1769-1830 British Sir Thomas Lawrence Galleries was a notable English painter, mostly of portraits. He was born in Bristol. His father was an innkeeper, first at Bristol and afterwards at Devizes, and at the age of six Lawrence was already being shown off to the guests of the Bear as an infant prodigy who could sketch their likenesses and declaim speeches from Milton. In 1779 the elder Lawrence had to leave Devizes, having failed in business and Thomas's precocious talent began to be the main source of the family's income; he had gained a reputation along the Bath road. His debut as a crayon portrait painter was made at Oxford, where he was well patronized, and in 1782 the family settled in Bath, where the young artist soon found himself fully employed in taking crayon likenesses of fashionable people at a guinea or a guinea and a half a head. In 1784 he gained the prize and silver-gilt palette of the Society of Arts for a crayon drawing after Raphael's "Transfiguration," and presently beginning to paint in oil.   Related Paintings of Sir Thomas Lawrence :. | Portrait of Mr and Mrs Julius Angerstein | Portrait of Henry Dundas | Children of Sir Samuel Fludyer | Portrait of Mary Palmer | Elizabeth Farren,Later Countess of Derby |
Related Artists:
Salomon Gessner
Swiss Painter, 1730-1788,a bookseller's son, was apprenticed to the bookseller Spener in Berlin. Giving up this employment, he lived for a time by painting and engraving, for which he had a considerable talent. In 1750 he settled in Zurich, continuing to live by painting, including painting on porcelain. He began to write idylls in poetic prose, beginning with Daphnis (1754). His Idyllen (1756) achieved a nation-wide success. In Der Tod Abels (1758) he attempted an epic in prose, which was followed by two plays (Schaferspiele), two stories, including Der erste Schiffer, and a few more idylls, Neue Idyllen (1772). In his idylls, Geßner, who is indebted to Theocritus and Virgil, creates an idealized, orderly, almost horticultural state of nature, from which everything rough and craggy has been eliminated; his shepherds are similarly untouched by the ruder aspects of country life. His work embodies the city-dweller's longing for a nature which he does not know, and this explains its instant popularity. W. Raabe uses Gebner's Idyllen, the publication of which coincided with the outbreak of the Seven Years War
BEHAM, Hans Sebald
German Northern Renaissance Engraver, 1500-1550 Hans Sebald Beham (1500 ?C 1550) was a German printmaker who did his best work as an engraver, and was also a designer of woodcuts and a painter and miniaturist. He is one of the most important of the "Little Masters", the group of German artists making old master prints in the generation after Durer. Beham is best known as a prolific printmaker, producing approximately 252 engravings, 18 etchings and 1500 woodcuts, including woodcut book illustrations. He worked extensively on tiny, highly detailed, engravings, many as small as postage stamps, placing him in the German printmaking school known as the "Little Masters" from the size of their prints. These works he produced and published himself, whilst his much larger woodcuts were mostly commissioned work. The engravings found a ready market among German bourgeois collectors, but were not much seen in Italy. He also made prints for use as playing cards, wallpaper, coats of arms, and designs for other artists, including many designs for stained or painted glass. He also illuminated two prayer books and painted a table top (now in the Louvre ) for Cardinal Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz.
Cornelis de Heem
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1631-1695 Son of Jan Davidsz. de Heem. He spent a great deal of his life in Antwerp, where he was taught by his father. Cornelis also worked in Utrecht in 1667, in nearby IJsselstein in 1676 and in The Hague from 1676 for more than ten years. His best works approach the quality of his father, particularly in works executed during the decade starting in 1655. Cornelis still-lifes can be distinguished by daring colour harmonies, sometimes with a strong blue. His compositions are often simpler: fruit-pieces, floral bouquets, festoons and garlands and sumptuous still-lifes, only occasionally in large formats. His technique changed from a more painterly to a more graphic style.