and his most successful painting of this subject is the largescale Capercaillie Lek, 1888, in which he captures the atmosphere of the forest at dawn. He was also influenced by Japanese art, for example in his Goldfinches of the late 1880s.[1] During the last years of the nineteenth century, a brooding element entered his work, perhaps the result of turmoil in his private life, as he left his wife, Anna, and took up with her younger sister, Signe, and was often short of money.[1] This darker quality in his paintings gradually began to attract interest and he had paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon. He amassed a collection of animals to act as his living models. Ernst Malmberg recalled: The animals seemed to have an instinctive trust and actual attraction to him...There in his animal enclosure, we saw his inevitable power over its many residents??foxes, badgers, hares, squirrels, weasels, an eagle, eagle owl, hawk, capercaillie and black game.[1] The greatness of Liljefors lay in his ability to show animals in their environment.[1] Sometimes he achieved this through hunting and observation of the living animal, and sometimes he used dead animals: for example his Hawk and Black Game, painted in the winter of 1883-4, was based on dead specimens, but he also used his memory of the flocks of black grouse in the meadows around a cottage he once lived in at Ehrentuna, near Uppsala. He wrote: The hawk model??a young one??I killed myself. Everything was painted out of doors as was usually done in those days. It was a great deal of work trying to position the dead hawk and the grouse among the bushes that I bent in such a way as to make it seem lively, although the whole thing was in actuality a still life.[1]   Related Paintings of bruno liljefors :. | skogsladan | svanar | berguv | tjaderlek | Weasel with Chaffinch |
Related Artists:
Colin Campbell Cooper
1856-1937 Colin Campbell Cooper Galleries Cooper was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Dr. Colin Campbell Cooper and Emily William Cooper. He studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins, and at Acad??mie Julian in Paris. Back in Philadelphia, he taught watercolor classes at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science and Industry (now Drexel University). In 1897 he married renowned artist Emma Lampert, and the next year they moved to New York City, where he began work on his famous skyscraper paintings. He travelled extensively, sketching and painting scenes of Europe, Asia, and the United States in watercolors and oils. He and his wife were on the RMS Carpathia and assisted in the rescue of the survivors of the Titanic. Several of his paintings document the rescue. In 1912, Cooper was elected to a prestigious membership in the National Academy of Design. Cooper exhibited in San Francisco's Panama-Pacific Exposition of 1915, winning the Gold Medal for oil and the Silver Medal for watercolor. He also participated in the Panama-California Exposition in San Diego. In 1920 his wife Emma died. He moved to Santa Barbara, California in 1921 and became dean of the School of Painting at the Santa Barbara Community School of Arts. He married his second wife, Marie Frehsee, in 1927. Cooper died in Santa Barbara in 1937.
carl gustav pilo
Carl Gustaf Pilo, konstnär, målare, född 1711 i Nyköping, död 2 mars 1793 i Stockholm Han studerade vid Konstakademien och för Arenius samt vidare i Tyskland. År 1740 till 1772 bosatt i Danmark, där han utnämndes till hovmålare, professor och direktör för akademien. I Danmark utförde han ett antal porträtt bl.a. av Fredrik V och Juliana Maria samt de kungliga barnen. Efter Gustav III:s statskupp år 1772 blev man i Danmark avogt inställd mot svenskar och Pilo blev helt enkelt tvungen att fly till Sverige. Han bosatte sig i sin barndomsstad Nyköping. Gustav III sökte upp honom med uppdraget, att måla kungens kröning. Pilo försökte avsäga sig det, för han hade ju faktiskt inte varit med vid kröningen och han hade aldrig tidigare målat en gruppbild. Men kungen var envis och han ville ha en motsvarande målning till Ehrenstrahls på Drottningholm av Karl XI:s kröning och Gustav III ville att Pilo skulle måla den. Pilo antog till slut uppdraget och 1782 till 1793 arbetade han med tavlan , utan att bli helt färdig, vilket man ser om man studerar den noga där man på flera ställen på målningen upptäcker flera dubbla ansikten. Dessutom experimenterade Pilo med asfaltsfärg, vilket gör att tavlan uppvisar många större sprickbildningar. Tavlan Gustav III:s kröning hänger på Nationalmuseum och är Pilos kanske yppersta arbete och en pärla i svensk konst. Kompositionen är väl avvägd, koloriten glänsande harmonisk samt de individuella porträtten är briljant utförda. Pilo bör räknas till våra främsta målare och var särskilt skicklig som kolorist, där man ser spår och inflytande från den venetianska skolan och från Rembrandt. Många av hans tavlor utstrålar festivitas detta gäller framförallt den stora kröningstavlan. Pilos betydelse i svensk konsthistoria kan också utläsas i att Postverket vid tre tillfällen använt målningar av P. som motiv vid frimärksutgivning. Bl a utgavs till Pilos 250-årsdag en detalj ur kröningstavlan. Även två av Pilos bröder var också konstnärer, dock med mindre framgång, Jöns Pilo (1707-?) och Olof Pilo (1718-1795).
ZUCCARO Taddeo
Italian Mannerist Painter, 1529-1566 Painter and draughtsman. Taught to draw by his father, at the age of 14 he went alone to Rome where, according to Vasari, he was employed in various workshops and studied independently, particularly the works of Raphael. Through assisting Daniele de Porri (1500-77), who had trained in Parma, he learnt of the work of Correggio and Parmigianino. He first became known for his paintings on fa?ades, notably scenes from the Story of Furius Camillus on the palazzo of a Roman nobleman Jacopo Matteo, executed in 1548. Vasari claimed that Taddeo's fa?ade decorations equalled those of Polidoro da Caravaggio; none survives, although some are documented in drawings (e.g. London, BM; Paris, Louvre) and show his assimilation of Polidoro's style. Taddeo's earliest extant works date from 1553 when he collaborated with Prospero Fontana on the decoration (part destr.) of the villa of Pope Julius III outside the Porta del Popolo in Rome; Taddeo's contributions included scenes of The Seasons in the loggia of the nymphaeum. In these, clarity of form and space, natural proportions and idealization of human form demonstrate his affinity with the classicism of the High Renaissance. He also assimilated the sculptural sensibility of Mannerism, derived from Michelangelo.