1728-1779 Dutch Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome. In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agust??n Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings. Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning. His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism. Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.  Related Paintings of Anton Raphael Mengs :. | British painter | Holy Roman Empress | Allegory of History | Portrait of Charles III of Spain | Self portrait |
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American, 1840-1922
Antoine Chintreuil
Antoine Chintreuil Antoine Chintreuil (May 15, 1814 - August 8, 1873) was a French landscape painter. He was born in Pont-de-Vaux, Ain and grew up in Bresse. In 1838 he moved to Paris, where he began studying under Paul Delaroche in 1842. The following year he met Corot, who influenced him profoundly by encouraging him to paint landscape en plein air. Art historian Athena S. E. Leoussi suggests that Chintreuil's work can be divided into three periods: From c. 1846-1850 he painted Paris and its surroundings, particularly Montmartre; from 1850-1857 he lived in Igny and frequently painted in Barbizon, and from 1857 on he lived and worked in La Tournelle-Septeuil in the Seine valley. During this final period his work reached its fullest development, and he achieved critical recognition. In the breadth and simplicity of his execution, and in his attention to capturing light and atmosphere, Chintreuil can be placed alongside Eugene Boudin, Johan Barthold Jongkind, and the painters of the Barbizon school, as an important forerunner of Impressionism. He died in Septeuil, Seine-et-Oise in 1873.
Julius Kronberg
1850-1921,Swedish painter and illustrator. He was educated at the Konstakademi in Stockholm, where his teachers were J. C. Boklund (1817-80), August Malmstr?m and Johan Fredrik H?ckert. In 1873 he travelled on a scholarship to D?sseldorf, and in the following year he went to Munich. There he was strongly influenced by the Old Masters (especially Rubens), as well as Hans Makart robustly theatrical style. Together they shaped Kronberg early works, for example Hunting Nymph and Fauns (1875; Stockholm, Nmus.), which caused a sensation when it was exhibited in Stockholm in 1876 and established his reputation. Kronberg left Munich in 1877 and settled in Rome, where, between trips to Egypt and Tunisia, he stayed until 1889, when he returned to Stockholm. During his years in Rome his style became increasingly austere. His exuberant Munich manner was replaced by a colder illusionism, which emphasized the historical details of subjects taken from the Bible and Shakespeare. Typical is David and Saul (1885; Stockholm, Nmus.), which reflected his study of Lawrence Alma-Tadema.