Norwegian 1863-1944 Edvard Munch Locations Edvard Munch (pronounced , December 12, 1863 ?C January 23, 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker, and an important forerunner of expressionistic art. His best-known composition, The Scream is one of the pieces in a series titled The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of life, love, fear, death, and melancholy. Edvard Munch was born in a rustic farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk in Loten, Norway to Christian Munch, the son of a prominent priest. Christian was a doctor and medical officer, who married Laura Cathrine Bjølstad, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had an older sister, Johanne Sophie (born 1862), and three younger siblings: Peter Andreas (born 1865), Laura Cathrine (born 1867), and Inger Marie (born 1868). Both Sophie and Edvard appear to have gotten their art talent from their mother. Edvard Munch was related to painter Jacob Munch (1776?C1839) and historian Peter Andreas Munch (1810?C1863). The family moved to Kristiania (now Oslo) in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress. Edvard??s mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munch's favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877. After their mother's death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father and by their aunt Karen. Often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He also received tutoring from his school mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost stories and tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Christian??s positive behavior toward his children, however, was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, ??My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious??to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angles of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.?? Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, plus Edvard??s poor health and the vivid ghost stories, helped inspire macabre visions and nightmares in Edvard, who felt death constantly advancing on him. One of Munch's younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding. Munch would later write, "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies??the heritage of consumption and insanity." Christian Munch??s military pay was very low, and his attempts at developing a private side practice failed, keeping his family in perrenial poverty. They moved frequently from one sordid flat to another. Munch??s early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the individual objects such as medicine bottles and drawing implements, plus some landscapes. By his teens, art dominated Munch??s interests. At thirteen, Munch has his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, were he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school, and where he returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils.  Related Paintings of Edvard Munch :. | Self-Portrait | Worker | The Children is ill | Sister Englaer | Envy |
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Christian Daniel Rauch
1777 Arolsen-1857 Dresden,was a German sculptor. Rauch was born at Arolsen in the Principality of Waldeck. His parents were poor and unable to place him under efficient masters. His first instructor taught him little else than the art of sculpting gravestones, and Professor Ruhl of Kassel could not give him much more. A wider field of improvement opened up before him when he removed to Berlin in 1797; but he was obliged to earn a livelihood by becoming a royal lackey, and to practise his art in spare hours. Queen Louisa of Prussia, surprising him one day in the act of modeling her features in wax, sent him to study at the Academy of Art. Not long afterwards, in 1804, Count Sandrecky gave Rauch the means to complete his education at Rome, where Wilhelm von Humboldt, Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen befriended him. Among other works, he executed bas-reliefs of "Hippolytus and Phaedra," "Mars and Venus wounded by Diomede," and a "Child praying." In 1811 Rauch was commissioned to execute a monument for Queen Louisa of Prussia.
Jean Portaels
Vilvorde, 1818 - Schaerbeek, 1895 was a Belgian orientalist painter and director of the Academy of Brussels. His father, a rich brewer, sent him to study at the Brussels Academy, whose Director, François Navez, took him on soon after in his own workshop. About 1841 Portaels went to Paris, where he was well received by Paul Delaroche. After his return to Belgium, he won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1842. He then travelled through Italy, Greece, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, the Lebanon, Judaea, Spain, Hungary and Norway. On his return to Belgium in 1847 Portaels succeeded H. Vanderhaert as Director of the Academy in Ghent. In 1849 he married the daughter of his first teacher, Navez, and in 1850 he settled in Brussels; but when he did not get the post of Director of the Brussels academy, and wished, nevertheless, to carry on teaching as his father-in-law had done, he opened a private studio-school, which became one of great significance in the development of Belgian art. Once more he went on his travels, spending time in Morocco; he returned to Brussels in 1874, and in 1878 became Director of the Academy which had so long been the object of his ambition. Portaels was an extremely prolific artist. Huge oil paintings adorning the walls of St Jacques-sur-Caudenberg; biblical scenes, such as The Daughter of Sion Reviled, The Death of Judas, The Magi travelling to Bethlehem, Judiths Prayer, and The Drought in Judaea; genre pictures, such as A Box in the Theatre at Budapest , portraits of officials and of high society, Oriental scenes and, above all, pictures of exotic female figures and exotic life. "His work is usually marked by an easy grace, which he perhaps uses to excess", wrote Theophile Gautier. But his pleasing and abundant productions as a painter do not constitute Portaels' crowning merit.
Jean-Etienne Liotard
1702-1789 Swiss Jean Etienne Liotard Gallery He began his studies under Professor Gardelle and Petitot, whose enamels and miniatures he copied with considerable skill. He went to Paris in 1725, studying under J. B. Masse and François Lemoyne, on whose recommendation he was taken to Naples by the Marquis Puysieux. In 1735 he was in Rome, painting the portraits of Pope Clement XII and several cardinals. Three years later he accompanied Lord Duncannon to Constantinople. His eccentric adoption of oriental costume secured him the nickname of the Turkish painter. He went to Vienna in 1742 to paint the portraits of the imperial family. Still under distinguished patronage he returned to Paris. In 1744 he visited England, where he painted the princess of Wales in 1753, and went to Holland in 1756, where, in the following year, he married Marie Fargues. She also came from a Hugenot family, and wanted him to shave off his beard. Another visit to England followed in 1772, and in the next two years his name figures among the Royal Academy exhibitors. He returned to his native town in 1776. In 1781 Liotard published his Trait?? des principes et des r??gles de la peinture. In his last days he painted still lifes and landscapes. He died at Geneva in 1789. Liotard was an artist of great versatility, and though his fame depends largely on his graceful and delicate pastel drawings, of which La Liseuse, The Chocolate Girl, and La Belle Lyonnaise at the Dresden Gallery are delightful examples, he achieved distinction by his enamels, copperplate engravings and glass painting. He also wrote a Treatise on the Art of Painting, and was an expert collector of paintings by the old masters. Many of the masterpieces he had acquired were sold by him at high prices on his second visit to England. The museums of Amsterdam, Berne, and Geneva are particularly rich in examples of his paintings and pastel drawings. A picture of a Turk seated is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the British Museum owns two of his drawings. The Louvre has, besides twenty-two drawings, a portrait of Lieutenant General Hrault and a portrait of the artist is to be found at the Sala di pittori, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. While his son also married a Dutch girl, the Rijksmuseum inherited an important collection of his drawings and paintings.