1887-1927 Born in Madrid, he studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, during which time he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic artist Jose Maria Carbonero. In 1906 he moved to Paris and became friends with Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, and in 1915 he was painted by his friend, Amedeo Modigliani. In Paris, Gris followed the lead of another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso. His portrait of Picasso in 1912 is a significant early Cubist painting done by a painter other than Picasso or Georges Braque. (Although he regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein acknowledged that Gris "was the one person that Picasso would have willingly wiped off the map.") Portrait of Picasso, 1912, The Art Institute of Chicago.Although he submitted darkly humorous illustrations to journals such as Le Rire, L'assiette au beurre, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris, Gris began to paint seriously in 1910. By 1912 he had developed a personal Cubist style. At first Gris painted in the analytic style of Cubism, but after 1913 he began his conversion to synthetic Cubism, of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier coll??. Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse. In 1924, he first designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes. Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilit??s de la peinture, at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923, and at the Galerie Flechtheim in D??sseldorf in 1925. He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) in the spring of 1927 at the age of forty, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.  Related Paintings of Juan Gris :. | The Fem carring the basket | Mill hand | Sideboard | Cup newspaper and winebottle | Landscape |
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William Dyce
1806-1864 Scottish painter, educationalist, theorist and designer. The son of a lecturer in medicine at Marischal College, Aberdeen, he studied medicine and theology, obtaining his Master's degree in 1823. Episcopalian by upbringing, Dyce was expected, like his cousin, the scholar and bibliophile Alexander Dyce (1798-1869), to proceed to Oxford to take orders. His early interest in art found an outlet in portraiture, his first commission being Sir James M. D. M'Grigor (1823; U. Aberdeen). His first attempt at history painting, The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents sent by Juno to Destroy Him (1824; Edinburgh, N.G.), much influenced by Reynolds, was shown to Sir Thomas Lawrence, who is said to have encouraged Dyce to enter the Royal Academy Schools in 1825. After a few months he set off for Rome in the company of Alexander Day;
Koller, Rudolf
Swiss Painter, 1828-1905 Swiss painter. He studied in Zurich under such artists as Johann Jakob Ulrich before going to D?sseldorf in 1846 to work with Carl Ferdinand Sohn. In 1847 he was in Paris where he shared a studio with Arnold B?cklin. Two years later he went to Munich where he worked with a group of artists called the 'Schweizer', whose leader was Johann Gottfried Steffan. He returned to Zurich in 1851 and painted mainly pastoral landscapes (e.g. Waterfall near Zurich, c. 1851; Zurich, Graph. Samml. Eidgen?ss. Tech. Hochsch.) evoking prevailing romantic sensibilities. His later paintings combine realist subject-matter with a carefully arranged and executed classical composition. He frequently chose rustic farm scenes containing animals, whom he believed represented a dignified and pure image of nature that was to be treated with respect. He was often considered to be the 19th-century counterpart to Paulus Potter whose paintings of animals were emulated at the time. His works are similar to those of Rosa Bonheur, as seen in Cows in the Roman Countryside (1869; Berne, Kstmus.). His most celebrated painting is the St Gotthard Mailcoach (1873; Zurich, Ksthaus), which depicts a coach at full speed attempting to stop suddenly for a herd of cattle obstructing the narrow road. After 1870, problems with his eyesight forced him to paint less, yet even late in life he was still capable of producing such lyrical paintings as Horses at the Drinking Fountain (1890; Le Locle, Mus. B.-A.).
George Willison
Portrait painter who was born in Edinburgh in 1741 and returned there to spend his retirement. He was a pupil of Mengs in Rome, before Mengs left for Madrid in 1761. He painted "Boswell" in Rome in 1765 which is now in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Willison was in London from 1767 and exhibited at the Scottish Academy between 1767 - 1770, and at the Royal Academy in 1771 and 1772. He left London for an opulent retirement in Edinburgh around 1784.