Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1697-1768 Italian painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was the most distinguished Italian view painter of the 18th century. Apart from ten years spent in England he lived in Venice, and his fame rests above all on his views (vedute) of that city; some of these are purely topographical, others include festivals or ceremonial events. He also painted imaginary views (capriccios), although the demarcation between the real and the invented is never quite clearcut: his imaginary views often include realistically depicted elements, though in unexpected surroundings, and in a sense even his Venetian vedute are imaginary. He never merely re-created reality. He was highly successful with the English, helped in this by the British connoisseur JOSEPH SMITH, whose own large collection of Canaletto works was sold to King George III in 1762. The British Royal Collection has the largest group of his paintings and drawings.  Related Paintings of Canaletto :. | London: Westminster Bridge from the North on Lord Mayor s Day | the Old Horse Guards from St James-s Park | Immaculate Conception s | Grand Canal: Looking North-East toward the Rialto Bridge (detail) d | Il Canal Grande da campo S Vio (mk21) |
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Frank Weston Benson
(March 24, 1862 - November 15, 1951) was an American Impressionist artist, and a member of the Ten American Painters. Benson was born in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1879, he began study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under Otto Grundmann, and later at the Acad??mie Julian in Paris. Upon return to America, he would become an instructor at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Some of his best known paintings (Eleanor, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Summer, Rhode Island School of Design Museum) depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous paintings and etchings of wildfowl. Born into a successful merchant family, Benson lived in Salem for most of his life. At the Boston Museum school he befriended Edmund Charles Tarbell and Robert Reid, at the same time teaching drawing classes in Salem and painting landscapes during the summer. In 1883 he began his studies in Paris, and in the summer of 1884 painted at Concarneau, along with Willard Metcalf and Edward Simmons. His early paintings were conventional landscapes.
Cornelis Bol
Dutch, born circa 1589-1666,Painter, etcher and draughtsman, active in London. He was probably from a family of painters originating in Mechelen who later settled in Antwerp. Bol and his wife were members of the Dutch Church in London in 1636. An etching of an Action between the Dutch and Spanish Fleets (Oxford, Bodleian Lib.) is signed and dated 1639, and a set of etchings by him after Abraham Casembrot ( fl c. 1650-75) includes a view of Lambeth Palace as well as four imaginary Mediterranean seaports. A signed drawing of the Blockhouse at Gravesend is in the British Museum, London. George Vertue saw at Wotton House, Bucks, 'three views of London from the River side Arundel House Somersett house Tower Lond. painted before the fire of London by Cornelius Boll: a good free taste'. They were probably commissioned by John Evelyn, the diarist, around 1660 and descended in the Evelyn family. Their attribution to Bol is confirmed by a signed version of Somerset House (London, Dulwich Pict. Gal.). Although Bol was only moderately accomplished, he was able to reproduce the distinctive light and character of the River Thames and to render the riverside and its landmarks with much topographical detail; his pictures make pleasing visual documents. The handling of the naval craft is identical in a small signed oil panel of an Action between Dutch and Spanish Ships (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and in other marine subjects that have appeared in London salerooms. According to Immerzeel, Bol was still working in London at the time of the Great Fire in 1666.
Lear, Edward
English Painter and Illustrator, 1818-1888 English painter, draughtsman, illustrator and writer. In the 1860s Lear described himself as 'Greek Topographical Painter par excellence', aspiring to the title of 'Painter-Laureate and Boshproducing-Luminary forthwith' (quoted in 1983 exh. cat., p. 14). This whimsical summary of his versatile activities as topographical draughtsman, oil painter, traveller, writer and illustrator of nonsense rhymes and stories is typical of Lear's idiosyncratic literary style. It reflected his eccentric personality. He was epileptic and prone to fits of deep depression. In addition, owing to family misfortunes,