New Zealand-born Australian Painter, 1882-1939,Australian painter. The son of a Norwegian father and Irish mother, he came to Sydney from New Zealand with his family in 1883. He received his first art lessons from Julian Rossi Ashton, although for many years he had little time for painting, instead working to support his family. He finally achieved recognition as an artist around the beginning of World War I. Following successful sales he became a full-time painter, championed in Sydney as the exemplary heir to the impressionist pastoral tradition of Australian art, which had been established in the late 19th century. Between 1915 and 1920, under the influence of Max Meldrum, he focused on the landscape as seen against the light. Painting en plein air he specialized in effects of early morning, for example Morning Light (1916; Sydney, A.G. NSW), one of a series painted at Emu Plains (1915-19),   Related Paintings of Elioth Gruner :. | Mingoola Valley | Mingoola Valley | Misty Landscape | Afternoon Bondi | Tamarama Beach |
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leon belly
French Academic Painter, 1827-1877
Henry Benbridge
Henry Benbridge born October 1743 died February 1812), early American portrait painter, was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James and Mary (Clark) Benbridge. When he was seven years old, his mother, who had been left a widow, was married to Thomas Gordon, a wealthy Scot. The boy's artistic talent was encouraged. He made decorative designs for his stepfather's drawing-room which were much admired. When he was fourteen years old he may have watched John Wollaston paint Gordon's portrait. It has been plausibly argued that young Benbridge had instruction from Wollaston, since his earliest known portrait, that of his half-sister Rebecca Gordon, "seems to hark back to Wollaston." When he was 21, Benbridge was sent to Italy, where he studied with Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1769, on commission from James Boswell, biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson, he made a portrait of Pasquale Paoli in Corsica which he took to London. It was exhibited (1769) at the Free Society of Artists, and from it three mezzotints were scraped and published with the artist's name signed "Bembridge." Like other young Americans he was encouraged by Benjamin West. He wrote, on December 7, 1769, to his stepfather: "Upon my arrival I waited upon Mr. West who received me with a sort of brotherly affection, as did my cousin, Mrs. West." Impelled, apparently, by a longing to rejoin his family, he left England in 1770, bearing from West the following note of recommendation to Francis Hopkinson: "By Mr. Benbridge you will receive these few lines. You will find him an Ingenous artist and an agreeable Companion. His merit in the art must procure him great incouragement and much esteem. I deare say it will give you great pleasure to have an ingenous artist resident amongst you." Elizabeth Ann Timothy (Mrs. William Williamson), watercolor on ivory of 1775In Philadelphia Benbridge married a Miss Sage and was admitted on January 18, 1771, to membership in the American Philosophical Society, of which Benjamin Franklin was a founder. He painted the large portrait of the Gordon family, with six figures, one of his masterpieces. Suffering, however, from asthma, he sought a more congenial climate and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he succeeded Jeremiah Theus (d. May 18, 1774) as the popular portrait painter of South Carolina. There he made many likenesses of southern men and women, several of which have been popularly attributed to John Singleton Copley, an artist who never painted in the South and who left America in 1774. Around 1800 Benbridge settled in Norfolk, Virginia, whence he made frequent visits to his native city. At Norfolk he gave to Thomas Sully his first lessons in oil painting. He had previously instructed Thomas Coram of Charleston. Sully describes his master as "a portly man of good address - gentlemanly in his deportment." Benbridge's health is said by Hart to have declined in middle age. Dunlap's assertion that his last years were passed "in obscurity and poverty" has been disputed.
Joos van Craesbeeck
(c. 1605/06- c. 1660) was a Flemish painter who specialized in tavern interiors, tronies, and other works similar to his teacher Adriaen Brouwer. Born in Neerlinter (Flemish Brabant), he became a master in Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1633?C1634, and like his contemporaries David Teniers the Elder and David Rijckaert III he developed rustic genre scenes. He subsequently moved to Brussels, where he joined that city's painters' guild in 1651. Paintings such as Death is Violent and Fast are typical of his small, theatrical images of peasants brawling crowded with violent expressive figures. Unlike Teniers, whose style became more elegant, Craesbeeck continued to paint bawdy figures later in his career.