(8 March 1826, in Vastemõisa near Suure-Jaani, Viljandi County, Estonia - 22 April 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia) was an Estonian painter. He is considered to have been the first professional Estonian painter. He distinguished himself primarily by his portraiture and to a lesser extent by his landscape paintings. Some of his most notable pictures depict the Estonian rural life in the second half of the 19th Century. Johann Köler was the seventh child born to a peasant family. Despite the poverty of the parents Köler managed to attend the elementary and the district schools in Viljandi. Then he attended a workshop of master painters in Cesis (then in Livonia). In 1846, Köler travelled to St. Petersburg to work as a sign writer, where his talent was soon discovered. From 1848 to 1855 Johan Köler studied drawing and painting at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. During 1857 Köler travelled to Paris via Berlin, later returned to Germany then travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1858, he travelled across the Alps to Milan, Geneva, Florence and Rome. There, he studied in a private academy and devoted his time to watercolor technique. In Rome during 1859 he presented his composition "Christ on the Cross". Answering the call of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Köler returned to the city in 1861. From 1862 to 1874 he was a teacher of the Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna, the daughter of Czar Alexander II of Russia. In 1869-1870, he worked as a lecturer at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1886 to 1889 Johan Köler worked in Vienna, Nice and Paris.  Related Paintings of Johann Koler :. | Duke Gortchakov | Philipp Karell | Portrait of Hugo Treffner | Italian landscape | A Roman Woman |
Related Artists:
Nicolaas Baur
who was born at Harlingen in 1767, was the son of Hendricus Antonius Baur, a portrait painter (born 1736, died 1817). He painted landscapes and views of cities, and many houses in Holland are embellished by his works. He also painted moonlight and winter scenes; and was particularly successful in marine subjects. He is considered one of the best of the later Dutch marine painters. He died at Harlingen in 1820.
Wassily Kandinsky
1866-1944 Wassily Kandinsky Galleries was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession??he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat??he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied first in the private school of Anton Azbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914 after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.
Arthur Quartley
(May 24, 1839 - May 19, 1886), was an American painter known for his marine seascapes. Quartley was born in Paris and lived there to the age of twelve, when his family moved to Baltimore, Maryland. He studied drawing with his father C.G. Quartley, who was an English engraver. His father was reputed to have demanded two drawings per week from the young lad. At age 17, Arthur was apprenticed to a sign painter in Baltimore. In 1862 Quartley and his family founded a design firm in Baltimore. The firm Emmart & Quartley was regarded as the best decorating company in the city (Dictionary of American Biography); however, young Quartley began painting marine seascapes of Chesapeake Bay, and progressively spent more and more time in that pursuit. He held a successful show of marine paintings at the studio of Norval H. Busey in Baltimore. Scholar Elizabeth Johns remarked that Quartley's work reveals familiarity with the Dutch Masters marine tradition of composition in treatment of light and color. To pursue his painting more seriously, Quartley moved to New York City in 1875. New York at that time had become a premier center for notable painters. From there he painted seascapes of Long Island bays, New York Harbor, the New Hampshire Isle of Shoals, and Naragansett Bay in Rhode Island. The Hudson River School was waning at this point, so that other groups were forming, among them the Tilers, of whom Quartley was a founding member. The Tilers was a group of artists and writers, that included such luminaries as Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase, and Augustus Saint Gaudens. They met frequently to exchange ideas and decorate ceramic tiles in promotion of their works. They also took excursions for painting, such as the 1878 pilgrimage to Eastern Long Island by Quartley and ten others. On that trip Quartley painted Seascape and also a blue painted tile of an introspective girl at the beach. The journalist and philanthropist John W. McCoy promoted the careers of Quartley and of his friend, the sculptor William H. Rinehart.