1599-1660,Spanish painter. He was apprenticed to Francisco Herrera the Elder before being trained by Francisco Pacheco. His early works were mostly religious or genre scenes. After arriving in Madrid in 1623, he painted a portrait of Philip IV that won him immediate success and an appointment as court painter. His position gave him access to the royal collections, including works by Titian, who exerted the greatest influence on his style. In his portraits from this period, only the faces and hands of the figures are accentuated, and the dark figures stand out against a light background. A visit to Italy (1629 ?C 31) further developed his style, and on his return to Madrid he entered his most productive period. Velazquez created a new type of informal royal portrait for Philip hunting lodge, and his portraits of court dwarfs display the same discerning eye as those of his royal subjects. On a second visit to Rome (1649 ?C 51) he painted a portrait of Pope Innocent X. The powerful head, brilliant combinations of crimson of the curtain, chair, and cope are painted with fluent technique and almost imperceptible brushstrokes that go far beyond the late manner of Titian and announce the last stage in Velazquez development. This portrait was copied innumerable times and won him immediate and lasting renown in Italy. In his last years he created his masterpiece, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour, 1656). In this casual scene, the artist is shown painting the king and queen in the presence of the infanta Margarita and her attendants; the nearly life size figures are painted in more or less detail according to their relation to the central figure of the infanta and to the source of light, creating a remarkable illusion of reality never surpassed by Velazquez or any other artist of his age. He is universally acknowledged as one of the giants of Western art.   Related Paintings of Velasquez :. | Vulcan s smelter | Assumption | The Louise Asia gram raises | Our Lady of Dai Guanzhong map | Bishop Maximilian |
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John sell cotman
English Romantic Painter, 1782-1842 English painter and etcher. Cotman was born in the parish of St Mary Coslany, Norwich, the son of Edmund Cotman, a hairdresser, later a haberdasher, and Ann Sell. In 1793 he entered Norwich Grammar School as a 'freeplacer'. In 1798 he moved to London, where he worked as an assistant to the publisher Rudolph Ackermann. Following in the footsteps of Turner and Thomas Girtin he joined Dr Monro's 'Academy' in 1799 and became a member of the sketching society that had developed around the personality and talent of Girtin.
John Rogers
American Sculptor, 1829-1904, He was an American sculptor who produced very popular, relatively inexpensive figurines in the latter 19th century. He became famous for his small genre sculptures, popularly termed "Rogers Groups", which were mass produced in cast plaster. A total of 80,000 copies of almost 80 Rogers Groups were sold across the United States and abroad. At the height of their popularity, Rogers' figurines graced the parlors of homes in the United States and were found as far away as Chile and Australia. The English novelist Charles Reade furnished his home with all the Rogers figurines available to him, and in the Dakota Territory, Lt. Col. George Custer and his wife had one.
Leon Benouville
Paris 1821 - Paris 1859. was a French painter. Leon Benouville first studied with his elder brother Jean-Achille Benouville (1815-1891) in the studio of François-Edouard Picot before he transferred to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1837. Like his brother he received the Prix de Rome in 1845. In Rome, as a Prix de Rome pensionary at the Villa Medici, he stayed with his brother and met the sculptor Charles Gumery.