French Cubist Painter, 1881-1955,was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker,Leger was born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Leger initially trained as an architect from 1897-1899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles in 1902-1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts; he also applied to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gerome and others, while also studying at the Academie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of Impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mere (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Leger's work after he saw the Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909 he moved to Montparnasse and met such leaders of the avant-garde as Archipenko, Lipchitz, Chagall, and Robert Delaunay. His major painting of this period is Nudes in the Forest (1909-10), in which Leger displayed a personal form of Cubism??his critics called it "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical formsethat made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso. In 1910 he joined with several other artists, including Delaunay, Jacques Villon, Henri Le Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia, and Marie Laurencin to form an offshoot of the Cubist movement, the Puteaux Group??also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section). Leger was influenced during this time by Italian Futurism, and his paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their vocabulary of tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colours plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Leger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne. He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun.  Related Paintings of Fernand Leger :. | stad | female toro | village in the forest | Nature Morte | motber and cbild |
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Dmitry Levitzky
1735-1822) was a Russian-Ukrainian portrait painter. Dmitry was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in a family of clergyman and engraver Grigory Levitzky. His father was his first art teacher. Later be became a pupil of Aleksey Antropov who came to Kiev to paint the Cathedral of St. Andrew. In 1770, Levitzky became famous as a portrait painter after the exhibition of six of his portraits in the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg. For the portrait of Alexander Kokorinov, Director and First Rector of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (1769) he was elected an academician and appointed the Professor of the portrait painting class at the Academy of Arts.
Peter Franchoys
Peter, Peeter or Pieter Franchoys or Francois (1606-1654) was a Flemish Baroque painter from Mechelen, who painted an altarpiece of Calvary influenced by Anthony van Dyck for the St. Gummarus church in Lier, Belgium. [edit] Biography He first learned to paint from his father, Lucas Franchoys the Elder, and later from Gerard Seghers in Antwerp . In 1631 he traveled in France and is recorded being in Fontainebleau. In 1646 he became a member of the Mechelen schutterij and in 1649 he became a master in the Guild of St. Luke there. According to Houbraken he was known for his landscapes with small figures, that attracted the admiration of Archduke Leopold Wilhelm of Austria, for whom he painted many years. His work is memorialized in the Gulden Cabinet of the poet from Lier, Cornelis de Bie.
Jan miel
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1599-1664 Flemish painter, active in Italy. Miel must have arrived in Rome in the early 1630s; he immediately came under the influence of Pieter van Laer (il Bamboccio) and the BAMBOCCIANTI. His earliest paintings of bambocciate (low-life scenes) are the Bowls Players (1633; Paris, Louvre) and its companion piece The Cobbler (Besan?on, Mus. B.-A. & Arch?ol.). Shortly after his arrival in Rome, Miel joined the Schildersbent, a confraternity of Netherlandish artists, and was given the nickname 'Bieco' ('threatening look'). His presence in Rome is documented from 1636 to 1658, when he moved to Turin and entered the service of Charles-Emanuel II, Duke of Savoy. Other early paintings that can be attributed to the 1630s include Halt at the Inn (Marseille, Mus. B.-A.) and Hunters' Rest (Warsaw, N. Mus.). Both are reworkings, in their subject-matter and composition, of contemporary paintings by van Laer, such as his Hunters Resting (Florence, Uffizi) and Halt at the Inn (Paris, Louvre).