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 :. | Note | Rain, Steam and Speed The Great Western Railway before 1844 | Mountain | Sunset | Assemble |
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Hirshfield Morris
American artist 1872-1946 American painter of Russian-Polish origin. He claimed to have carved wooden ceremonial objects as a young boy, but ceased to create until he retired from his clothing manufacturing concern and began to paint. When Sidney Janis was arranging an exhibition of American folk art for MOMA in 1939, he saw Hirshfield's naive works in a gallery in New York. He exhibited two in the show and organized a one-man show for the artist in 1943; he also purchased two works, including Beach Girl (1937; New York, MOMA). In such paintings Hirshfield based large areas of the overall design on the fabrics with which he worked during his years in business, and his outlined forms on the art of patternmaking.
Hans Eworth
Flemish Northern Renaissance Painter, active 1540-1573 Flemish painter, active in England. Jan Euworts was listed in 1540 as a freeman of the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp, but by 1545 he had moved to England, where until 1571 his name, spelt in a wide variety of ways (e.g. Eeworts, Eottes, Euertz, Evance, Eworts, Ewotes, Ewout, Ewoutsz., Eywooddes, Hawarde, Heward, Huett etc), appeared in numerous naturalization, tax and parish documents. About 35 paintings are generally attributed to him, consisting primarily of dated portraits of the English gentry and nobility. The majority are signed with the monogram HE, which led to their being attributed to the Flemish painter Lucas de Heere during the 18th and 19th centuries. Cust reattributed the paintings to Eworth on the basis of an inventory (1590) of the collection of John, 1st Baron Lumley, in which three monogrammed portraits were listed as being by Haunce Eworth
Nash, Paul
English, 1889-1946 Painter, printmaker, designer, writer and photographer. Although he briefly attended the Slade School, London, in 1910, he was essentially self-taught. His first one-man show was held in 1912 at the Carfax Gallery, London, where he showed a set of shadowy landscapes and imaginative drawings that look back to the Pre-Raphaelites and late 19th-century illustration. Between 1910 and 1914 he paid little attention to Post-Impressionism and the modern movements in London.