George Elgar Hicks
1824-1914
British
George Elgar Hicks Gallery
Born on March 13, 1824 in Lymington, Hampshire, George Elgar Hicks was the second son of a wealthy magistrate. His parents encouraged Hicks to become a doctor and so Hicks studied medicine at University College from 1840-42. However, after three years "ardous and disagreeable study" Hicks decided he wanted to be an artist. Due to this, Hicks began training as an artist considerably later in life than most artists of the time. In 1843, Hicks attended Sass's Academy and by 1844 had entered the Royal Academy Schools.
In 1847 Hicks married Maria Hariss and six of their eight children were born in the seven years following. He did not achieve much success as an artist during this period and later referred to his art at this time as "small and unimportant." He blamed this on the fact he had little time to study art or interact with other artists, due to his busy family life.
In 1859, Hicks painted his first large genre painting, Dividend Day. Bank of England (exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1859) following the success of Frith's paintings Ramsgate Sands and Derby Day at the Royal Academy. It was a typical genre painting, showing a scene from the Bank of England and featuring a broad range of social classes. Hicks painted several more large modern life paintings in the following years which were generally poorly reviewed by critics. These include The General Post Office. One minute to 6 (1860), Billingsgate Fish Market (1861) and Changing Homes (1862). Hicks paintings were often of subjects that no other artists attempted, such as the General Post Office and Billingsgate Fish Market. Hicks was one of the few artists that showed lasting interest in the emulation of Frith's style and is generally considered Frith's principal imitator.
By the late 1860s, the popularity of genre painting had waivered and Hicks began to focus on painting historical subjects, leading to society portraiture in the 1870s.
In 1884, Hicks remarried following the death of Maria in 1881. He retired in the 1890s and died a month before the declaration of World War I in 1914. Related Paintings of George Elgar Hicks :. | Afternoon Wind | Self-Portrait with Saskia | Portrait of Maria Andreyevna Rumyantseva | Still Life with Calf's Leg | mahias palbitzki | Related Artists: Ramon Bayeu1746-1793
Spanish
Ramon Bayeu Gallery
The biography of Jose del Castillo (Madrid, 14.10.1737-Madrid, 5.10.1793) shows that the artist, being in his youth one of the most appropriate painters for becoming a leader of the artistic movement of the Illustrious Absolutism, ends up performing secondary work, paintings for tapestry and some religious works of art, which was not the field where he could best display his talent. Jose del Castillo is a perfect example of how an unhappy destiny can influence on the professional life of a painter under the regime of that time. Surely the unhappy destiny, in point of fact, does not explain anything and we will have to find out the real reasons why one of the most promising careers in painting of the eighteenth century in Spain was crushed. Probably it was a combination of two unsuccessful elections, from our point of view, that excluded the figure of Jose del Castillo from the elite group of artists of that time. Julius LeBlanc Stewart (September 6, 1855, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - January 5, 1919, Paris, France), was an American artist who spent his career in Paris. A contemporary of fellow expatriate painter John Singer Sargent, Stewart was nicknamed "the Parisian from Philadelphia."
His father, the sugar millionaire William Hood Stewart, moved the family to Paris in 1865, and became a distinguished art collector and an early patron of Fortuny and the Barbizon artists. Julius studied under Eduardo Zamacois as a teenager, under Jean-Leo Grôme at the École des Beaux Arts, and later was a pupil of Raymondo de Madrazo.
Stewart's family wealth enabled him to live a lush expatriate life and paint what he pleased, often large-scaled group portraits. The first of these, After the Wedding (1880), showed the artist's brother Charles and his bride Mae, daughter of financier Anthony J. Drexel, leaving for their honeymoon. Wybrand Hendriks (June 24, 1744, Amsterdam - January 28, 1831, Haarlem), was a Dutch painter and the concierge of the Teylers Museum.
According to the RKD he learned to paint while working for the decorative wall paper factory of J. Remmers in Amsterdam. From 1786 to 1819 he was the second concierge ("kastelein") of the Teyler's Stichting in Haarlem, where he lived at the "Fundatiehuis" as curator of the art collection, with his studio in the old drawing room of Teyler's drawing academy, which had itself been moved to the city hall. He assumed the position in 1785 after his predecessor Vincent Jansz van der Vinne had left in disagreement with Martin van Marum, the head of the fossil and instrument collections. As curator, he managed to purchase an important collection of Italian drawings from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden in 1790.
He is known for portraits, landscapes, and flower still lifes in the manner of Jan van Huysum.
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