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 :. | Portrait of the Artist | master crewe as henry | mrs abington as miss prue | david garrick in the character of kiteley | Portrait of the Artist (mk25) |
Related Artists:
Kane Paul
Irish-born Canadian Painter b.1810 d.1871 was an Irish-Canadian painter, famous for his paintings of First Nations peoples in the Canadian West and other Native Americans in the Oregon Country. A largely self-educated artist, Kane grew up in Toronto (then known as York) and trained himself by copying European masters on a study trip through Europe. He undertook two voyages through the wild Canadian northwest in 1845 and from 1846 to 1848. The first trip took him from Toronto to Sault Ste. Marie and back. Having secured the support of the Hudson's Bay Company, he set out on a second, much longer voyage from Toronto across the Rocky Mountains to Fort Vancouver and Fort Victoria in the Columbia District, as the Canadians called the Oregon Country. On both trips Kane sketched and painted Aboriginal peoples and documented their lives. Upon his return to Toronto, he produced more than one hundred oil paintings from these sketches. Kane's work, particularly his field sketches, are still a valuable resource for ethnologists.
Charles-Francois de la Croix
1700-1782 Romanticism French
Gentile da Fabriano
1370-1427 Italian Gentile da Fabriano Locations Gentile da Fabriano, whose real name was Gentile di Niccolo di Giovanni di Massio, came from Fabriano in the Marches. According to tradition, his family was an old one and moderately prosperous. His father, who was said to have been a scholar, mathematician, and astrologer, became an Olivetan monk when a monastery of that order was established in Fabriano in 1397. Gentile brother, Ludovico, was a monk of the same order in Fabriano, and Gentile himself was living in the Olivetan monastery of S. Maria Nuova in Rome at the time of his death. A document of Oct. 14, 1427, speaks of him as dead. Gentile art indicates that he was probably trained in Lombardy, perhaps in Milan. He worked in the then current International Gothic style, to which he brought his own personal quality. His earliest works display the decorative rhythmic drapery patterns preferred by the International Gothic masters, which Gentile tempered and ultimately abandoned after his contact with Florentine art. In a document of 1408 Gentile is recorded in Venice, where he painted an altarpiece (now lost) for Francesco Amadi. Testifying to his high reputation was his commission in 1409 for frescoes in the Doges Palace in Venice (painted over in 1479). Pandolfo Malatesta commissioned Gentile to decorate a chapel (destroyed) in Brescia in 1414. The artist is last recorded in Brescia on Sept. 18, 1419, when he departed for Rome to answer the summons of Pope Martin V. Gentile name first appeared on the roll of painters in Florence in 1421. He was in Siena in 1420 and 1424-1425 and in Orvieto late in 1425. From 1426 until the time of his death he was in Rome. Typical of Gentile early style is the polyptych (ca. 1400) from the convent of Valle Romita in Fabriano, in which Gentile displays the International Gothic love for naturalistic detail in the floral turf beneath the feet of the graceful, slender saints whose figures are swathed in rhythmic, linear drapery. The central panel, the Coronation of the Virgin, shows the love for calligraphic drapery so characteristic of Gentile early style. Other noteworthy early works include the much damaged Madonna in Perugia and the Madonna with Saints and Donor in Berlin. The altarpiece Adoration of the Magi, signed and dated 1423, was Gentile major work in Florence. In remarkably good condition, with its original frame still intact, it shows Gentile Gothicism now tempered by his contact with the more austere art of Florence. The rich display of gold leaf and brilliant colors were favorite International Gothic traits, but in the interest in perspective and foreshortening and especially in the exquisite predella panels Gentile shows the influence of the Florentines. The altarpiece for the Quaratesi family, signed and dated 1425, also demonstrates the composite quality of Gentile art. The fresco Madonna Enthroned in Orvieto Cathedral of late 1425 has few traces of the International Gothic style and displays a corporeality and fullness in keeping with his evolution after Florence. His last works, the frescoes in St. John Lateran in Rome depicting the life of John the Baptist and grisaille portraits of saints, were destroyed in 1647, when Francesco Borromini reconstructed the interior.