Russian Neoclassical/Romantic Painter, 1799-1852,was an internationally renowned Russian painter. He is regarded as a key figure in transition from the Russian neoclassicism to romanticism. Born of French parents in Saint Petersburg, Carlo Brulleau (as his name was spelled until 1822) felt drawn to Italy from his early years. Despite his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1809?C1821), Briullov never fully embraced the classical style taught by his mentors and promoted by his brother, Alexander Briullov. After distinguishing himself as a promising and imaginative student and finishing his education, he left Russia for Rome where he worked until 1835 as a portraitist and genre painter, though his fame as an artist came when he began doing historical painting. His best-known work, The Last Day of Pompeii (1830?C1833), is a vast composition compared by Pushkin and Gogol to the best works of Rubens and Van Dyck. It created a sensation in Italy and established Briullov as one of the finest European painters of his day. After completing this work, he triumphantly returned to the Russian capital, where he made many friends among the aristocracy and intellectual elite and obtained a high post in the Imperial Academy of Arts.   Related Paintings of Karl Briullov :. | Self portrait | Portrait of The Shishmariov sisters,Olga and Alexandra | Portrait of Yekaterina Semionova | Portrait of Olga davydova with Her Daughter Natalia | Bathsheba |
Related Artists:
Floris Verster
1861-1927 Dutch Floris Verster Gallery Dutch painter. He trained first at the Ars Aemula Naturae school in Leiden under George Hendrik Breitner, then at The Hague Academie (1879-82) and the Brussels Academie (1882). In Leiden in 1882 he started painting landscapes in the style of the Hague school. From 1882 to 1892 he shared a studio in Leiden with the still-life painter Menso Kamerlingh Onnes (1860-1925), who was to become his brother-in-law. Influenced by Onnes and such French realists as Antoine Vollon and Theodule Ribot, in 1885 he turned to painting still-lifes in a mildly Impressionist style that by 1888-9 often attained monumental formats, as in Peonies (1.35*2.00 m, 1889; Amsterdam, Stedel. Mus.). He submitted some of these to exhibitions, where their reception was mixed; artists including Breitner, H. W. Mesdag and Jacob Maris were enthusiastic, but the critics quite often were not. He participated in a few exhibitions abroad, notably from 1890 to 1894 in Munich and in 1891 with Les XX in Brussels.
James Mcneill Whistler
American Painter and Printmaker, 1834-1903 James Abbott McNeill Whistler's deft brushwork and mighty ego made him one of London's best-known painters in the second half of the 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, Whistler spent most of his adult life in England and France, in an era when an American artist in Europe was something of a rarity. He specialized in landscapes and (especially later in his career) portraits; stylistically he is often linked with Claude Monet and August Renoir, though he was not exactly part of the Impressionist movement. His etchings also are highly regarded. Witty, cranky and a bit of a devil, Whistler was a regular gadabout in British society. He had a famous long-running feud with the playwright Oscar Wilde, each of them trying to outwit the other with cutting public remarks. Some critics of the era considered Whistler's work to be smudgy and too radical; after viewing Whistler's 1875 study of fireworks over the Thames, Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket, John Ruskin wrote: "I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler successfully sued Ruskin for libel but was awarded only a farthing in damages,
Jean Portaels
Vilvorde, 1818 - Schaerbeek, 1895 was a Belgian orientalist painter and director of the Academy of Brussels. His father, a rich brewer, sent him to study at the Brussels Academy, whose Director, François Navez, took him on soon after in his own workshop. About 1841 Portaels went to Paris, where he was well received by Paul Delaroche. After his return to Belgium, he won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1842. He then travelled through Italy, Greece, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, the Lebanon, Judaea, Spain, Hungary and Norway. On his return to Belgium in 1847 Portaels succeeded H. Vanderhaert as Director of the Academy in Ghent. In 1849 he married the daughter of his first teacher, Navez, and in 1850 he settled in Brussels; but when he did not get the post of Director of the Brussels academy, and wished, nevertheless, to carry on teaching as his father-in-law had done, he opened a private studio-school, which became one of great significance in the development of Belgian art. Once more he went on his travels, spending time in Morocco; he returned to Brussels in 1874, and in 1878 became Director of the Academy which had so long been the object of his ambition. Portaels was an extremely prolific artist. Huge oil paintings adorning the walls of St Jacques-sur-Caudenberg; biblical scenes, such as The Daughter of Sion Reviled, The Death of Judas, The Magi travelling to Bethlehem, Judiths Prayer, and The Drought in Judaea; genre pictures, such as A Box in the Theatre at Budapest , portraits of officials and of high society, Oriental scenes and, above all, pictures of exotic female figures and exotic life. "His work is usually marked by an easy grace, which he perhaps uses to excess", wrote Theophile Gautier. But his pleasing and abundant productions as a painter do not constitute Portaels' crowning merit.