1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | Portrait of Madame X | Mrs. Henry Phipps and Her Grandson Winston | Portrait of Charles Vane Tempest Stewart | Boats at Anchor | Millet s Garden |
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Richard Dadd
1817-1886 British Richard Dadd Location English painter. He was the fourth of nine children of Robert Dadd, an apothecary and chemist in Chatham. His mother was Mary Ann Martin. Two of his brothers and one sister were, like Dadd himself, to die insane.
Quentin Matsys
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1465-1530,Flemish painter. After studying in Louvain, he moved to Antwerp by 1491, remaining in that city throughout his life. Influences of Italian art, especially of Leonardo da Vinci, may be seen in his work, particularly in the delicate modeling, the subtle nuances of tone, and in the adoption of Leonardo's grotesque head studies for such pictures as The Old Man (Jacquemart-Andre Mus., Paris) and Ugly Duchess (National Gall., London). Massys sought inspiration also in works of earlier Flemish artists, especially of Jan van Eyck. The combined Flemish and Italian influences aided Massys in evolving a calm and measured style, with solid figures and soft textures. He developed a type of portraiture in which the sitter was placed against an appropriate background, as in his painting of St. Erasmus surrounded by books and papers (National Gall., Rome). There are religious subjects and portraits by Massys in the museums of Munich, Brussels, Antwerp, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Quentin's son, Jan Massys, c.1509?C1575, painted satirical and later more elegant works under French influence. Judith (Mus. of Fine Arts, Boston) is characteristic. Another son, Cornelis Massys, d. after 1560, was a landscape painter and engraver.
Parrocel, Joseph
French, 1646-1704 He studied with his father Barthelemy Parrocel (1595-1660) and then with his elder brother Louis Parrocel (1634-94). He went to Paris for four years to perfect his work and then, c. 1667, to Rome, where he became the pupil of the battle painter Jacques Courtois and was influenced by Salvator Rosa. He remained in Italy for eight years and stayed for a time in Venice, before returning to settle in Paris in 1675. He was approved (agree) by the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in February 1676 and received as a full member in November of the same year, presenting the Siege of Maastricht (Draguignan, Mus. Mun.). His painted oeuvre consists principally of military scenes, particularly battles, and he received numerous royal commissions. In the period 1685-8 he executed 11 paintings for the Salle du Grand Couvert at the cheteau of Versailles (nine in situ; one in Tours, Mus. B.-A.; one in Dijon, Mus. B.-A.); in 1699 he painted the Crossing of the Rhine (Paris, Louvre.) for the cheteau of Marly, Yvelines, and in 1700 he executed the Fair at Bezons (Tours, Mus. B.-A.), anticipating the fetes galantes of Antoine Watteau. He was also the author of a number of hunting scenes . His most important religious paintings were the May of Notre-Dame de Paris of 1694, St John the Baptist Preaching (Arras, Mus. B.-A.) and St Augustin Succouring the Sick (c. 1703; Nantes, Mus. B.-A.), which was intended for the monastery in the Place des Victoires in Paris. He also contributed battle scenes to the backgrounds of portraits by Hyacinthe Rigaud and by Gabriel Blanchard. His technique was highly original in the context of his time; he employed a very free style of execution and used thick impasto and intense colours. He was also a prolific engraver, producing around 100 plates,