English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Schatten und Dunkelheit: Der Abend vor der Sintflut | Castle | Resident place | Bridge | Nuber two |
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Pietro Fragiacomo
(Pirano deIstria (Trieste), 1856 - Venice, 1922) was an Italian painter. Born at Pirano deIstria near Trieste, Fragiacomo moved with his family to Venice, where he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1878 after a period as a worker in Treviso. He then abandoned his studies barely one year later to devote himself more freely to painting from life, often in the company of his friend the painter Giacomo Favretto. He won a bronze medal at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 in Paris and took part in the Munich International Exhibition of the same year, as well as later editions. Drawing inspiration from the Venetian lagoon and always characterised by a crepuscular sense of nature, his landscapes took on Symbolist overtones at the end of the century. He won the Prince Umberto Prize at the Milan Triennale of 1891 and was a regular participant from 1895 to 1922 at the Venice Biennale, which held a solo show of his work in 1910 and a posthumous retrospective in 1924.
jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin
1699-1779 was an 18th-century French painter. He is considered a master of still life.Chardin was born in Paris, the son of a cabinetmaker, and rarely left the city. He lived on the Left Bank near Saint-Sulpice until 1757, when Louis XV granted him a studio and living quarters in the Louvre.Chardin entered into a marriage contract with Marguerite Saintard in 1723, whom he did not marry until 1731.He served apprenticeships with the history painters Pierre-Jacques Cazes and Noël-Nicholas Coypel, and in 1724 became a master in the Academie de Saint-Luc. Upon presentation of The Ray in 1728, he was admitted to the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture. The following year he ceded his position in the Academie de Saint-Luc. In November of 1731 his son Jean-Pierre was baptized, and a daughter, Marguerite-Agn's, was baptized in 1733. In 1735 his wife Marguerite died, and within two years Marguerite-Agn's had died as well.Beginning in 1737 Chardin exhibited regularly at the Salon. He would prove to be a 'dedicated academician', regularly attending meetings for fifty years, and functioning successively as counsellor, treasurer, and secretary, overseeing in 1761 the installation of Salon exhibitions. In 1744 he entered his second marriage, this time to Françoise-Marguerite Pouget. The following year a daughter, Angelique-Françoise, was born, but she died in 1746. In 1752 Chardin was granted a pension of 500 livres by Louis XV. At the Salon of 1759 he exhibited nine paintings; it was the first Salon to be commented upon by Denis Diderot, who would prove to be a great admirer and public champion of Chardin's work.Beginning in 1761, his responsibilities on behalf of the Salon, simultaneously arranging the exhibitions and acting as treasurer, resulted in a diminution of productivity in painting, and the showing of 'replicas' of previous works.In 1763 his services to the Academie were acknowledged with an extra 200 livres in pension. In 1765 he was unanimously elected associate member of the Academie des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts of Rouen, but there is no evidence that he left Paris to accept the honor.By 1770 Chardin was the 'Premiere peintre du roi', and his pension of 1,400 livres was the highest in the Academy.In 1772 Chardin's son,
William Dexter
Australian, 1818-1860,was an English-Australian painter. Dexter was born at Melbourne, Derbyshire, England, and became an apprentice at the Derby China factory painting flowers and birds in the Chinese and Japanese styles. Dexter then studied at Paris, and returning to England, married Caroline nee Harper at Nottingham in 1843. Dexter had a picture in the Royal Academy exhibition in 1851 and another in 1852. Dexter then sailed to Australia and arrived at Sydney on 8 October 1852. Dexter was at Bendigo in August 1853, where William Howitt heard him advocating republican doctrines at a meeting of diggers. His wife came out from England at the end of 1854, and in March 1855 they together opened a gallery of arts and school of design in Bathurst Street, Sydney. This apparently was not a success for they went to live at Stratford, Victoria, in 1856, and there made the acquaintance of Angus McMillan. In 1857 Dexter exhibited six oils and three watercolours at the first Victorian Society of Fine Arts exhibition, held in Melbourne. Soon afterwards he returned to Sydney as the Dexters had separated. He became a partner in a sign-writing business, dying there in 1860.