American Neoclassical Painter, 1738-1820 American historical painter who worked in England. He was born in Springfield, Pa., in a house that is now a memorial museum at Swarthmore College. After some instruction from a local artist named William Williams, he set up as a portrait painter in Philadelphia at 18, subsequently moving to New York City. In 1760 he went to Europe, where he remained for the rest of his life. For three years he studied in Italy. Working under the tutelage of Anton Mengs, he was also inspired by the classical research of Johann Winckelmann. He then settled in London, becoming a leader of the neoclassical movement. Under the patronage of George III, commissions came to him in great numbers, and in 1772 he was appointed historical painter to the king. A founder of the Royal Academy, he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as its president in 1792. West executed more than 400 canvases, chiefly historical, mythological, and religious subjects painted on a heroic scale. He had many pupils and was a generous friend and adviser to younger artists, particularly American painters studying in England, among whom were Washington Allston, Samuel Morse, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Singleton Copley. His influence on American painting of the period was predominant. Among West's best-known works are Death of General Wolfe (Grosvenor Gall., London) and Penn's Treaty with the Indians (Pa. Acad. of the Fine Arts). In these paintings he created a new departure in historical painting by clothing his figures in the costume of their period instead of the traditional classical garb.  Related Paintings of WEST, Benjamin :. | Edward III Crossing the Somme | Joseph Banks | Self-Portrait | Portrait of Colonel Guy Johnson | Prospect Park |
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Arkady Rylov
(Russian: 29 January 1870 - June 22, 1939) was a Russian and Soviet Symbolist painter. Rylov was born in the village Istobenskoye, Vyatka gubernia. He was brought in the family of his stepfather, a notary (Rylov's father had a psychiatric illness). He moved to Saint Petersburg and studied at the Technical Design School of Baron Schtiglitz (1888-1891), then at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Arkhip Kuindzhi (1894-1897). Rylov was a member of the Mir iskusstva movement and its spin-off Union of Russian Artists also a member of the Association of Artists of the Revolutionary Russia. He was a chairman of the Kuindzhi Society. He started as a historical painter (his graduation work in the Imperial Academy of Arts was Assault of Pechenegs on a Slav village but became a predominately landscape painter. Still many of his paintings have some allusions with Russian history. Many of his landscapes painted after the October Revolution were seen as symbols of the revolutionary Freedom. At that time he also painted some typical Socialist Realism compositions like Lenin in Razliv. He taught in the Academy of Arts. In his studio he created almost a small nature reserve. There lived squirrels, rabbits, monkey Manka and many wild birds (without cages) and two anthills. According to Mikhail Nesterov wild animals and birds loved Rylov and often came to his studio.
Jessie Willcox Smith
American Golden Age Illustrator, 1863-1935 was an American illustrator famous for her work in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal and for her illustrations for children's books. Born in the Mount Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Smith studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, graduating in 1888. A year later, she started working in the production department of the Ladies Home Journal, for five years. She left to take classes under Howard Pyle, first at Drexel and then at the Brandywine School. Jessie Willcox Smith, Illustration for The Water-Babies (1916)She was a prolific contributor to books and magazines during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, illustrating stories and articles for clients such as Century, Collier's Weekly, Leslie's Weekly, Harper's, McClure's, Scribners, and the Ladies' Home Journal. Smith may be most well known for her covers on Good Housekeeping, which she painted from December 1917 through March 1933. She also painted posters and portraits. Her twelve illustrations for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies (1916) are also well known. On Smith's death, she bequeathed the original works to the Library of Congress' "Cabinet of American Illustration" collection. Smith was close friends with the artists Elizabeth Shippen Green and Violet Oakley,
CAPORALI, Bartolomeo
Italian painter, Umbrian school (b. ca. 1420, Perugia, d. 1505, Perugia)