1757-1825,Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Along with Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky, Borovikovsky is one of the three great Russian portrait painters of the second half of the 18th century. He was trained by his father and brothers, who were icon painters. His early works were also icons, such as the Mother of God (1784; Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.) and King David (1785; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.); they are archaic in style and resemble portraits produced by Ukrainian folk artists. At the end of the 1780s Borovikovsky moved to St Petersburg and took up portrait painting. He was aided by advice from Levitsky and took lessons from Johann Baptist Lampi (i). He soon became established, gaining a reputation as a brilliant colourist, and he received many commissions. Throughout his career, however, he continued to paint icons from time to time. In 1795 he became a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts; he was also closely connected with many of the chief exponents of Russian culture in the city. The number of his surviving works is large (at least 400 portraits). He had his own workshop, and he would often rely on assistants to paint the less important parts of a portrait. His sitters included members of the imperial family, courtiers, generals, many aristocrats and figures from the Russian artistic and literary worlds. Most of his portraits are intimate in style. A particularly touching example is the portrait of Ol ga Filippova, the wife of a close friend (c. 1790; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), who is seen in a white peignoir with a park in the background. The portrait is painted in a flowing style; the combination of light, subdued tones, typical of Borovikovsky, gives an impression of tender femininity and quiet contemplation.   Related Paintings of Vladimir Borovikovsky :. | Princess Margaret Dolgorukaya | Portrait of the Sisters Princess Anna Gavriilovna Gagarina and Princess Varvara Gavriilovna Gagarina | Portrait of Maria Lopukhina | Portrait of A. G. and A. A. Lobanov-Rostovsky | Portrait of Prince Kuropotkin |
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John Frederick Kensett
American Hudson River School Painter, 1816-1872 He attended school at Cheshire Academy, and studied engraving with his immigrant father, Thomas Kensett, and later with his uncle, Alfred Dagget. He worked as engraver in the New Haven area until about 1838, after which he went to work as a bank note engraver in New York City. In 1840, along with Asher Durand and John William Casilear, Kensett traveled to Europe in order to study painting. There he met and traveled with Benjamin Champney. The two sketched and painted throughout Europe, refining their talents. During this period, Kensett developed an appreciation and affinity for 17th century Dutch landscape painting. Kensett and Champney returned to the United States in 1847. After establishing his studio and settling in New York, Kensett traveled extensively throughout the Northeast and the Colorado Rockies as well as making several trips back to Europe. Kensett is best known for his landscape of upstate New York and New England and seascapes of coastal New Jersey, Long Island and New England. He is most closely associated with the so-called "second generation" of the Hudson River School. Along with Sanford Robinson Gifford, Fitz Hugh Lane, Jasper Francis Cropsey, Martin Johnson Heade and others, the works of the "Luminists," as they came to be known, were characterized by unselfconscious, nearly invisible brushstrokes used to convey the qualities and effects of atmospheric light. It could be considered the spiritual, if not stylistic, cousin to Impressionism. Such spiritualism stemmed from Transcendentalist philosophies of sublime nature and contemplation bringing one closer to a spiritual truth.
William Mctaggart
Scottish Painter, 1835-1910 was a Scottish landscape painter who was influenced by Impressionism. The son of a crofter, William McTaggart was born in the small village of Aros in Kintyre. He moved to Edinburgh at the age of 16 and studied at the Trustees' Academy under Robert Scott Lauder. He won several prizes as a student and exhibited his work in the Royal Scottish Academy, becoming a full member of the Academy in 1870. His early works were mainly figure paintings, often of children, but he later turned to land and seascape painting, inspired by his childhood love of the sea and the rugged, Atlantic-lashed west coast of his birth. The Storm, 1890, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh.McTaggart was fascinated with nature and man??s relationship with it, and he strove to capture aspects such as the transient effects of light on water. He adopted the Impressionist practice of painting out of doors, and his use of colour and bold brushwork resemble qualities found in paintings by Constable and Turner, both artists whom he admired. McTaggart was skilled in the use of both oil and watercolour and, in addition to Kintyre seascapes, he also painted landscapes and seascapes in Midlothian and East Lothian. Many of his later works depict the Moorfoot Hills which could be seen from his house near Lasswade, which he moved to in 1889.
Master John
(floruit 1544-1545)