Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614 Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures. In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals.  Related Paintings of El Greco :. | St Luke | st. louis, king of france | Purification of the Temple | Mary Magdalen in Penitence | The Annuciation |
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Antoine Rivalz
(1667, Toulouse - 1735) was a French painter. The son of Jean-Pierre Rivalz (who painted and designed the city's hôtel de ville), Antoine was the official painter to the town of Toulouse, a talented portraitist of the society of the city in the 18th century. He also produced a large number of drawings. Antoine Rivalz began his training in the studios of his father Jean-Pierre, the sculptor Marc Arcis and the artist Raymond Lafage. In his training, he was particularly interested in studying classical works and the Baroque Italian masters. From 1685 to 1687 he trained at the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris. On his return to Toulouse he received his first two commissions. In 1687 he set out for Rome, where he stayed for more than ten years. In 1694 he won second prize at the Accademia di San Luca with a drawing of The fall of the giants, with first prize going to Antonio Balestra and Felice Nardi. In Rome he became friends with other artists such as Carlo Maratta, Luigi Garzi and Benedetto Luti, and was more and more in demand for commissions from families in both Rome and Toulouse. In 1703, he returned to Toulouse and was made painter of the city's hôtel de ville, a post he held until his death. Supported by an important studio, he received a large number of commissions - commemorative paintings, paintings of ordinance and armour, architectural projects, restorations. This post, however, allowed him above all to forge productive relations with the city's upper classes and benefit from a near-monopoly on public, religious and private commissions in the city. He married his first cousin Louise Rivalz, with whom he had six children, including the future artist Pierre Rivalz, known as the "chevalier Rivalz". In 1726 he set up Toulouse's first art school and in 1750 letters patent from Louis XV turned it into the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture de Toulouse, the only one in France (after that in Paris) to be allowed to bear that title.
Louis Buvelot
Swiss-born Australian Painter 1814-1888 was a Swiss-born landscape painter who emigrated to Australia in 1865 and influenced the Heidelberg School of painters. Buvelot was born in Morges, Vaud, Switzerland, second son of Francois Simeon Buvelot, postal official, and his wife Jeanne-Louise nee Heizer, a school teacher. Louis Buvelot worked under Marc-Louis Arland at Lausanne, and from around 1834 continued his studies at Paris with Camille Flers, a well-known landscape painter of the day. After a few months there he migrated to Bahia, Brazil where he worked on his uncle's coffee plantation. In October 1840 Buvelot moved to Rio de Janeiro and attracted the notice of the emperor Dom Pedro II, who bought some of his pictures and decorated him with the Order of the Rose. In November 1843 Buvelot married Marie-Felicite, nee Lalouette (born 1816). Buvelot returned to Switzerland in 1852 and in 1856 was awarded a silver medal for a picture exhibited at Berne.
William Bell Scott
1811-1890 Brother of David Scott. He trained at the Trustees' Academy in Edinburgh and was taught engraving by his father. He saw the family print workshop as 'the lineal descendant of Albert Derer's factory in Nernberg'; he was later to own a fine collection of D?rer's prints and write a book about him (1870). In 1837 he went to London, where he was impressed by 'a new and interesting school of historical and loosely speaking, inventive and illustrative painters'. This encouraged him to leave landscape painting for the time being and become a history painter. Like his brother, he entered a cartoon for the Westminster Hall competition in 1842: the Free North Britons Surprising the Roman Wall between the Tyne and Solway; this too was unsuccessful. In 1843, discouraged by lack of patronage in London, he accepted the Mastership of the Government School of Design at Newcastle upon Tyne, where he stayed for 20 years, visiting London each summer.