French Realist/Impressionist Painter and Sculptor, 1834-1917 French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, pastellist, photographer and collector. He was a founder-member of the Impressionist group and the leader within it of the Realist tendency. He organized several of the group exhibitions, but after 1886 he showed his works very rarely and largely withdrew from the Parisian art world. As he was sufficiently wealthy, he was not constricted by the need to sell his work, and even his late pieces retain a vigour and a power to shock that is lacking in the contemporary productions of his Impressionist colleagues.  Related Paintings of Edgar Degas :. | Half-Langth Study of a Woman | Worker | dancers | New Singer | Princess Pauline de Metternich |
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LIMBOURG brothers
Flemish painters (b. 1370-80, Nijmegen, d. 1416, Nijmegen). family of Franco-Flemish manuscript illuminators. The Limbourg brothers, Pol, Jan, and Herman, were trained as goldsmiths. They succeeded Jacquemart de Hesdin in 1411 as court painters to Jean, duc de Berry. Their masterpiece is the magnificent book of hours known as the Tr??s Riches Heures (c.1415; Mus??e Cond??, Chantilly). This is filled with exquisite illustrations of the daily life of the aristocracy and peasantry, including a series of calendar illuminations that are considered the finest extant examples of the International Gothic style
Alphonse Mucha
1860-1939 Czech Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (today's region of Czech Republic). His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, even though drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrusovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected demand for a new poster to advertise a play starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris, at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster within two weeks, and on 1 January 1895, the advertisement for Gismonda appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Bernhardt was so satisfied with the success of that first poster that she entered into a 6 years contract with Mucha. Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used paler pastel colors. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris diffused the "Mucha style" internationally. He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian one. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he wanted always to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.
Benjamin Robert Haydon
English Romantic Painter, 1786-1846 1786-1846.was an English historical painter and writer. Haydon was born at Plymouth. His mother was the daughter of the Rev. Benjamin Cobley, rector of Dodbrooke, near Kingsbridge, Devon. Her brother, General Sir Thomas Cobley, was renowned for his part in the siege of Ismail. Benjamin's father, a prosperous printer, stationer and publisher, was well known in Plymouth. Haydon, an only son, at an early date showed an aptitude for study, which was carefully fostered by his mother. At the age of six he was placed in Plymouth grammar school, and at twelve in Plympton St Mary School, the same school where Sir Joshua Reynolds had received most of his education. On the ceiling of the school-room was a sketch by Reynolds in burnt cork, which Haydon loved to sit and look at. Whilst at school he had some thought of adopting the medical profession, but he was so shocked at the sight of an operation that he gave up the idea. Reading Albinus inspired him with a love for anatomy; but from childhood he had wanted to become a painter. Full of energy and hope, he left home, on 14 May 1804, for London, and entered the Royal Academy as a student. He was so enthusiastic that Henry Fuseli asked when he ever found time to eat. Aged twenty-one (1807) Haydon exhibited, for the first time, at the Royal Academy, The Repose in Egypt, which was bought by Thomas Hope the year after for the Egyptian Room at his townhouse in Duchess Street. This was a good start for the young artist, who shortly received a commission from Lord Mulgrave and an introduction to Sir George Beaumont. In 1809 he finished his well-known picture of Dentatus, which, though it increased his fame, resulted in a lifelong quarrel with the Royal Academy, whose committee had hung it in a small side-room instead of the great hall. That same year, he took on his first pupil, Charles Lock Eastlake, later destined to become one of the great figures of the British art establishment. In 1810 his financial difficulties began when the allowance of £200 a year from his father was stopped. His disappointment was embittered by the controversies in which he now became involved with Beaumont, for whom he had painted his picture of Macbeth, and Richard Payne Knight, who had denied the beauties as well as the money value of the Elgin Marbles.