Caribbean-born French Pointillist/Impressionist Painter, ca.1830-1903 .Painter and printmaker. He was the only painter to exhibit in all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions held between 1874 and 1886, and he is often regarded as the 'father' of the movement. He was by no means narrow in outlook, however, and throughout his life remained as radical in artistic matters as he was in politics. Thad?e Natanson wrote in 1948: 'Nothing of novelty or of excellence appeared that Pissarro had not been among the first, if not the very first, to discern and to defend.' The significance of Pissarro's work is in the balance maintained between tradition and the avant-garde. Octave Mirbeau commented: 'M. Camille Pissarro has shown himself to be a revolutionary by renewing the art of painting in a purely working sense;  Related Paintings of Camille Pissarro :. | Red Roofs(Village Cornet,Impression of Winter) (mk09) | Factory near Pontoise Usine pres de Pontoise | The Boldieu Bridge,Rouen | Flowering Plum Tree Eragny | Walking in the countryside on the road loggers |
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Ferdinand Olivier
German Painter, 1785-1841 Painter, draughtsman and lithographer, brother of Heinrich Olivier. The brothers' mother was a court opera singer in Dessau, and Ferdinand's later interest in the German medieval and Nazarene styles owed much to the intellectual climate at the Anhalt-Dessau court, where Leopold III Frederick Francis, Prince of Anhalt-Dessau, had been the first German prince to introduce the Gothic Revival style. Olivier took up drawing in 1801-2 under the tuition of Carl Wilhelm Kolbe and the engraver Johann Christian Haldenwang (1777-1831). In 1802-3 he accompanied his father to Berlin, where he studied woodcut techniques under Johann Friedrich Gottlieb Unger (1755-1804) and may have attended August Wilhelm Schlegel's lectures on belles-lettres and art. It was here, at the latest, that he discovered Herzensergiessungen eines kunstliebenden Klosterbruders (Berlin, 1797) by Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder and Ludwig Tieck, and the latter's Franz Sternbalds Wanderungen (Berlin, 1798), two books of vital significance for the painting of the Romantic era. Having decided to make art their career, Ferdinand and his brother Heinrich spent two years (1804-6) in Dresden, where they copied the works of Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain in the art gallery during the summer months. Ferdinand also took lessons from Jacob Wilhelm Mechau (1745-1808) and Carl Ludwig Kaaz, both painters of idealized landscapes, and he was probably introduced to the work of Philipp Otto Runge and Caspar David Friedrich by Friedrich August von Klinkowström (1778-1835), a friend of Runge. In June 1807 Ferdinand's excellent knowledge of French led to his appointment as embassy secretary in Paris, where Heinrich soon joined him. However, after just a few weeks he gave up his diplomatic career in order to devote himself to a study of the Musee Napoleon, which at that time housed art treasures pillaged from all parts of Europe. Ferdinand and Heinrich jointly produced three paintings for Leopold III Frederick Francis of Anhalt-Dessau: a portrait of Napoleon on Horseback (c.1809; W?rlitz, Schloss), and a Last Supper and Baptism (1809-10; Werlitz, Evangel. Ch.) for the Gothic Revival church in Werlitz. Although these last two were supposed to be copies after the 'old German school', the Olivier brothers in fact used 15th- and 16th-century Dutch and Flemish models to create original compositions. At the end of 1809 they returned to Dessau.
Jean Leon Gerome
French 1824-1904 Jean Leon Gerome Galleries French painter, sculptor, and teacher. Son of a goldsmith, he studied in Paris and painted melodramatic and often erotic historical and mythological compositions, excelling as a draftsman in the linear style of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. His best-known works are scenes inspired by several visits to Egypt. In his later years he produced mostly sculpture. He exerted much influence as a teacher at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; his pupils included Odilon Redon and Thomas Eakins. A staunch defender of the academic tradition, he tried in 1893 to block the government acceptance of the Impressionist works bequeathed by Gustave Caillebotte.
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.