1791-1882 Italian Francesco Hayez Galleries Hayez came from a relatively poor family from Venice. His father was of French origin while his mother, Chiara Torcella, was from Murano. The child Francesco, youngest of five sons, was brought up by his mother sister, who had married Giovanni Binasco, a well-off shipowner and collector of art. From childhood he showed a predisposition for drawing, so his uncle apprenticed him to an art restorer. Later he became a student of the painter Francisco Magiotto with whom he continued his studies for three years. He was admitted to the painting course of the New Academy of Fine Arts in 1806, where he studied under Teodoro Matteini. In 1809 he won a competition from the Academy of Venice for one year of study at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He remained in Rome until 1814, then moved to Naples where he was commissioned by Joachim Murat to paint a major work depicting Ulysses at the court of Alcinous. In the mid 1830s he attended the Salotto Maffei salon in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei (whose portrait Hayez painted for her husband), and he was still in Milan in 1850 when he was appointed director of the Academy of Brera there. Assessment of the career of Hayez is complicated by the fact that he often did not sign or date his works. Often the date indicated from the evidence is that at which the work was acquired or sold, not of its creation. Moreover he often painted the same compositions several times with minimal variations, or even with no variation. His early works show the influence of Ingres and the Nazarene movement. His later work participates in the Classical revival.  Related Paintings of Francesco Hayez :. | The Kiss | Venezianerinnen | Der Tod des Dogen Marin Faliero | Bubende Maria Magdalena | Portrait of Camillo Benso di Cavour |
Related Artists:
Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk
1782-1810 Dutch Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk Gallery Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. In 1803 he was admitted to the Amsterdam Tekenacademie where he was a pupil of the director, Jurriaan Andriessen. Despite a highly successful student career that culminated in a gold medal from the Felix Meritis Society in 1807, he was unable to establish himself as a professional artist during the remainder of his very short working life in Amsterdam. Andriessen's studies from nature seem to have been an important influence; van Troostwijk was one of the earliest artists to paint en plein air. Although he looked back to 17th-century Dutch landscape art and to the work of his contemporaries, in such paintings as Landscape in Gelderland (c. 1808; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; see NETHERLANDS, THE, fig. 21) he achieved a totally new lyricism in the rendering of atmospheric effects. The Raampoortje (1809; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) displays a fresh colouristic touch rare in Dutch painting of this period. His Self-portrait (c. 1810; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) is equally original in composition and colour. He also produced animal paintings in the manner of Paulus Potter, drawings and a few etchings towards the end of his life. Van Troostwijk died before his considerable talents could be recognized, and, although he has come to be seen as an important precursor of much late 19th-century Dutch painting, he had little influence on his immediate successors.
John mulcaster carrick
fl.1854-1880
George Gower
1540-1596 English George Gower Gallery Little is known about his early life except that he was a grandson of Sir John Gower of Stettenham, Yorkshire. His earliest documented works are the two 1573 companion portraits of Sir Thomas Kytson and his wife Lady Kytson, now in the Tate Gallery in London. Gower painted a self-portrait in 1579 (right) that shows his coat of arms and his artist's tools of his trade. An allegorical device shows a balance with an artist's dividers outweighing the family coat of arms, "a startling claim in England where a painter was still viewed as little more than an artisan." The Armada portrait of Elizabeth I by George Gower c. 1588Gower was appointed to the position of Serjeant Painter to Queen Elizabeth in 1581. This allowed him to paint most of England??s aristocracy. The post also made him responsible for painted decoration at the royal residences, and on coaches and furniture. Among his works were a fountain (now destroyed) and the astronomical clock, both at Hampton Court Palace. He also inspected portraits of the Queen by other artists prior to their official release. Gower's best-known work is the version of the Armada Portrait of Elizabeth now at Woburn Abbey, painted to commemorate the 1588 defeat of the Spanish Armada. (A cut down version of this painting in the National Portrait Gallery (United Kingdom) is attributed to Gower; the "Drake" version is by a different hand.)