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 :. | Elizabeth at the Piano | The Portrait of Letita Wison Jordan | Salutat | Weda Cook | Frances Eakins |
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john masefield
(born June 1, 1878, Ledbury, Herefordshire, Eng. ?? died May 12, 1967, near Abingdon, Berkshire) English poet. He went to sea in his youth, then lived precariously for several years in the U.S. before settling in London. He is best known for his poems of the sea, Salt-Water Ballads (1902, including "Sea Fever" and "Cargoes"), and for his long narrative poems, such as The Everlasting Mercy (1911), containing phrases of colloquial coarseness that were unknown in earlier 20th-century English verse. After he became poet laureate in 1930, his poetry became more austere. He also wrote adventure novels, sketches, and works for children.
Viacheslav Schwarz
Australian,1838-69
James Baker Pyne
English Painter, 1800-1870 He was articled to a Bristol attorney, but around 1821 he took up painting and exhibited at the Bristol Gallery of Arts in 1824. Apparently self-taught, he worked closely with the Bristol artist Samuel Jackson (1794-1869) for a time and was influenced by the poetic landscapes of Francis Danby. In 1835 he moved to London and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. He showed seven pictures there altogether, but he also exhibited at the British Institution and showed 206 works at the Society of British Artists. Although technically accomplished, Pyne's work is curiously lacking in distinction. He imitated many artists but never found a style of his own. His early views of Bristol are among his best work, a good example being View of the Avon from Durdham Down (1829; Bristol, Mus. & A.G.). He also painted some lively coast scenes such as Whitby (Leicester, Mus. & A.G.). He was less successful when emulating J. M. W. Turner.