1685-1766 French Jean Marc Nattier Gallery Brother of Jean-Baptiste Nattier. As well as being taught by his father, he trained with his godfather, Jean Jouvenet, and attended the drawing classes of the Academie Royale, where in 1700 he won the Premier Prix de Dessin. From around 1703 he worked on La Galerie du Palais du Luxembourg. The experience of copying the work of Rubens does not, however, seem to have had a liberating effect on his draughtsmanship, which was described by the 18th-century collector Pierre-Jean Mariette as cold. Nattier was commissioned to make further drawings for engravers in the early part of his career, including those after Hyacinthe Rigaud famous state portrait of Louis XIV (1701; Paris, Louvre) in 1710, which indicates that he had established a reputation while he was still quite young. Although he was offered a place at the Academie de France in Rome on the recommendation of Jouvenet, Nattier preferred to remain in Paris and further his career. In 1717 he nevertheless made a trip to Holland, where he painted portraits of Peter the Great and the Empress Catherine (St Petersburg, Hermitage). The Tsar offered Nattier work at the Russian court, but the artist declined the offer. He remained in Paris for the rest of his life.  Related Paintings of Jean Marc Nattier :. | Portrait de Christian Louis de Montmorency | Madame Adeaide de France Tying Knots | Madame Henriette as Flora | Mademoiselle Marsollier | Portrait of Madame Sophie, Daughter of Louis XV |
Related Artists:
Charles de La Fosse
(June 16, 1636 - December 13, 1716), French painter, was born in Paris. He was one of the most noted and least servile pupils of Le Brun, under whose direction he shared in the chief of the great decorative works undertaken in the reign of Louis XIV. Leaving France in 1662, he spent two years in Rome and three in Venice. The influence of his prolonged studies of Veronese is evident in his "Finding of Moses" (Louvre), an in his "Rape of Proserpine" (Louvre), which he presented to the Royal Academy as his diploma picture in 1673. He was at once named assistant professor, and in 1674 the full responsibilities of the office devolved on him, but his engagements did not prevent his accepting in 1689 the invitation of Lord Montagu to decorate Montagu House. He visited London twice, remaining on the second occasionetogether with Rousseau and Monnoyer more than two years. William III vainly strove to detain him in England by the proposal that he should decorate Hampton Court, for Le Brun was dead, and Mansart pressed La Fosse to return to Paris to take in hand the cupola of Les Invalides. The decorations of Montagu House are destroyed, those of Versailles are restored, and the dome of the Invalides (engraved, Picart and Cochin) is now the only work existing which gives a full measure of his talent. During his latter years La Fosse executed many other important decorations in public buildings and private houses, notably in that of Crozat, under whose roof he died on 13 December 1716. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Atkinson Grimshaw
British 1836-1893 Atkinson Grimshaw Gallery Grimshaw's primary influence was the Pre-Raphaelites. True to the Pre-Raphaelite style, he put forth landscapes of accurate color and lighting, and vivid detail. He often painted landscapes that typified seasons or a type of weather; city and suburban street scenes and moonlit views of the docks in London, Leeds, Liverpool, and Glasgow also figured largely in his art. By applying his skill in lighting effects, and unusually careful attention to detail, he was often capable of intricately describing a scene, while strongly conveying its mood. His "paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene." Dulce Domum (1855), on whose reverse Grimshaw wrote, "mostly painted under great difficulties," captures the music portrayed in the piano player, entices the eye to meander through the richly decorated room, and to consider the still and silent young lady who is meanwhile listening. Grimshaw painted more interior scenes, especially in the 1870s, when he worked until the influence of James Tissot and the Aesthetic Movement. On Hampstead Hill is considered one of Grimshaw's finest, exemplifying his skill with a variety of light sources, in capturing the mood of the passing of twilight into the onset of night. In his later career this use of twilight, and urban scenes under yellow light were highly popular, especially with his middle-class patrons. His later work included imagined scenes from the Greek and Roman empires, and he also painted literary subjects from Longfellow and Tennyson ?? pictures including Elaine and The Lady of Shalott. (Grimshaw named all of his children after characters in Tennyson's poems.) In the 1880s, Grimshaw maintained a London studio in Chelsea, not far from the comparable facility of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. After visiting Grimshaw, Whistler remarked that "I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy's moonlit pictures."[9] Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes, however, Grimshaw worked in a realistic vein: "sharply focused, almost photographic," his pictures innovated in applying the tradition of rural moonlight images to the Victorian city, recording "the rain and mist, the puddles and smoky fog of late Victorian industrial England with great poetry." Some artists of Grimshaw's period, both famous and obscure, generated rich documentary records; Vincent Van Gogh and James Smetham are good examples. Others, like Edward Pritchett, left nothing. Grimshaw left behind him no letters, journals, or papers; scholars and critics have little material on which to base their understanding of his life and career. Grimshaw died 13 October 1893, and is buried in Woodhouse cemetery, Leeds. His reputation rested, and his legacy is probably based on, his townscapes. The second half of the twentieth century saw a major revival of interest in Grimshaw's work, with several important exhibits of his canon.
Blake, William
William Blake was an English poet, painter was born November 28, 1757, in London William Blake started writing poems as a boy, many of them inspired by religious visions. Apprenticed to an engraver as a young man, Blake learned skills that allowed him to put his poems and drawings together on etchings, and he began to publish his own work. Throughout his life he survived on small commissions, never gaining much attention from the London art world. His paintings were rejected by the public