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 :. | First draft | The Shipwreck (mk31) | San Giorgio Maggiore at Dawn | Hero and Leander | Sunset |
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Albert Joseph Moore Prints
English Classicist Painter, 1841-1893 Albert Joseph Moore (4 September 1841 ?C 25 September 1893) was an English painter, known for his depictions of langorous female figures set against the luxury and decadence of the classical world. SilverHe was born in York in 1841, the youngest of the fourteen children of the artist William Moore of York who in the first half of the 19th century enjoyed a considerable reputation in the North of England as a painter of portraits and landscape. In his childhood Albert Moore showed an extraordinary love of art, and as he was encouraged in his tastes by his father and brothers, two of whom afterwards became famous as artists ?? John Collingham Moore and Henry Moore, and he was able to begin the active exercise of his profession at an unusually early age. His first exhibited works were two drawings which he sent to the Royal Academy in 1857. A year later he became a student in the Royal Academy schools; but after working in them for a few months only he decided that he would be more profitably occupied in independent practice. During the period that extended from 1858 to 1870, though he produced and exhibited many pictures and drawings, he gave up much of his time to decorative work of various kinds, and painted, in 1863, a series of wall decorations at Coombe Abbey, the seat of the Earl of Craven; in 1865 and 1866 some elaborate compositions: The Last Supper and The Feeding of the Five Thousand on the chancel walls of the church of St. Alban's, Rochdale; and in 1868 A Greek Play, an important panel in tempera for the proscenium of the Queen's Theatre in Long Acre. His first large canvas, Elijah's Sacrifice, was completed during a stay of some five months in Rome at the beginning of 1863, and appeared at the Academy in 1865. A still larger picture, The Shunamite relating the Glories of King Solomon to her Maidens, was exhibited in 1866, and with it two smaller works, Apricots and Pomegranates. In these Albert Moore asserted plainly the particular technical conviction that for the rest of his life governed the whole of his practice, and with them he first took his place definitely among the most original of British painters.
Alonzo Cano
Alonzo Cano or Alonso Cano (19 March 1601 - 3 September 1667) was a Spanish painter, architect and sculptor born in Granada. He learned architecture from his father, Miguel Cano;painting in the academy of Juan del Castillo, and from Francisco Pacheco the teacher of Velezquez; and sculpture from Juan Martenez Montañes. As a sculptor, his most famous works are the Madonna and Child in the church of Lebrija (also called Nebrija), and the colossal figures of San Pedro and San Pablo. He was made first royal architect, painter to Philip IV, and instructor to the prince, Balthasar Charles, Prince of Asturias. The King gave him the church preferment of a canonof the Granada Cathedral (1652), in order to take up a position as chief architect of the cathedral, where his main achievement in architecture was the façade, designed at the end of his life and erected to his design after his death.[citation needed] Ideal portrait of a Spanish King.He was notorious for his ungovernable temper; and it is said that once he risked his life by committing the then capital offence of dashing to pieces the statue of a saint, when in a rage with the purchaser who begrudged the price he demanded.[1] According to another story, he found his house robbed after coming home one evening, his wife murdered, and his Italian servant fled. Notwithstanding the presumption against the fugitive, the magistrates condemned Cano, because he was of a jealous temper. Upon this he fled to Valencia, but afterwards returned to Madrid, where he was put to the torture, which he endured without incriminating himself, and the king received him into favour. After the death of his wife he took Holy Orders as a protection from farther prosecution, but still continued his professional pursuits. He died in 1676. In his last moments, when the priest held to him a crucifix, he told him to take it away; according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, this was because the priest gave the Sacrament to conversos.
Popova, Liubov
Russian Constructivist Painter and Designer, 1889-1924