English 1861-1922 Godward was a Victorian Neo-classicist, and therefore a follower in theory of Frederic Leighton. However, he is more closely allied stylistically to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with whom he shared a penchant for the rendering of Classical architecture, in particular, static landscape features constructed from marble. The vast majority of Godward's extant images feature women in Classical dress, posed against these landscape features, though there are some semi-nude and fully nude figures included in his oeuvre (a notable example being In The Tepidarium (1913), a title shared with a controversial Alma-Tadema painting of the same subject that resides in the Lady Lever Art Gallery). The titles reflect Godward's source of inspiration: Classical civilisation, most notably that of Ancient Rome (again a subject binding Godward closely to Alma-Tadema artistically), though Ancient Greece sometimes features, thus providing artistic ties, albeit of a more limited extent, with Leighton. Given that Classical scholarship was more widespread among the potential audience for his paintings during his lifetime than in the present day, meticulous research of detail was important in order to attain a standing as an artist in this genre. Alma-Tadema was, as well as a painter, an archaeologist who attended historical sites and collected artefacts that were later used in his paintings: Godward, too, studied such details as architecture and dress, in order to ensure that his works bore the stamp of authenticity. In addition, Godward painstakingly and meticulously rendered those other important features in his paintings, animal skins (the paintings Noon Day Rest (1910) and A Cool Retreat (1910) contain superb examples of such rendition) and wild flowers (Nerissa (1906), illustrated above, and Summer Flowers (1903) are again excellent examples of this). The appearance of beautiful women in studied poses in so many of Godward's canvases causes many newcomers to his works to categorise him mistakenly as being Pre-Raphaelite, particularly as his palette is often a vibrantly colourful one. However, the choice of subject matter (ancient civilisation versus, for example, Arthurian legend) is more properly that of the Victorian Neoclassicist: however, it is appropriate to comment that in common with numerous painters contemporary with him, Godward was a 'High Victorian Dreamer', producing beautiful images of a world which, it must be said, was idealised and romanticised, and which in the case of both Godward and Alma-Tadema came to be criticised as a world-view of 'Victorians in togas'.  Related Paintings of John William Godward :. | Venus Binding her Hair | The Ring | The Mirror | The Old, Old Story | A Grecian Lovely |
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James Augustus Suydam
(1819-1865) architect, lawyer, and artist; as an artist was considered one of the premier Luminism painters. He is widely known as an American landscape painter and one of the leading members of the Hudson River School. James Augustus Suydam was descended from an old New York Dutch merchant family. He graduated from New York University (then the University of the City of New York), and began his career as a businessman but turned a significant portion of his energies to painting, studying under famed artist and portrait painter Minor C. Kellogg. At the age of thirty he was elected to the Century Association. One of the "regulars" who gathered to paint at North Conway, New Hampshire, he exhibited Conway Meadows at the New York Athenaeum and Boston Athenaeum. He opened his studio at the noted 10th Street Studio Building, New York City, in 1858. The following year he was elected an honorary professional member in the prestigious National Academy of Design, which granted him full membership in 1861. He died suddenly in North Conway at the age of 46. James Suydam was described by his friend, the accomplished artist Sanford Robinson Gifford as a "thoroughly educated and accomplished man. " In addition to his work as an artist, which he began only after working in law and architecture, he was widely read and well-versed in history, philosophy, and the sciences. His work as a landscape painter reflects this breadth of knowledge and reveals Suydam as a deeply spiritual individual. Using his familiarity with science, Suydam reduced nature to calm, clean, planar forms, and then distorted proportional relations so that God's creations loomed superior over the work of man. The National Academy has most of his works such as Paradise Rocks (1865), and the Taft family's Taft Museum also holds works. The Taft also has a podcast website for this artist. A painting of Gifford's from 1859 which Suydam, according to a report, "donated to the [National] academy in 1865," became the subject of a deaccession controversy at the Academy in late 2008.
Reuben Moulthrop
American portrait, miniature, wax sculptor b.1763-d.1814 American painter. As proprietor of a waxworks museum and travelling waxworks exhibition, he was interested in modelling in wax in his early years. While moving around his native state, he was exposed to several artistic influences, beginning with Winthrop Chandler. His earliest portraits seem to date from about 1788, when he completed Mr and Mrs Samuel Hathaway (1788; New Haven, CT, Colony Hist. Soc. Mus.). Its dark, heavy outlines, its flatness and almost geometric forms derive from Chandler. The quality of Moulthrop's paintings was extremely uneven; many of the best of the surviving body of about 50 works date from around 1800. The Rev. Thomas Robbins which depicts the sitter's direct gaze and contains more detail than the earlier portraits, shows the artist at his most accomplished. In the last years of his brief career he appears to have been influenced by William Jennys and John Durand,
Filippo Brunelleschi
Italian Early Renaissance Sculptor and Architect, 1377-1446,Florentine architect and engineer. Trained as a sculptor and goldsmith, he turned his attention to architecture after failing to win a competition for the bronze doors of the Baptistery of Florence, having tied with Lorenzo Ghiberti. He worked out the laws of linear perspective (later codified by Leon Battista Alberti). By the early 1420s Brunelleschi was Florence's most prominent architect. His major work, the octagonal dome of the cathedral (1420 ?C 36), was constructed with the aid of machines of his own invention. The Medici family commissioned him to design the (old) sacristy and basilica of San Lorenzo (begun 1421), considered keystones of the early Renaissance; he adhered to the conventional format while adding his own interpretation of antique designs for capitals, friezes, pilasters, and columns. His later monumental works foreshadowed the strong profiles and massive grandeur of the work of Alberti and Donato Bramante.