1725-1805 French Jean Baptiste Greuze Galleries French painter and draughtsman. He was named an associate member of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris, in 1755 on the strength of a group of paintings that included genre scenes, portraits and studies of expressive heads (t?tes d'expression). These remained the essential subjects of his art for the next 50 years, except for a brief, concentrated and unsuccessful experiment with history painting in the late 1760s, which was to affect his later genre painting deeply. Though his art has often been compared with that of Jean-Simeon Chardin in particular and interpreted within the context of NEO-CLASSICISM in general, it stands so strikingly apart from the currents of its time that Greuze's accomplishments are best described, as they often were by the artist's contemporaries, as unique. He was greatly admired by connoisseurs, critics and the general public throughout most of his life. His pictures were in the collections of such noted connoisseurs as Ange-Laurent de La Live de Jully, Claude-Henri Watelet and Etienne-Francois, Duc de Choiseul. For a long period he was in particular favour with the critic Denis Diderot, who wrote about him in the Salon reviews that he published in Melchior Grimm's privately circulated Correspondance litteraire. His reputation declined towards the end of his life and through the early part of the 19th century, to be revived after 1850, when 18th-century painting returned to favour, by such critics as Th?ophile Thore, Arsene Houssaye and, most notably, Edmond and Jules de Goncourt in their book L'Art du dix-huiti?me siecle. By the end of the century Greuze's work, especially his many variations on the Head of a Girl, fetched record prices, and his Broken Pitcher (Paris, Louvre) was one of the most popular paintings in the Louvre. The advent of modernism in the early decades of the 20th century totally obliterated Greuze's reputation. It was only in the 1970s, with Brookner's monograph, Munhall's first comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work, increased sale prices, important museum acquisitions and fresh analyses of his art by young historians, that Greuze began to regain the important place that he merits in the history of French art of the 18th century.  Related Paintings of Jean Baptiste Greuze :. | Silence (mk25) | la petit paresseux | The benefactress | The Spoiled Child | The Lamentation of Time Passing (mk08) |
Related Artists:
Daniel Gardner
United Kingdom (1750 -1805 ) - Drawer
Constant Wauters
painted Actors Before a Performance in 1851
Theodor Rocholl
(1854-1933), German military painter and war artist. Rocholl was born in Sachsenberg (Waldeck) on June 11, 1854, the son of Rudolf Rocholl, the Lutheran theologian and philosopher. He was a student in Munich in 1877, then at the Dresden Academy. After a year, he moved to Munich where he studied historical painting under Karl von Piloty. He ocmpleted his art studies at the Desseldorf Academy where he developed his interest in military art under the influence of Wilhelm Camphausen; his contemporaries in this field were Carl Röchling and Richard Knötel. The artist observed the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent German army manoeuvres between 1883 and 1888; in 1890, he traveled to Russia to view the German Garde-Korps on manoeuvre. Later in the decade, he was attached to the Turkish Army and covered the conflict in Thessalia in 1897 between the Turks and the Greeks; his sketches of the fighting were published the following year. He covered the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 as the official artist of the German expeditionary force. A decade later, he covered the fighting between Turkey and Albania. Many of his paintings depict German military scenes, especially the battles of the Franco-Prussian War. One of his most famous pictures depicted King William at the Battle of Sedan, meeting his triumphant soldiers after the victory. Rocholl also painted a large mural for the Evangelischen Padagogiums in Bad Godesberg. In his 60th year, he became a war artist covering the campaign on the Western Front. His War Letters printed in 1916 in which he described the fear and destruction. An autobiography of his life as a painter appeared in 1921. He died in a streetcar accident Desseldorf in his 80th year on September 14, 1933.