French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | Richard Wagner January 15 | Algerian Woman Seated | Woman with a Cat | Young Girl with a Falcon | Banks of the Seine at Champrosay |
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Charles Rennie Macintosh
Scottish Art Nouveau Designer , (1868-1928). Scottish architect, designer and painter. In the pantheon of heroes of the Modern Movement, he has been elevated to a cult figure, such that the importance of his late 19th-century background and training in Glasgow are often overlooked. He studied during a period of great artistic activity in the city that produced the distinctive GLASGOW STYLE. As a follower of A. W. N. Pugin and John Ruskin, he believed in the superiority of Gothic over Classical architecture and by implication that moral integrity in architecture could be achieved only through revealed construction. Although Mackintosh's buildings refrain from overt classicism, they reflect its inherent discipline. His profound originality was evident by 1895, when he began the designs for the Glasgow School of Art. His decorative schemes, particularly the furniture, also formed an essential element in his buildings. During Mackintosh's lifetime his influence was chiefly felt in Austria, in the work of such painters as Gustav Klimt and such architects as Josef Hoffmann and Joseph Maria Olbrich. The revival of interest in his work was initiated by the publication of monographs by Pevsner (1950) and Howarth (1952). The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society was formed in Glasgow in 1973; it publishes a biannual newsletter, has a reference library and organizes exhibitions. The Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, which opened in 1981,
Dominique Vivant Denon
French, 1747-1825,French savant, he accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798) as leader of the learned Commission on the Sciences and Arts that was to study Ancient Egyptian buildings and architecture and herald the birth of modern Egyptology. In 1802 he published his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte pendant les campagnes du general Bonaparte (Journey in Lower and Upper Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte). An accurate source-book of Ancient Egyptian architecture, it had an extraordinary impact, triggering the C19 Egyptian Revival that at first was correctly described as Egyptomania, and was a major influence on Neo-Classicism. Denon was Director-General of Museums, and was in charge of the Musee Napoleon (now the Louvre).
oscar bjorck
född 15 januari 1860 i Stockholm, död av en hjärtattack i sitt hem klockan 03.00 den 5 december 1929, var en svensk konstnär och professor vid Konsthögskolan 1898-1925, och från 1918 även vice preses. Åren 1877-1882 var han elev till Edvard Pers??us vid konstakademins principskola och målade bland annat prisämnena Loke fängslas af asarne (1880), Gustaf Vasa inför kung Hans (1881) och Den förlorade sonens återkomst (1882, belönad med kungliga medaljen). 1883 fick Björck akademiskt resestipendium och vistades vintern 1883?C84 i Paris. Vintern 1884?C85 reste Björck till M??nchen, målade några porträtt, bland annat ett i helfigur av sin hustru. Våren 1885 flyttade han till Venezia och på hösten till Rom. Där målade han den stora modelltavlan Susanna (Göteborgs museum) och Romerska smeder (galleriet i Washington, en skiss till samma tavla finns i Göteborgs museum). 1887 målades i Venezia Veneziansk saluhall (nationalmuseum), Lördagsmässa i Markuskyrkan och andra tavlor. Efter en sommarvistelse på Skagen, där han förut tillbringat två somrar, 1882 och 1884, bosatte sig Björck 1888 i Stockholm. Han har sedan huvudsakligast målat porträtt. Bland dessa kan nämnas flera av konung Oscar (bland dem ett på Skokloster, ett i helfigur på Drottningholm, ett med krona och mantel, på Stockholms slott, ett som övergick i tyske kejsarens ägo), prins Eugen vid staffliet (nationalmuseum, 1895), kronprins Gustaf (Stockholms slott, 1900), konstnärens hustru (helfigur, 1891, Göteborgs museum) och friherre Nordenfalk (konstakademien, 1892). Dessutom skapade han några landskap, ett par genrebilder och olika dekorativa målningar. Från 1889 var han ledamot vid konstakademin och lärare vid Konsthögskolan. 1898 blev han professor. Björck var kommissarie för konstavdelningen vid Stockholmsutställningen 1897 och vid Baltiska utställningen 1914 samt för den svenska utställningen i London 1924.