English-born Australian Painter, 1854-1914 was an Australian landscape artist and a member of the Heidelberg School of Australian impressionists. Withers was born at Handsworth, Staffordshire, the son of Edwin Withers. He showed an early desire to paint, but objection was made to this by his father. It is not known what occupation he followed in England, but in 1882 he arrived in Australia with the intention of going on the land. After working for about 18 months on a farm, Withers removed to Melbourne and obtained a position as draughtsman in a firm of printers. He then took up his painting again, and began to exhibit with the Victorian Academy of Arts afterwards merged in the Victorian Artists' Society. In 1887 Withers went to Europe. There he was married to Miss F. Flinn and studied for some months at the Academie Julian, Paris. He returned to Australia with his wife in June 1888 having been commissioned to do black and white work for Messrs Fergusson and Mitchell of Melbourne. His most important work in this way will be found in the illustrations to Edmund Finn's, The Chronicles of Early Melbourne. Withers settled down at first at Kew, a suburb of Melbourne, and then near Heidelberg on the other side of the river Yarra. He became friendly with Arthur Streeton, Charles Conder, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and other leading artists of the period. He began to sell a few pictures, but the collapse of the land boom put an end to his illustrative work. He obtained some work as a drawing and painting master in schools, and in 1891 opened a studio in Collins-street west, where he held his first private exhibition.   Related Paintings of Walter Withers :. | Fossickers | A bright winter's morning | Midsummer | The Last of Summer, | The Yarra below Eaglemont |
Related Artists:
John Crome
English Romantic Painter, 1768-1821 was an artist in the Romantic era. Born in the English city of Norwich, John Crome is also known as Old Crome to distinguish him from his son, John Berney Crome, who was also a well-known artist. The son of a weaver, he was apprenticed to a coach painter or sign painter. It is said that he acquired his skills by copying Gainsboroughs and Hobbemas owned by Thomas Harvey of Old Catton, his patron from 1790. The two main influences on his style are considered Dutch 17th century painting and Wilson. Crome went on to become the founder of the Norwich school of painters, of which John Sell Cotman is another famous member. He worked both in watercolour and oil. His oil paintings alone number in excess of 300. Many can be seen at major galleries around the world, including the Tate Gallery and the Royal Academy, but he is also well represented in Norwich itself. He also produced etchings and taught art. One of his pupils was James Stark. Crome's Broad and nearby Crome's Farm.
Nathaniel Hone
1718-1784 British Nathaniel Hone (24 April 1718 ?C 14 August 1784) was an Irish-born portrait and miniature painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. The son of a Dublin-based Dutch merchant, Hone moved to England as a young man and, after marrying in 1742, eventually settled in London, by which time he had acquired a reputation as a portrait-painter. While his paintings were popular, his reputation was particularly enhanced by his skill at producing miniatures and enamels. He interrupted his time in London by spending two years (1750-1752) studying in Italy. As a portrait painter, several of his works are now held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. His sitters included magistrate Sir John Fielding and Methodist preacher John Wesley, and General Richard Wilford and Sir Levett Hanson in a double portrait.[2][3] He courted controversy in 1775 when his satirical picture "The Conjurer" was seen to attack the fashion for Italian Renaissance art and to ridicule Sir Joshua Reynolds (it also included a nude caricature of fellow Academician Angelica Kauffmann, later painted out by Hone), and was rejected by the Royal Academy. To show his reputation was undamaged, Hone organised a one-man retrospective in London ?C the first such solo exhibition of an artist??s work. His great-grand-nephew shared the same name and was also a notable Irish painter, known as Nathaniel Hone the Younger (1831-1917).
VASARI, Giorgio
Italian Mannerist Writer and Painter, 1511-1574 Italian painter, architect, and writer. Though he was a prolific painter in the Mannerist style, he is more highly regarded as an architect (he designed the Uffizi Palace, now the Uffizi Gallery), but even his architecture is overshadowed by his writings. His Lives of the Most Eminent Architects, Painters, and Sculptors (1550) offers biographies of early to late Renaissance artists. His style is eminently readable and his material is well researched, though when facts were scarce he did not hesitate to fill in the gaps. In his view, Giotto had revived the art of true representation after its decline in the early Middle Ages, and succeeding artists had brought that art progressively closer to the perfection achieved by Michelangelo.