(1 January 1805 - 29 August 1838) was a Danish landscape painter of the Copenhagen School, also known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting. He spent most of his artistic life in Italy, where he painted refined landscapes in a light colour palette but died early, most likely by way of suicide. Fritz Petzholdt was born into a prosperous home on 1 January 1805 in Copenhagen to grocer Johan Jacob Petzholdt and his second wife Josephine Marie Elisabeth Petzholdt. After completing an apprenticeship as a house painter, he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1824 where he studied under Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, known as the farther of the Golden Age of Danish Painting spanning the first half of the 19th century. He graduated in 1828 and already the following year sold a painting, En mose ved Høsterkøb med tørvearbejdere (A Bog at Høsterkøb), to the Royal Danish Painting Collection. Although he never won the Academy's gold medal, the traditional opening for Academy students to go abroad to further their studies since it was accompanied by a travel stipend, his family's wealth allowed him to travel to Harz the same year and then, in May 1830, to set out for Rome. On the way he visited Dresden, Prague, Nuremberg, Munich, Venice and Florence. In Rome he joined the Danish artists colony which had formed in the city with Bertel Thorvaldsen as its centre. He made excursions to the Roman countrysideeto places such as Tivoli, Subiaco and Olevanoeas well as longer trips south to Naples, Sicily and Corfu. In the winter of 1835/36 he returned to Copenhagen due to his farther's illness and subsequent death. Shortly after the funeral, he returned to Italy with an extended stop in Munich on the way. From Italy he continued to Greece, a destination only Martinus Rørbye had visited before him among the Danish Golden Age painters. On 29 August 1838 he was found dead in his hotel room in Patras with his throat cut. Whether it was a case of suicide or murder was never settled.   Related Paintings of Fritz Petzholdt :. | drottningholm figurerna i forgrunden ar faltmarskalken rutger von ascheberg och karl | Between the mountains of the Sierra Nevada in Californie | Adobe Church | Seesturm | Charles Towneley's Library in Park Street (nn03) |
Related Artists:
GILLIS, Nicolaes
Dutch painter (active 1610-1630 in Haarlem)
SCHAUFELEIN, Hans Leonhard
German Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1480-1540 was a German painter, designer, and wood engraver. He was born in Nuremberg, probably studied under Wohlgemut, and then became the assistant of D??rer, whom he imitated. In 1512 he went to Augsburg and in 1515 removed to Nordlingen. He is a graceful narrator, and his types, though rarely accurately drawn, are attractive, but he lacks power and depth. Characteristic early paintings are the altarpiece at Ober Sankt Veit[1], near Vienna (1502), "Scenes from the Life of Christ" (Dresden Gallery), and "St. Jerome" (Germanic Museum, Nuremberg). To his Nordlingen period belong his masterpiece, the so-called "Ziegler Altar" for St. George's Church (1521), part of which is still in the church, part in the museum; "Scenes from the Story of Judith," in the town hall; and the illuminated Psalter for Count von Ottingen, now in the Berlin print room. His most important woodcuts are those for the Theuerdank of Emperor Maximilian.
Baron Antoine-Jean Gros
1771-1835 French Baron Antoine-Jean Gros Galleries The son of a painter, Antoine Jean Gros was born in Paris on March 16, 1771. At the age of 14 he entered the studio of Jacques Louis David, the acknowledged leader of the classical revival. Although his own work became radically different from David's, he maintained a lifelong respect for his teacher and envisioned himself as the upholder of the Davidian tradition. In 1787 Gros entered the Acad??mie de Peinture, and when the Acad??mie dissolved in 1793 (a result of the French Revolution) he went to Italy. He met Josephine Bonaparte in Genoa in 1796, and she introduced him to Napoleonic society. Gros entered Napoleon's immediate entourage and accompanied him on several north Italian campaigns. Gros also became involved with Napoleon's program of confiscating Italian art for removal to France. Gros returned to Paris in 1800 and began to show his Napoleonic paintings in the annual Salons. The most famous of these are the Pesthouse at Jaffa (1804) and Napoleon at Eylau (1808). These works served to deify Napoleon, showing him engaged in acts of heroism and mercy. Stylistically, the paintings were revolutionary:their exotic settings, rich color, agitated space, and general penchant for showing the gruesome specifics of war and suffering differed radically from the cool generalizations of Davidian classicism that Gros had learned as a student. The presentation of contemporary historical events was also new, a harbinger of the realism that developed steadily during the first half of the 19th century in French, American, and English painting. Finally, the emphatic emotionalism of Gros's art established the foundation of romantic painting that Th??odore G??ricault and Eug??ne Delacroix developed after him. Unlike that of some of his countrymen (David is a case in point), Gros's position did not suffer after the fall of Napoleon. Gros painted for the restored monarchy, for instance, Louis XVIII Leaving the Tuileries (1817), and he decorated the dome of the Panth??on in Paris with scenes of French history (1814-1824). For this Charles X made him a baron in 1824. But these works lack the zest and commitment of Gros's Napoleonic period, perhaps because they were not based on the immediate kinds of historical experiences that had inspired the earlier paintings. Although marked by considerable public success, Gros's later career was in many ways acutely troubled. Basically, he could not resolve his personal esthetic theories with his own painting or with the work of his younger contemporaries. To the end Gros wished to propagate the classicism of David, and he took over David's studio when the master was exiled in 1816. By the 1820s, however, the revolutionary romanticism of G??ricault and Delacroix, among others, had clearly begun to eclipse classicism, and Gros found himself fighting a lonely and losing battle for conservatism. Ironically, he was fighting a trend that his own best work had helped to originate. As he persisted, moreover, his own painting began to show a diffident mixture of classic and romantic attitudes. Thus, while he was inherently a romantic, he tragically came to doubt himself. Gros died on June 26, 1835, apparently a suicide.