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 :. | Anna Yuryevna Kvashnina Samarina. | Portrait of Nathalie Petrovna Golitsyn in a white cap | Alexandra Struyskaya | Catherine II, | Portrait of Anna Yuryevna Kvashnina Samarina | Related Artists:
louis marcoussisLouis Marcoussis, formerly Ludwik Kazimierz Wladyslaw Markus or Ludwig Casimir Ladislas Markus, (1878 or 1883, Warsaw -- October 22, 1941, Cusset) was a painter and engraver of Polish origin who lived in Paris for much of his life and became a French citizen.
After studying law briefly in Warsaw he went to the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers included Jan Stanislawski and Jozev Mehoffer. Moving to Paris in 1903, he spent a short time at the Academie Julian under Jules Lefebvre. The first time a painting of his was shown in a major exhibition was at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, and over the next quarter-century his work was shown in many other important exhibitions, in particular at the Salon des Independants and the Tuileries.
He drew cartoons for satirical journals, as he had earlier in Poland. In Paris he needed to earn his own living, and also took on other drawing and illustration work. In the cafes of Montmartre and Montparnasse he got to know Apollinaire, Braque, Degas, Picasso and many more artists and writers. It was Apollinaire who suggested Markus' French name, Marcoussis, after a village not far from Paris.
Impressionism influenced his early paintings, but from about 1910 he was part of the Cubist movement alongside other avant-garde painters like Picasso, Braque and Juan Gris. His work was shown in exhibitions in many European cities and in the US. In 1925 he had his first solo exhibition in Paris. As well as painting still-lifes and musical instruments in the Cubist manner, he also produced portraits, views of Paris, and images from the Breton seaside.
From 1930 onwards, he concentrated on printmaking and illustration, including work inspired by Apollinaire's Alcool, Tzara's Indicateur des chemins de cœur, and Éluard's Lingeres legeres and Aurelia. In the late 1930s Marcoussis collaborated with Spanish surrealist Joan Mire and taught him etching techniques. He also taught at the Academie Schlaefer.
In 1913 he had married Alice Halicka, a painter who came from Krakow. Their daughter Malene was born in 1922. Marcoussis served in a Polish company of the French Foreign Legion from 1914-1919. He became a French citizen, while also staying in touch with Poland, both personally and professionally. He did not generally talk about his Jewish ancestry, and his family had converted to Catholicism, but today Marcoussis is often described as a Jewish artist.
After Nazi troops arrived in Paris in 1940, Marcoussis and Alice moved to Cusset near Vichy. He died there on 22 October 1941
Franz von LenbachShrobenhausen 1836-Munich 1904
German painter. The son of a master builder, he trained for his father's profession at the Kenigliche Landwirtschafts- und Gewerbeschule in Landshut, also working from 1851 in the sculpture studio of Anselm Sickinger (1807-73) in Munich. His elder brother, Karl August Lenbach (1828-47), had already become involved with painting, and it was through him that Franz Lenbach met Johann Baptist Hofner (1832-1913), an artist who had studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in Munich. They went on sketching expeditions together, and Hofner introduced him to plein-air painting. After spending two semesters at the Polytechnische Schule in Augsburg (1852-3), and some months in the studio of Albert Grefle (1807-89), a portrait painter in Munich, Lenbach entered the Akademie in Munich in 1854. In 1857 he attended the classes of Karl Theodor Piloty (later von Piloty), who was renowned for his history paintings. Lenbach produced his first important painting, the Angel Appearing to Hagar in the Desert (1858; destr.), while in this class, followed by Peasants Trying to Take Shelter from a Thunderstorm in a Chapel (1858; destr.; oil sketch, Schweinfurt, Samml. Schefer). The sale of this picture, together with a scholarship, enabled him to accompany Piloty on a journey to Rome with Ferdinand von Piloty (1828-95),
Jindrich Pruchapainted Village Green in 1910 - 1911