(1799 - 1874) was a British artist and clergyman. Dampier was born in 1799 at the village of Codford St Peter in Wiltshire, England He was baptised on the 20th of Dec. 1799 (LDS IGI record batch # C014402). He was one of 13 children of Codford St Peter's rector Reverend John Dampier (1763-1839) and his wife Jane. In 1819 he went to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil as a clerk. In 1825, he was picked up in Rio to be the expedition artist on the English ship HMS Blonde under the command of Captain George Anson Byron. The ship was returning the bodies of King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamemalu to the Hawaiian islands (known by the British as "Sandwich Islands"), after both died from measles during a visit to England. Robert Dampier spent 11 weeks in Hawaii painting portraits in oil paint and making pencil drawings of landscapes. After returning to England, he studied law at Cambridge University and then was ordained in the Church of England. He married Sophia Francis Roberts in 1828. In 1837 he became rector of Langton Matravers church. Circa 1843 they had a daughter Juliana Sophia, His wife Sophia died in 1864, and he married again in 1872. He had a daughter Frederika from the second marriage. Although employed a rector, he continued to sketch until his death in 1874. Major works by Robert Dampier are held by the Honolulu Academy of Arts and Washington Place, also in Honolulu, Hawaii.   Related Paintings of Robert Dampier :. | Cock and Hens | States of Mind II : Those Who Stay | Disturbing the Fishers (nn02) | Portrait of Isaac Levitan by Valentin Serov | Classical hunting fox, Equestrian and Beautiful Horses, 043. |
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Aved, Jacques-Andre-Joseph
French Painter, 1702-1766
Agostino Carracci
(16 August 1557 ?C 22 March 1602) was an Italian painter and printmaker. He was the brother of the more famous Annibale and cousin of Lodovico Carracci. He posited the ideal in nature, and was the founder of the competing school to the more gritty (for lack of a better term) view of nature as expressed by Caravaggio. He was one of the founders of the Accademia degli Incamminati along with his brother, Annibale Carracci, and cousin, Ludovico Carracci. The academy helped propel painters of the School of Bologna to prominence. Agostino Carracci was born in Bologna, and trained at the workshop of the architect Domenico Tibaldi. Starting from 1574 he worked as a reproductive engraver, copying works of 16th century masters such as Federico Barocci, Tintoretto, Antonio Campi, Veronese and Correggio. He also produced some original prints, including two etchings. He travelled to Venice (1582, 1587?C1589) and Parma (1586?C1587). Together with Annibale and Ludovico he worked in Bologna on the fresco cycles in Palazzo Fava (Histories of Jason and Medea, 1584) and Palazzo Magnani (Histories of Romulus, 1590?C1592). In 1592 he also painted the Communion of St. Jerome, now in the Pinacoteca di Bologna and considered his masterwork. From 1586 is his altarpiece of the Madonna with Child and Saints, in the National Gallery of Parma. In 1598 Carracci joined his brother Annibale in Rome, to collaborate on the decoration of the Gallery in Palazzo Farnese. From 1598?C1600 is a triple Portrait, now in Naples, an example of genre painting. In 1600 he was called to Parma by Duke Ranuccio I Farnese to began the decoration of the Palazzo del Giardino, but he died before it was finished. Agostino's son Antonio Carracci was also a painter, and attempted to compete with his father's Academy.
Henry Benbridge
Henry Benbridge born October 1743 died February 1812), early American portrait painter, was born in Philadelphia, the only child of James and Mary (Clark) Benbridge. When he was seven years old, his mother, who had been left a widow, was married to Thomas Gordon, a wealthy Scot. The boy's artistic talent was encouraged. He made decorative designs for his stepfather's drawing-room which were much admired. When he was fourteen years old he may have watched John Wollaston paint Gordon's portrait. It has been plausibly argued that young Benbridge had instruction from Wollaston, since his earliest known portrait, that of his half-sister Rebecca Gordon, "seems to hark back to Wollaston." When he was 21, Benbridge was sent to Italy, where he studied with Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1769, on commission from James Boswell, biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson, he made a portrait of Pasquale Paoli in Corsica which he took to London. It was exhibited (1769) at the Free Society of Artists, and from it three mezzotints were scraped and published with the artist's name signed "Bembridge." Like other young Americans he was encouraged by Benjamin West. He wrote, on December 7, 1769, to his stepfather: "Upon my arrival I waited upon Mr. West who received me with a sort of brotherly affection, as did my cousin, Mrs. West." Impelled, apparently, by a longing to rejoin his family, he left England in 1770, bearing from West the following note of recommendation to Francis Hopkinson: "By Mr. Benbridge you will receive these few lines. You will find him an Ingenous artist and an agreeable Companion. His merit in the art must procure him great incouragement and much esteem. I deare say it will give you great pleasure to have an ingenous artist resident amongst you." Elizabeth Ann Timothy (Mrs. William Williamson), watercolor on ivory of 1775In Philadelphia Benbridge married a Miss Sage and was admitted on January 18, 1771, to membership in the American Philosophical Society, of which Benjamin Franklin was a founder. He painted the large portrait of the Gordon family, with six figures, one of his masterpieces. Suffering, however, from asthma, he sought a more congenial climate and moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where he succeeded Jeremiah Theus (d. May 18, 1774) as the popular portrait painter of South Carolina. There he made many likenesses of southern men and women, several of which have been popularly attributed to John Singleton Copley, an artist who never painted in the South and who left America in 1774. Around 1800 Benbridge settled in Norfolk, Virginia, whence he made frequent visits to his native city. At Norfolk he gave to Thomas Sully his first lessons in oil painting. He had previously instructed Thomas Coram of Charleston. Sully describes his master as "a portly man of good address - gentlemanly in his deportment." Benbridge's health is said by Hart to have declined in middle age. Dunlap's assertion that his last years were passed "in obscurity and poverty" has been disputed.