Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.   Related Paintings of GUARDI, Francesco :. | Pope Pius VI Blessing the People on Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo sdg | Audience Granted by the Doge dfh | Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo fh | Piazza di San Marco dfh | The Giudecca Canal with the Zattere dgh |
Related Artists:
Prado, Blas del
Spanish, active 1545-99
Sawrey Gilpin
1733-1807 English Sawrey Gilpin Gallery Gilpin was born 30 Oct 1733 in Cumbria, the son Captain John Bernard Gilpin, a soldier and amateur artist. His elder brother William Gilpin was a clergyman, schoolmaster, and author of several influential works on picturesque scenery. Apprenticed to the marine painter Samuel Scott of Covent Garden, Sawrey came to specialise in painting animals, particularly horses and dogs, which he sometimes added to backgrounds by other artists, including Philip Reinagle, George Barret and J. M. W. Turner. He was patronised by Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland. Gilpin was Director and President of the Society of Artists, and a member of the Royal Academy from 1796. Sawrey Gilpin married Elizabeth Broom; their son William Sawrey Gilpin also became an artist, and in later life a landscape gardener. He died at Broughton, Northamptonshire, England in 1807. Works by Sawrey Gilpin are in the collections of the Courtauld Institute of Art , Tate Britain [3], and the Royal Academy in London and the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
William Glackens
1870-1938 William Glackens Galleries William James Glackens (March 13, 1870?CMay 22, 1938) was a U.S. realist painter. Glackens studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later moved to New York City, where he co-founded what came to be called the Ashcan School art movement. This group of artists, dubbed by the press "the Eight Independent Painters" or The Eight, chose to exhibit their works without pre-approval by the juries of the existing art establishment. He became known for his dark-hued paintings of street scenes and daily life in the city's neighborhoods. His later work was brighter in tone, and showed the influence of Renoir. During much of his career as a painter, Glackens also worked as an illustrator for newspapers and magazines in Philadelphia and New York City.