British 1836-1893 Atkinson Grimshaw Gallery Grimshaw's primary influence was the Pre-Raphaelites. True to the Pre-Raphaelite style, he put forth landscapes of accurate color and lighting, and vivid detail. He often painted landscapes that typified seasons or a type of weather; city and suburban street scenes and moonlit views of the docks in London, Leeds, Liverpool, and Glasgow also figured largely in his art. By applying his skill in lighting effects, and unusually careful attention to detail, he was often capable of intricately describing a scene, while strongly conveying its mood. His "paintings of dampened gas-lit streets and misty waterfronts conveyed an eerie warmth as well as alienation in the urban scene." Dulce Domum (1855), on whose reverse Grimshaw wrote, "mostly painted under great difficulties," captures the music portrayed in the piano player, entices the eye to meander through the richly decorated room, and to consider the still and silent young lady who is meanwhile listening. Grimshaw painted more interior scenes, especially in the 1870s, when he worked until the influence of James Tissot and the Aesthetic Movement. On Hampstead Hill is considered one of Grimshaw's finest, exemplifying his skill with a variety of light sources, in capturing the mood of the passing of twilight into the onset of night. In his later career this use of twilight, and urban scenes under yellow light were highly popular, especially with his middle-class patrons. His later work included imagined scenes from the Greek and Roman empires, and he also painted literary subjects from Longfellow and Tennyson ?? pictures including Elaine and The Lady of Shalott. (Grimshaw named all of his children after characters in Tennyson's poems.) In the 1880s, Grimshaw maintained a London studio in Chelsea, not far from the comparable facility of James Abbott McNeill Whistler. After visiting Grimshaw, Whistler remarked that "I considered myself the inventor of Nocturnes until I saw Grimmy's moonlit pictures."[9] Unlike Whistler's Impressionistic night scenes, however, Grimshaw worked in a realistic vein: "sharply focused, almost photographic," his pictures innovated in applying the tradition of rural moonlight images to the Victorian city, recording "the rain and mist, the puddles and smoky fog of late Victorian industrial England with great poetry." Some artists of Grimshaw's period, both famous and obscure, generated rich documentary records; Vincent Van Gogh and James Smetham are good examples. Others, like Edward Pritchett, left nothing. Grimshaw left behind him no letters, journals, or papers; scholars and critics have little material on which to base their understanding of his life and career. Grimshaw died 13 October 1893, and is buried in Woodhouse cemetery, Leeds. His reputation rested, and his legacy is probably based on, his townscapes. The second half of the twentieth century saw a major revival of interest in Grimshaw's work, with several important exhibits of his canon.  Related Paintings of Atkinson Grimshaw :. | Waterloo Lake Roundhay Park Leeds | THe Seal of the Covenant | Autumn | Snowbound | View of Heath Street by Night |
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John White Alexander
1865-1915 John White Alexander Galleries Alexander was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, now a part of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Orphaned in infancy, he was reared by his grandparents and at the age of 12 became a telegraph boy in Pittsburgh. His talent at drawing attracted the attention of one of his employers, who assisted him to develop them. He moved to New York at the age of eighteen and worked in an office at Harper's Weekly, where he was an illustrator and political cartoonist at the same time that Abbey, Pennell, Pyle, and other celebrated illustrators labored there. After an apprenticeship of three years, he travelled to Munich for his first formal training. Owing to the lack of funds, he removed to the village of Polling, Bavaria, and worked with Frank Duveneck. They travelled to Venice, where he profited by the advice of Whistler, and then he continued his studies in Florence, the Netherlands, and Paris. In 1881 he returned to New York and speedily achieved great success in portraiture, numbering among his sitters Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Burroughs, Walt Whitman, Henry G. Marquand, R. A. L. Stevenson, and president McCosh of Princeton University. His first exhibition in the Paris Salon of 1893 was a brilliant success and was followed by his immediate election to the Soci??t?? Nationale des Beaux Arts. Many additional honors were bestowed on him. In 1901 he was named Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and in 1902 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among the gold medals received by him were those of the Paris Exposition (1900) and the World's Fair at St. Louis (1904). Many examples of his paintings are on display in museums and public places in the United States and in Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Butler Institute, and the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. In addition, in the entrance hall to the Art Museum of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, a series of Alexander's murals entitled "Apotheosis of Pittsburgh" (1905-1907) covers the walls of the three-storey atrium area. Alexander was married to Elizabeth Alexander Alexander, to whom he was introduced in part because of their shared last name. Elizabeth was the daughter of James Waddell Alexander, President of the Equitable Life Assurance Society at the time of the Hyde Ball scandal. The Alexanders had one child, the mathematician James Waddell Alexander II. Alexander's original and highly individual art is based upon a very personal interpretation of humanity. He died in New York.
Matteo Rosselli
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1578-1650 Italian painter. An influential artist of the early 17th century in Florence, he is described by the early sources as being of a gentle disposition and as a dedicated and dignified painter, although he lacked originality and power. His work is characterized by the simplicity, descriptive naturalism and refined colour of the Counter-Reformation art created by such Tuscan artists as Santi di Tito, Bernardino Poccetti, Lodovico Cigoli and Domenico Passignano, yet he was also responsive to Venetian and Emilian art. The son of Alfonso Rosselli and Elena Coppi, he received his early education in Gregorio Pagani's studio, which he attended from as early as 1587. His initial inclination was towards classical and balanced compositions, in which the influence of Andrea del Sarto, whose frescoes he copied in the Chiostro dello Scalzo, is clear. On 26 February 1599 he was admitted to the Accademia del Disegno and in 1605 went to be with Passignano in Rome for six months, greatly enriching his artistic experiences through this contact. He returned to Florence in the same year and, on Pagani's death (1605), completed his master's unfinished works with great success. Pagani's influence can be seen in the bright colours of Rosselli's Adoration of the Magi (1607; Montevarchi, Arezzo, S Andrea). To 1610 belong two monochrome paintings depicting Henry IV at Nantes and Henry IV at Gaudebec
Abraham Fischer
1850 ?C 1913,was the sole Prime Minister of the Orange River Colony in South Africa. He was originally a lawyer in Cape Colony, joining the bar in 1875. He became vice-president of the Orange Free State's volksraad in 1893 and a member of the executive council in 1896. During the Boer War he went to Europe to solicit support for the Boers, returning in 1903 to practice law in the newly-formed Orange River Colony. Continuing to promote the Boer cause, he helped form the Oranje Unie party in May 1906 and became its chairman; the party won the majority of seats in the colony's first elections that were held in November 1907. On November 27, he was chosen as Prime Minister, and stayed in that position until it ceased to exist with the union of May 31, 1910. He then joined the cabinet of the Union of South Africa.