Russian Painter, ca.1735-1808 Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov (Fedor Rokotov) (Russian: ?????????? ??????????́?????????? ????́??????????) (1736?C1809) was a distinguished Russian painter who specialized in portraits. Fyodor Rokotov was born into a family of peasant serfs, belonging to the Repnins. Much in his biography is obscure. He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom in the end of 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress (1770s, illustration, right). Rokotov avoided painting formal portraits with lots of adornments and decorations. Instead he was one of the first Russian painters advancing a psychological portrait with attention to optical and atmospheric effects.  Related Paintings of Fedor Rokotov :. | Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia | Portrait of Catherine II | Anna Yuryevna Kvashnina Samarina. | Catherine II, | Portrait of Nathalie Petrovna Golitsyn in a white cap |
Related Artists:
Pieter Saenredam
b. 1597, Assendelft, d. 1665, Haarlem,Painter and draughtsman, son of Jan Saenredam. His paintings of churches and the old town halls in Haarlem, Utrecht and Amsterdam must have been appreciated by contemporary viewers principally as faithful representations of familiar and meaningful monuments. Yet they also reveal his exceptional sensitivity to aesthetic values; his paintings embody the most discriminating considerations of composition, colouring and craftsmanship. His oeuvre is comparatively small, the paintings numbering no more than 60, and each is obviously the product of careful calculation and many weeks of work. Their most striking features, unusual in the genre, are their light, closely valued tonalities and their restrained, restful and delicately balanced compositions. These pictures, always executed on smooth panels, are remarkable for their sense of harmony and, in some instances, serenity. Here, perhaps, lies a trace of filial fidelity to the Mannerist tradition of refinement and elegance, of lines never lacking in precision and grace. But Mannerist figures and the more comparable components of strap- and scrollwork embellishment lack the tension and clarity of Saenredam's designs, which also have a completeness reminiscent of the fugues of Gerrit Sweelinck (1566-?1628).
Adolphe Bouguereau
French 1825-1905 French painter. From 1838 to 1841 he took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the coll?ge at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the Ecole Municipale de Dessin et de Peinture part-time, under Jean-Paul Alaux. In 1844 he won the first prize for figure painting, which confirmed his desire to become a painter. As there were insufficient family funds to send him straight to Paris he painted portraits of the local gentry from 1845 to 1846 to earn money. In 1846 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in the studio of Fran?ois-Edouard Picot. This was the beginning of the standard academic training of which he became so ardent a defender later in life. Such early works as Equality (1848; priv. col., see 1984-5 exh. cat., p. 141) reveal the technical proficiency he had attained even while still training. In 1850 he was awarded one of the two Premier Grand Prix de Rome for Zenobia Discovered by Shepherds on the Bank of the River Araxes (1850; Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In December 1850 he left for Rome where he remained at the Villa Medici until 1854, working under Victor Schnetz and Jean Alaux (1786-1864). During this period he made an extensive study of Giotto's work at Assisi and Padua and was also impressed by the works of other Renaissance masters and by Classical art. On his return to France he exhibited the Triumph of the Martyr (1853; Lun?ville, Mus. Lun?ville; see fig. 1) at the Salon of 1854. It depicted St Cecilia's body being carried to the catacombs, and its high finish, restrained colour and classical poses were to be constant features of his painting thereafter. All his works were executed in several stages involving an initial oil sketch followed by numerous pencil drawings taken from life.
Auguste Chabaud
1882-1955,French painter, sculptor and writer. He trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Avignon with Pierre Grivolas (1824-1905). After moving to Paris in 1899 he attended Fernand Cormon's atelier in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and William-Adolphe Bouguereau's studio in the Acad?mie Julian. He also studied at the Acad?mie Carriere, where he met Matisse, Jean Puy, Andre Derain and Pierre Laprade. While family responsibilities from 1901 and military service in World War I sharply curtailed much of his early output, he nonetheless produced noteworthy paintings and sculptures from 1907, the first year he exhibited at the Paris Salon, to 1913, when he exhibited at the Armory Show in New York.