French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | Blindekuhspiel | The Love Letter | Recreation by our Gallery | The Pond | The Adoration of the Shepherds. |
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Francesco Monti
Italian Painter, 1685-1768 Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the son of a tailor who served the Este court in Modena during the 1690s. Monti studied with the foremost painter in Modena, Sigismondo Caula (b 1637), for three years from c. 1700. In 1703 he moved to Bologna and entered the studio of Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. Roli (1962) defined the formative influences on Monti's art as dal Sole and Donato Creti on the one hand, and Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Antonio Gionima on the other. Monti evolved a distinctive personal idiom, characterized by graceful figures reminiscent of the style of Parmigianino, but perhaps more directly inspired by the more extravagant late Mannerist idiom of such painters as Bartholomeus Spranger and Josef Heintz I of the court of Rudolf II at Prague. Monti may have known their work through prints by Aegidius Sadeler II, Jan Muller and others. This exotic figure style, with fluent, swaying forms and faces suggestively muted by half-shadow was accompanied by unusual shades of colour that glow richly in darkened settings. Monti's art contributed to a neo-Mannerist strain in 18th-century Emilian painting
Kitty Kielland
Norwegian Painter, 1843-1914 was a Norwegian landscape painter. Kielland was born to an affluent family in Stavanger, the older sister of Alexander Kielland. Kielland's mutual interactions with her brother would be important to shaping her as an artist. Although she received some training in drawing and painting, it was not until she turned thirty that she was allowed to train as a professional artist. In 1873 she traveled to Karlsruhe where she was trained by Hans Gude. As a woman Kielland was forced to take private lessons from Gude instead of joining his landscape painting class. Gude's adherence to realism left a lasting impression on Kielland that was visible in her later works.[
Dickinson, Preston
American Precisionist Painter, 1891-1930 American painter, b. New York City. In New York he studied at the Art Students League. From 1910 to 1915 he traveled in Europe, returning often later in life. His still lifes and landscapes in oil and watercolor are built up of highly colorful planes.