American Realist Painter, 1844-1916. Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 ?C June 25, 1916) was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".  Related Paintings of Thomas Eakins :. | the agnew clinic | Between Rounds | The Artist-s wife and his dog | Frank Hamilton cushing | Weda Cook |
Related Artists:
Hans Gude
March 13, 1825 ?C August 17, 1903,Norwegian painter. He was the most renowned Norwegian landscape painter of his time. At the age of 12 he was enrolled as a pupil of Johannes Flintoe (1787-1880). After attending evening classes at the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, he went to D?sseldorf in 1841 to study privately with the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910). In 1842 Gude was admitted to the landscape class at the Akademie under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He was later appointed an assistant teacher at Schirmer private studio, and he succeeded his master as Professor of landscape painting both at the D?sseldorf Akademie (1854-62) and at the Karlsruhe Akademie (1864-80). In the 1840s Gude established his reputation in Norway and on the Continent with powerful images of the Norwegian mountains. These were shown in the Kunstforening galleries in D?sseldorf and Christiania and at the Berliner Akademische Kunstausstellung, where Gude exhibited throughout his life. Adolph Tidemand and Gude dominated the colony of Norwegian artists who studied in D?sseldorf in the mid-19th century. The two artists worked together on five paintings, all representing people in boats; Gude painted the landscape, Tidemand the figures. The Bridal Procession at Hardanger (1848; Oslo, N.G.) celebrates a ceremony of country life and is the most famous work of Norwegian National Romanticism. In a sunny western Norwegian landscape with snow on the high mountains, the bridal couple and wedding guests in national costume are shown rowing across the water from a medieval stave church on the headland in the background. Gude revealed greater maturity in High Mountain (1857; Oslo, N.G.). The disposition of mountains massed on the high plateau around a little lake produces an effect of monumentality. The predominant colours shade from grey to blue, concentrated in the cloud cover. The influence of Schirmer tranquil landscapes is apparent, while the rhythmic arrangement of light and shadow is reminiscent of Achenbach.
Master of the Prelate Mur
painted The Adoration of the Magi in 15th century
Jean-Pierre Franque
French, 1774-1860,French painter. He and his twin brother, Joseph-Boniface Franque (1774-1833), who was also a painter, were the sons of a modest farmer and, according to a local story, their youthful talent was such that the provincial government paid for them to study in Grenoble. They enrolled at the Ecole Gratuite in Grenoble and stayed for about two years (1786-8), training to become engravers. During the revolutionary period, the twins' education was taken over by the Departement de la Dreme. In 1792 their case was discussed at the National Assembly in Paris, which placed them in David's atelier and provided a pension for four years. David agreed to educate them but refused payment, writing to the President of the Assembly, 'I am overjoyed to be chosen to be the first teacher of these youths who could be called children of the nation since they owe everything to her.' The two brothers were considered very promising students, and David asked Jean-Pierre to assist him in the execution of the Intervention of the Sabine Women (1796-9; Paris, Louvre). Jean-Pierre also became involved with LES PRIMITIFS and the mysterious Maurice Quae (1779-1804), who reacted against Davidian principles and advocated a return to 'primitive' 15th-century Italian art. Franque demonstrated his independence from David in the selection of the subject for his 1806 Salon debut, the Dream of Love Induced by the Power of Harmony (destr.). In the spring of 1807 he was one of the 26 painters who entered a sketch (untraced) for the competition for a large painting representing Napoleon on the battlefield of Eylau, a competition won by Gros. In 1810 Franque produced Allegory of the Condition of France before the Return from Egypt (Paris, Louvre).