Dante Gabriel Rossetti
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1828-1882
Rossetti's first major paintings display some of the realist qualities of the early Pre-Raphaelite movement. His Girlhood of Mary, Virgin and Ecce Ancilla Domini both portray Mary as an emaciated and repressed teenage girl. His incomplete picture Found was his only major modern-life subject. It depicted a prostitute, lifted up from the street by a country-drover who recognises his old sweetheart. However, Rossetti increasingly preferred symbolic and mythological images to realistic ones. This was also true of his later poetry. Many of the ladies he portrayed have the image of idealized Botticelli's Venus, who was supposed to portray Simonetta Vespucci.
Although he won support from the John Ruskin, criticism of his clubs caused him to withdraw from public exhibitions and turn to waterhum, which could be sold privately.
In 1861, Rossetti published The Early Italian Poets, a set of English translations of Italian poetry including Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova. These, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, inspired his art in the 1850s. His visions of Arthurian romance and medieval design also inspired his new friends of this time, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. Rossetti also typically wrote sonnets for his pictures, such as "Astarte Syraica". As a designer, he worked with William Morris to produce images for stained glass and other decorative devices.
Both these developments were precipitated by events in his private life, in particular by the death of his wife Elizabeth Siddal. She had taken an overdose of laudanum shortly after giving birth to a stillborn child. Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed. He idealised her image as Dante's Beatrice in a number of paintings, such as Beata Beatrix.
These paintings were to be a major influence on the development of the European Symbolist movement. In these works, Rossetti's depiction of women became almost obsessively stylised. He tended to portray his new lover Fanny Cornforth as the epitome of physical eroticism, whilst another of his mistresses Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner William Morris, was glamorised as an ethereal goddess. Related Paintings of Dante Gabriel Rossetti :. | A Vision of Fiammetta | Portrait of Algernon Swinburne | Found (mk28) | La Ghirlandata | Scenes from Malory's Morte d'Arthur | Related Artists: Arthur ElsleyBritish
FL.1890-1919
Frank Mahony (4 December 1862 - 28 June 1916) was an Australian artist and member of the Dawn and Dusk Club.
Although christened "Francis Mahony", he later added 'Prout' and usually signed his work 'Frank P. Mahony'.
Mahony was born in Melbourne, third surviving child of Timothy Mahony, an Irish-born contractor, and his Cornish second wife Elizabeth, Johns. Mahony was taken to Sydney when 10 years old and studied at the Academy of Art under Giulio Anivitti.Mahony's work was accepted by The Bulletin and he became known for his excellent drawings of horses. In 1889 his oil painting Rounding up a Straggler, was bought for the Art Gallery of New South Wales; in 1896 The Cry of the Mothers was also purchased.Mahony did a lot of illustrative work for the Picturesque Atlas of Australia, Victoria and its Metropolis, the Antipodean and other magazines of the period, and was also responsible for some of the illustrations to Barcroft Boake's Where the Dead Men Lie. Adam ElsheimerGerman Baroque Era Painter, 1578-1610
German painter, printmaker and draughtsman, active in Italy. His small paintings on copper established him after his brief life as the most singular and influential German artist to follow D?rer. Their grand conception in terms of monumental figures and poetic landscape and their meticulous, miniature-like execution were admired by Rubens and came to influence many 17th-century artists, including Rembrandt.
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