1858-1921 Belgian Fernand Khnopff Gallery Fernand Khnopff was born to a wealthy family that was part of the high bourgeoisie for generations. Khnopff's ancestors had lived in Flanders since the early 17th-century but were of Austrian and Portuguese descent. Most male members of his family had been lawyers or judges, and young Fernand was destined for a juridical career. In his early childhood (1859-1864) he lived in Bruges where his father was appointed Substitut Du Procureur Du Roi. His childhood memories of the medieval city of Bruges would play a significant role in his later work. In 1864 the family moved to Brussels. To please his parents he went to law school at the Free University of Brussels (now divided into the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel) when he was 18 years old. During this period he developed a passion for literature, discovering the works of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Leconte de Lisle and other mostly French authors. With his younger brother Georges Khnopff - also a passionate amateur of contemporary music and poetry - he started to frequent Jeune Belgique ("Young Belgium"), a group of young writers including Max Waller, Georges Rodenbach, Iwan Gilkin and Emile Verhaeren. Khnopff left University due to a lack of interest in his law studies and began to frequent the studio of Xavier Mellery, who made him familiar with the art of painting. On the 25th of October 1876 he enrolled for the Cours De Dessin Apres Nature ("course of drawing after nature") at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts en Bruxelles. At the Academie, his most famous fellow student was James Ensor, whom he disliked from the start. Between 1877 and 1880 Khnopff made several trips to Paris where he discovered the work of Delacroix, Ingres, Moreau and Stevens. At the Paris World Fair of 1878 he became acquainted with the oeuvre of Millais and Burne-Jones. During his last year at the Acad??mie in 1878-1879 he neglected his classes in Brussels and lived for a while in Passy, were he visited the Cours Libres of Jules Joseph Lefebvre at the Acad??mie Julian.   Related Paintings of Fernand Khnopff :. | memory of Flanders A canal | View From the Bridge at Fosset | After Flaubert Thetemptation of St Anthony | At the Seaside | Orpheus |
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Gentile da Fabriano
Fabriano ca 1370-Rome 1427 Italian painter, one of the outstanding exponents of the elegant international Gothic style. In 1409 he worked in the Doge's Palace, Venice, painting historical frescoes that subsequently perished. In 1422 he was in Florence where he created his most celebrated painting, the resplendent Strozzi altarpiece (Uffizi). Gentile painted in the spirit and the manner of the older school, with glowing color and lavish use of gilt, thereby achieving a jewellike, courtly style. By 1425 he had responded to the new Florentine realism. His refined forms yielded to a sturdier rendering of figures in the Quaratesi altarpiece (panels are now in the Uffizi; Vatican; National Gall., London; and National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.). From 1425 until his death he worked in Siena, Orvieto, and Rome. Gentile died in Rome before the completion of the frescoes of St. John the Baptist in the Lateran Basilica.
William Robinson Leigh
(September 23, 1866 - March 11, 1955) is a noted American artist, who specialized in Western scenes. He was born at Maidstone Manor Farm, Berkeley County, West Virginia. He entered the Maryland Institute at age 14, then attended the Royal Academy in Munich. He returned to the United States and worked painting cycloramas and as a magazine illustrator. He married and fathered William Colston Leigh, Sr. (1901-1992). In 1906, Leigh traveled to the American West and maintained a studio in New York City. In 1933, he wrote and illustrated The Western Pony. He also traveled to Africa and published a book Frontiers of Enchantment (1938). Hs adventures were chronicled in a number of popular magazines including Life, the Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers.He is known for painting the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Forest, but his primary interest were the Hopi and Navajo Indians
MENGS, Anton Raphael
German Neoclassical Painter, 1728-1779 Painter and writer, brother of Theresia Concordia Mengs. His early career was at the Dresden court; thereafter he worked principally in Rome and Madrid, notably on the frescoes at the Villa Albani and the Palacio Real respectively. As an early exponent of Neo-classicism he produced some impressive classical and religious scenes, though he was most accomplished as a portrait painter. Under the influence of Johann Joachim Winckelmann he also wrote some theoretical works, of which the most important is the Gedanken ber die Schenheit und ber den Geschmack in der Malerey (1762). Although acclaimed during his lifetime