b. March 30, 1746, Fuendetodos, Spain--d. April 16, 1828, Goya is considered the 18th Century's foremost painter and etcher of Spanish culture, known for his realistic scenes of battles, bullfights and human corruption. Goya lived during a time of upheaval in Spain that included war with France, the Inquisition, the rule of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and, finally, the reign of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. Experts proclaim these events -- and Goya's deafness as a result of an illness in 1793 -- as central to understanding Goya's work, which frequently depicts human misery in a satiric and sometimes nightmarish fashion. From the 1770s he was a royal court painter for Charles III and Charles IV, and when Bonaparte took the throne in 1809, Goya swore fealty to the new king. When the crown was restored to Spain's Ferdinand VII (1814), Goya, in spite of his earlier allegiance to the French king, was reinstated as royal painter. After 1824 he lived in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux until his death, reportedly because of political differences with Ferdinand. Over his long career he created hundreds of paintings, etchings, and lithographs, among them Maya Clothed and Maya Nude (1798-1800); Caprichos (1799-82); The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 (1814); Disasters of War (1810-20); and The Black Paintings (1820-23).  Related Paintings of Francisco de goya y Lucientes :. | The Duchess of Alba | Witches in the Air | Devouring One of his Children | Les Jeunes or the Young Ones | Paquete |
Related Artists:
Witold Pruszkowski
Polish Painter, 1846-1896 Polish painter and draughtsman. He spent his early years in Odessa and Kiev, subsequently living in France, in particular in Paris, where he studied under the Polish portrait painter Tadeusz Gorecki (1825-68), continuing (1868-71) at the Akademie der Kenste in Munich. In 1871 he moved to Krakew where he studied until 1875 under Jan Matejko at the School of Fine Arts. During ten years in Krakew he produced many striking portraits. In the portrait of Mrs Fedorowicz (1878; Krakew, N. Mus.) he achieved subtle effects of modelling by means of carefully differentiated tones and meticulously distributed light. The Realism of these portraits is subsumed into an advanced proto-Impressionist technique, on occasion using both small patches of distinct colour and broadly applied areas of impasto. Alongside such works, Pruszkowski produced paintings based on fantastic legends, fables and folk-tales. In these works one can trace influences going back to the artist's Munich period; but Pruszkowski's essentially Romantic vision translated his subjects into an entirely Polish context, as in Midsummer's Night (1875; Warsaw, N. Mus.) and Water Nymphs (1877; Krakew, N. Mus.). In 1882 Pruszkowski moved to the village of Mnikow outside Krakew, where he worked in the isolation he believed essential for creative activity. Contact with the country people, however, provided him with themes for his work; alongside his fantastic and legendary subjects he painted genre scenes of peasant life. He brought to his subjects a diversity of means of formal depiction, from the realistic to the near visionary. However, there are notable recurrent motifs, for example the image of the native willow, the symbolic haunt of spirits, as in Willow on Marshland (1892; Ledz, Mus. A.). The visionary element achieved its apogee in the pastel compositions from the last years of his life. In works such as Death of Ellenai (1892; Wroclaw, N. Mus.) the evanescent nature of forms is expressed through restrained colour schemes, generally tending towards silvery greyish azure or shades of pink.
Caesar van Everdingen
(1616/17, Alkmaar - buried October 13, 1678, Alkmaar), older brother of Allart van Everdingen and Jan van Everdingen, was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter. Caesar Pietersz van Everdingen also known as Caesar Boetius van Everdingen was educated in Utrecht, where he learned to paint from Jan Gerritsz van Bronckhorst.Caesar became a member of the painter's guild in Alkmaar in 1632. His first known painting dates from 1636. In 1648 he moved to Haarlem, where he joined the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke and the civic guard (or schutterij) there, where he met Jacob van Campen. From 1648 to 1650 He helped him with the decoration of the Oranje Zaal (Orange room) in Huis ten Bosch. In 1658 he moved back to Alkmaar where he started a workshop and took on pupils. Many of his pictures are to be seen in the museums and private houses of the Netherlands. His pupils were Jan Theunisz Blanckerhoff, Adriaen Dekker, Hendrik Graauw, and Thomas Heeremans.Houbraken also lists two other pupils; Adriaen Warmenhuizen, and Laurens Oosthoorn.
Alfred Stevens
1823-1906 Alfred Stevens Galleries Flemish Alfred Emile Stevens (May 11, 1823 - August 29, 1906) , Belgian painter, was born in Brussels. El??gants sur les BoulevardsHis father, an old officer in the service of William I of the Netherlands, was passionately fond of pictures, and readily allowed his son to draw in the studio of François Navez, director of the Brussels Academy. In 1844 Stevens went to Paris and worked under the instructing of Camille Roqueplan, a friend of his father's; he also attended the classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where Ingres was then professor. In 1849 he painted at Brussels his first picture, A Soldier in Trouble, and in the same year went back to Paris, where he definitely settled, and exhibited in the Salons. He then painted Ash-Wednesday Morning, Burghers and Country People finding at Daybreak the Body of a Murdered Gentleman, An Artist in Despair, and The Love of Gold. Allegory of the Night MSK, Oostende, BelgiumIn 1855 he exhibited at the Antwerp Salon a little picture called At Home, which showed the painter's bent towards depicting ladies of fashion. At the Great Exhibition in Paris, 1855, his contributions were remarkable, but in 1857 he returned to graceful female subjects, and his path thenceforth was clear before him. At the Great Exhibition of 1867 he was seen in a brilliant variety of works in the manner he had made his own, sending eighteen exquisite paintings; among them were the Lady in Pink (in the Brussels Gallery), Consolation, Every Good Fortune, Miss Fauvette, Ophelia, and India in Paris. At the Paris International Exhibitions of 1878 and 1889, and at the Historical Exhibition of Belgian Art, Brussels, 1880, he exhibited The Four Seasons (in the Palace at Brussels), The Parisian Sphinx, The Japanese Mask, The Japanese Robe, and The Lady-bird (Brussels Gallery). "Alfred Stevens is one of the race of great painters," wrote Camille Lemonnier, "and like them he takes immense pains with the execution of his work." The example of his finished technique was salutary, not merely to his brethren in Belgium, but to many foreign painters who received encouragement from the study of his method. The brother of Alfred Stevens, Joseph Stevens, was a great painter of dogs and dog life. See J. du Jardin, L'Art flamand; Camille Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux arts en Belgique.