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 Rossetti became increasingly depressed, and buried the bulk of his unpublished poems in his wife's grave at Highgate Cemetery, though he would later have them exhumed.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 :. | Found (mk28) | The Bride (mk09) | Writing on the Sand (mk28) | Fazio's Mistress | Saint Catherine |
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Michael Willmann
(27 September 1630 - 26 August 1706) was a German painter. The Baroque artist became known as the "Silesian Raphael". Willmann was born in Königsberg, Duchy of Prussia. He was educated by his father, the painter, Christian Peter Willmann. Michael went to the Dutch Republic in 1650 to learn from the masters, and he was inspired by the works of Rembrandt, Peter Paul Rubens, and Anthony van Dyck. For financial reasons he was unable to afford studying at the studio of a well-known painter. After two years in the Netherlands, mostly spent in Amsterdam, Willmann returned to Königsberg, passed his master's examination, and began to travel. After visiting Danzig, Willmann went to Prague, where he stayed from 1653-55. He then spent about a year in Breslau. Willmann's first known paintings, commissioned by Abbot Arnold Freiberger of the Abbatia Lubensis abbey in Leubus, Lower Silesia, date from 1656. Leubus became the setting of much of Willmann's creativity. From 1657-58 Willmann was in Berlin as the court painter of Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg. He painted mythological scenes for the elector, presumably for his residence at Königsberg Castle. In 1660 Willmann returned to Leubus, which allowed him a large workshop. Willmann's workship, modeled after those of the Dutch painters, quickly spread his fame. The extensive studio included his son Michael Leopold Willmann the Younger, his daughter Anna Elisabeth, and Anna Elisabeth's husband Christian Neuenhertz and son Georg Wilhelm Neunhertz. Willmann's studio also counted Johann Kretschmer from Glogau, Johann Jacob Eybelwieser from Breslau, the Cistercian Jacob Arlet from Gressau, and Willmann's stepson Johann Christoph Lischka. Willmann became the leading painter of Silesia through his expressiveness, technical dexterity, and speed. Willmann worked on orders from the patriciate of Breslau, as well as churches and monasteries throughout Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. He received contracts for the Cistercian monasteries in Gressau, Heinrichau, Kamenz, Rauden, and Himmelwitz. With the assistance of his students and assistants, Willmann produced 500 paintings and frescos during his life. Numerous drawings of Willmann's were later used by engravers.
Philipe Mercier
Philippe Mercier (also known as Philip Mercier) (Berlin, 1689 - London, 18 July 1760) was a French painter and etcher, who lived principally and was active in England. He was born in Berlin of French extraction, the son of a Huguenot tapestry-worker. He studied painting at the Akademie der Wissenschaften of Berlin[1] and later under Antoine Pesne, who had arrived in Berlin in 1710. Later, he traveled in Italy and France before arriving in Londone"recommended by the Court at Hannover"eprobably in 1716. He married in London in 1719 and lived in Leicester Fields. He was appointed principal painter and librarian to the Prince and Princess of Wales at their independent establishment in Leicester Fields, and while he was in favor he painted various portraits of the Royalties, and no doubt many of the nobility and gentry. Of the Royal portraits, those of the Prince of Wales and of his three sisters, painted in 1728, were all engraved in mezzotint by Jean Pierre Simon, and that of the three elder children of the Prince of Wales by the John Faber Junior in 1744. This last was a typical piece of Mercier's composition, the children being made the subject of a spirited, if somewhat childish, allegory in their game of play. Prince George is represented with a firelock on his shoulder, teaching a dog his drill, while his little brother and sister are equally occupied in a scene that is aptly used to point a patriotic moral embodied in some verses subjoined to the plate
David Johnson
American Landscape painter. b.1827 d.1908 was a member of the second generation of Hudson River School painters. He was born in New York City, New York. He studied for two years at the antique school of the National Academy of Design. He also studied briefly with the Hudson River artist Jasper Francis Cropsey. Along with John Frederick Kensett and John William Casilear, he was best known for the development of Luminism. By 1850, Johnson was exhibiting regularly at the National Academy of Design in New York, where he became an associate in 1860.