Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Woman reading a novel | Olive Trees:Bright Blue Sky (nn04) | The Garden of Saint-Paul Hospital (nn04) | La Mousme, Sitting | Weaver Arranging Threads (nn04) |
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PALAGI, Pelagio
1775-1860 Italian painter, architect, designer and collector. At the age of 12 he began to frequent the house in Bologna of his patron Conte Carlo Filippo Aldrovandi Marescotti (1763-1823), whose collections and library provided his early artistic education and engendered his taste for collecting. From 1795 he worked on several decorative schemes with the theatre designer and decorator Antonio Basoli (1774-1848), and it was perhaps in theatre designs that Palagi was first exposed to an eclectic range of motifs from exotic cultures. He was influenced by the linear, mannered style of Felice Giani, with whom he frequented the important evening drawing sessions at the house of the engraver Francesco Rosaspina (1762-1841). Beginning in 1802, he participated in the informal Accademia della Pace, Bologna, as well as studying at the Accademia Clementina, and was elected to the Accademia Nazionale di Belle Arti of Bologna in 1803. Soon his draughtsmanship took on a bizarre, brooding style akin to that of Piranesi and such early Romantics as Luigi Sabatelli and Henry Fuseli. During this period he began designing funerary monuments, a type of commission that he continued to receive throughout his life. In 1805 he worked with Giani on the decorations of the Palazzo Aldini, Bologna.
George Hardy
(1822-1909) was an English genre painter, a member of the Cranbrook Colony and eldest brother to Frederick Daniel Hardy. Hardy was born in Brighton in Sussex the first son (of 8 children) of George Hardy (b. 1796 in London), a musician to George IV, Queen Adelaide, and Queen Victoria in the Royal household at Windsor. His mother was Sarah Lloyd (b. 1804). Hardy became an oil painter of light-hearted genre subjects and moved to the artists' colony in Cranbrook in Kent. He married Ellen Hutton in May 1862 and the couple had 3 children. Hardy died in Eastbourne in 1909.
William Henry Knight
(26 September 1823 - 31 July 1863) was an English portrait and genre painter. Knight was born in Newbury, Berkshire where his father, John Knight, was a schoolmaster. He was to become a solicitor, but gave up his law studies after two of his paintings were accepted by the annual exhibition of the Society of British Artists. He moved to London in 1855, taking lodgings in Kennington Road, Lambeth, and supporting himself by drawing crayon portraits while studying in the British Museum and in the schools of the Royal Academy.