1796-1886 Asher Brown Durand Galleries His interest shifted from engraving to oil painting around 1830 with the encouragement of his patron, Luman Reed. In 1837, he accompanied his friend Thomas Cole on a sketching expedition to Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks and soon after he began to concentrate on landscape painting. He spent summers sketching in the Catskills, Adirondacks, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire, making hundreds of drawings and oil sketches that were later incorporated into finished academy pieces which helped to define the Hudson River School. Durand is particularly remembered for his detailed portrayals of trees, rocks, and foliage. He was an advocate for drawing directly from nature with as much realism as possible. Durand wrote, "Let [the artist] scrupulously accept whatever [nature] presents him until he shall, in a degree, have become intimate with her infinity...never let him profane her sacredness by a willful departure from truth." Like other Hudson River School artists, Durand also believed that nature was an ineffable manifestation of God. He expressed this sentiment and his general views on art in his "Letters on Landscape Painting" in The Crayon, a mid-19th century New York art periodical. Wrote Durand, "[T]he true province of Landscape Art is the representation of the work of God in the visible creation..." Durand is noted for his 1849 painting Kindred Spirits which shows fellow Hudson River School artist Thomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant in a Catskills landscape. This was painted as a tribute to Cole upon his death in 1848. The painting, donated by Bryant's daughter Julia to the New York Public Library in 1904, was sold by the library through Sotheby's at an auction in May 2005 to Alice Walton for a purported $35 million. The sale was conducted as a sealed, first bid auction, so the actual sales price is not known. At $35 million, however, it would be a record price paid for an American painting at the time.  Related Paintings of Asher Brown Durand :. | Creek and rocks | Aaron Ogden | Kaaterskill Clove | Portrait of Isaac Edrebi of Morocco | The Beeches |
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Aniello Falcone
(1600-1665) was an Italian Baroque painter, active in Naples and noted for his painted depictions of battle scenes. Born in Naples the son of a tradesman, he showed his artistic tendency at an early age. He first received some instruction from a relative, and then became one of the most prominent pupils apprenticed under Jose de Ribera. Salvatore Rosa, in turn, is said to have apprenticed under Aniello. The Anchorite, ca. 1650 Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aniello Falcone Besides battle pictures, large and small, taken from biblical as well as secular history, he painted various religious subjects, which, however, count for little in his general reputation. He became, as a battle painter, almost as celebrated as Giacomo Borgognone, and was named L' Oracolo delle Battaglie. His works have animation, variety, truth to nature, and careful color. Falcone was bold, generous, accustomed to arms, and an excellent fencer. In the insurrection of 1647, led by Masaniello, he resolved to be bloodily avenged for the death, at the hands of two Spaniards, of a nephew and of a pupil in the school of art which he had established in Naples. Salvator Rosa, Carlo Coppola, among others, and he formed an armed band named the Compagnia della Morte, or Company of Death. (See Salvator Rosa.) They battled in the streets by day; at night they were painters again, and handled the brush with impetuous zeal. Rule restored, they decamped. Falcone and Rosa made off to Rome; here Borgognone noticed the works of Falcone, and became his friend, and a French gentleman induced him to go to France, where Louis XIV became one of his patrons. Ultimately Jean-Baptiste Colbert obtained permission for the painter to return to Naples, and there he died in 1665.
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV (June 4, 1884 - August 3, 1940, Bangalore Palace), also known popularly as Nalwadi Krishna Raja Wadiyar was the ruling Maharaja of the princely state of Mysore from 1902 until his death in 1940. He is regarded as one of the most celebrated rulers among the Indian States when India was still under British rule. At the time of his death, he was also one of the world's wealthiest men, with a personal fortune estimated in 1940 to be worth $400 million which would be equivalent to $56 billion in 2010 prices.
Oscar Torna
Swedish, 1842-1894