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.Jerome | The Dormition of the Virgin | La Purificacion del templo Roma | view and plan of toledo | The Resurrection |
Related Artists:
Frank Walton
Frank Walton. RI, RBA (1840 - 1888)
Lebasque, Henri
French Painter, 1865-1937 was born in 1865 at Champign (Maine-et-Loire). He started his education at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, and moved to Paris in 1886. Here, Lebasque started studying under Leon Bonnat, and assisted Humbert with the decorative murals at the Pantheon. Around this time, Lebasque met Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir, who later would have a large impact on his work. Lebasque's vision was coloured by his contact with younger painters, especially Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, founders of the The Nabis' Group and the Intimists who first favoured the calm and quietude of domestic subject matter. From his first acquaintance with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, Lebasque learnt the significance of a colour theory which stressed the use of complementary colours in shading. Lebasque was a founding member of the Salon d'Automne in 1903 with his friend Henri Matisse. Two years later a group of artists exhibited there including Georges Rouault, Andre Derain, Edouard Vuillard and Henri Matisse while keeping solid links with other artists such as Gustave Rouault, Raoul Dufy, Louis Valtat and especially Henri Manguin, who made him discover the south of France. His time in South of France would lead to a radical transformation in Lebasque's paintings, changing his colour palette forever. Other travels included the Vendee, Normandie and Brittany, although Lebasque would always prefer the small idyllic villages of the South of France. Lebasque had some commercial success during his lifetime. He worked on the decorations at the theatre of the Champs-Elyses and of the Transatlantique sealiner.
Alfred Elmore
Irish-born British Painter, 1815-1881 was a Victorian history and genre painter. He was born in Cork, Ireland, the son of Dr. John Richard Elmore, a surgeon who retired from the British Army to Clonakilty. His family moved to London, where Elmore studied at the Royal Academy of Arts. His early works were in the troubadour style of Richard Parkes Bonington, but he soon graduated to religious work, notably The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, commissioned by Daniel O'Connell for Westland Row Church in Dublin. Between 1840 and 1844 Elmore travelled across Europe, visiting Munich, Venice, Bologna, and Florence. Elmore seems to have been associated with The Clique, a group of young artists who saw themselves as followers of Hogarth and David Wilkie. According to his friend William Powell Frith he was member of the group, but since it was most active while he was in continental Europe, his involvement was probably short-lived. Most of Elmore's later works were historical narrative paintings. Religious Controversy and The Novice were implicitly anti-Catholic in character. Other paintings set episodes from Shakespeare, or the history of the French Revolution. They often contained subtle explorations of the process of creation, most importantly his two paintings about technological innovation, The Invention of the Stocking Loom (1847, Nottingham Castle Museum) and The Invention of the Combing Machine (1862, Cartwright Hall, Bradford). Both portray the process of industrialisation by depicting picturesque pre-industrial handicrafts. The inventor is supposed to be pondering these manual skills while he forms in his mind a mechanism to replace them. Elmore's best-known work is On the Brink (1865; Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), a moral genre painting depicting a young woman who has lost her money gambling, and is 'on the brink' of responding to the blandishments of a seducer, who is depicted as a satan-like figure,