1728-1779 Dutch Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome. In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agust??n Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings. Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning. His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism. Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.  Related Paintings of Anton Raphael Mengs :. | Self-portrait | The Holy Family | Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane | Semiramis Receives News of the Babylonian Revolt by Anton Raphael Mengs. Now in the Neues Schloss, Bayreuth | Portrait of Richard Wilson |
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staffan hallstrom
Staffan Hallström, född 1914 i Stockholm, död 1976, var en svensk målare och tecknare. Staffan Hallström föräldrar var Gustaf Hallström, antikvarie vid Statens historiska museum och Astrid Hallström, född Berg. Han studerade på Gerlesborgsskolan, Tekniska skolan 1932-34 och vid Kungliga Konsthögskolan i Stockholm 1935-41 för bland annat Isaac Grenewald och Olle Hjortzberg 1935-41. Han företog studieresor till Frankrike, Italien, Nederländerna och Belgien. Staffan Hallström bodde och arbetade under 1940-talet i Saltsjö-Duvnäs, där han hyrde rum av konstnären Olle Nyman. Han fick då kontakt med Evert Lundqvist, som inspirerade honom och gav honom stöd. Tillsammans med Olle Nyman, Evert Lundqvist och Roland Kempe ingick han i Saltsjö-Duvnäs-gruppen. Senare hade han även atelje på Varvsgatan och kombinerad bostad och atelje vid Brunkebergstorg. År 1946 hade han sin debututställning på Konstnärshuset i Stockholm. Han slog igenom med utställningen Hundra målningar på Konstakademien 1961 och spåddes då lysande framtid framför allt av skulptören Torsten Renqvist. Staffan Hallström, arbetade i nyexpressionistisk stil och bland hans mest kända verk är Ingens hundar från 1958, som köptes in av Moderna museet. Detta motiv målade han sedan i olika versioner. Tillsammans med Lasse Andreasson gestaltade han 1972 Masmos tunnelbanestation med verket Ta ned solen i tunnelbanan, målningar på plåt utefter spårväggarna. Han är representerad på bland annat Moderna och Nationalmuseum. .
Walter Crane,RWS
1845-1915 English painter, illustrator, designer, writer and teacher. He showed artistic inclinations as a boy and was encouraged to draw by his father, the portrait painter and miniaturist Thomas Crane (1808-59). A series of illustrations to Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott (Cambridge, MA, Harvard U., Houghton Lib.) was shown first to Ruskin, who praised the use of colour, and then to the engraver William James Linton, to whom Crane was apprenticed in 1859. From 1859 to 1862 Crane learnt a technique of exact and economical draughtsmanship on woodblocks. His early illustrative works included vignette wood-engravings for John R. Capel Wise's The New Forest: Its History and its Scenery (1862).
Ivan Nikitin
Russian Painter, ca.1680-1742,Russian painter. The son of a Moscow priest who was close to the imperial court, Nikitin probably studied at the workshop of the Armoury Palace in Moscow and subsequently worked chiefly in St Petersburg. His early portraits were of Peter the Great and members of Peter family, for example the portraits of Peter daughters Elizabeth (St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.) and Anne (Moscow, Tret yakov Gal.) and of his sister Natal ya Alekseyevna (St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.). One of the few signed and dated works is a portrait of Praskov ya Ioannovna, Daughter of Tsar Ivan V (1714; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.). Nikitin style was formed at the time of Peter the Great reforms of the administrative and education system in Russia, and he ranks as a pioneer of a new style in Russian painting. In his early works, up to 1716, he adapted the medieval Russian style of portraiture to the forms of contemporary European examples.