British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents Sent by Hera | Portrait of Lady Jane Halliday | Colonel Banastre Tarleton | mary, countess of bute | sir william chambers ra |
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Pasternak, Leonid
Russian, 1862-1945 Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. From 1881 to 1883 Pasternak studied painting privately with Professor Yevgraf Semyonovich Sorokin (1821-92), while working towards a degree in medicine. Switching to law, he also spent several terms studying drawing at the Akademie in Munich between 1883 and 1885. He had his first success in 1889 when his large genre painting in oil, News from Home (1.10*1.52 m, 1888; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.), was bought by the influential collector Pavel Tret'yakov. The painting reflects the influence of his German teachers in the sombre tones and the emphasis on the realism of the figures and setting. In 1889 he settled in Moscow and established his own art school.
Metcalf, Willard Leroy
American Impressionist Painter, 1858-1925 American painter and illustrator. His formal education was limited, and at 17 he was apprenticed to the painter George Loring Brown of Boston. He was one of the first scholarship students admitted to the school of art sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and took classes there in 1877 and 1878. After spending several years illustrating magazine articles on the Zuni Indians of New Mexico, he decided to study abroad and in 1883 left for Paris. There he studied at the Acad?mie Julian under Jules Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger. During the five years he spent in France he became intimately acquainted with the countryside around the villages of Grez-sur-Loing and Giverny. He returned to America in 1888
Paul Hoeniger
German, 1865-1924