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 :. | Approching Summer Storm | Farmer's Girl | Farmers Girl | Approching Summer Storm | Heidelberg |
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TIZIANO Vecellio
Italian painter, Venetian school (b. 1490, Pieve di Cadore, d. 1576, Venezia).
John Pettie
British Painter, 1839-1893 He was brought up in Edinburgh and East Lothian, and in 1855 he entered the schools of the Trustees' Academy, Edinburgh, sponsored by the history painter James Drummond (1816-77). He studied under Robert Scott Lauder, and among his fellow students were WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, Thomas Graham (1840-1906), George Paul Chalmers (1833-78), John Burr (1831-93) and John MacWhirter, several of whom later became part of Pettie's circle of Scottish artist friends in London. Pettie first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1858 with In Trabois House (untraced), a scene from Sir Walter Scott's The Fortunes of Nigel, and he began sending work to the Royal Academy in 1860. From 1858 he provided illustrations for the periodical Good Words, and, encouraged by the reviews received for his early Royal Academy exhibits, such as The Armourers (exh. RA 1860) and What D'Ye Lack' (exh. RA 1861), when Good Words transferred its headquarters, Pettie moved to London in 1862. He shared a studio in Fitzroy Square with Orchardson and Graham from 1863 until his marriage to Elizabeth Ann Bossom on 25 August 1865. He subsequently lived at various addresses, gravitating towards the wealthy artistic colony in St John's Wood, where in 1882, at 2 Fitzjohn's Avenue, he built a neo-Georgian house and studio, The Lothians (destr.). This reflected not only the professional circle in which Pettie moved but also the rapid financial success that he achieved in London. From the mid-1860s his most important patron was John Newton Mappin, founder of the Mappin Art Gallery,
ROSSELLINO, Bernardo
Italian sculptor Florentine school (b. 1409, Settignano, d. 1464, Firenze).Italian architect and sculptor. Influenced by Donatello, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Luca Della Robbia, he developed a moderately Classical style. His tomb for Leonardo Bruni (1444 C 50) in Santa Croce, Florence, was one of the greatest achievements of early Renaissance sculpture and inaugurated a new type of sepulchral monument. Its fine balance between sculpture and architecture, figure and decoration, made it the prototypical niche tomb of its time. He also designed the apse of St. Peter's Basilica and the cathedral and Piccolomini Palace in Pienza (1460 ?C 64). He presumably trained his brother Antonio (1427 ?C 79), who regularly assisted him.