French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Bathers | Fisherman | The Maria at Honfleur | End of the Seawall | Grassy Riverbank |
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Peeter Danckers de Rij
Pieter, Peeter, or Peter Danckerts de Rij, Dankers de Ry, or Peteris Dankersas (1605, Amsterdam - 9 August 1661, Rudnik) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He was the son of Cornelis Danckerts de Ry, member of a large family of printers, painters and engravers. Adam Kazanowski - by Peeter Danckers de Rij. Example of Dankerts-Sandrart collaboration in print of PC Hooft. This 1642 engraving was painted by Sandrart, etched by Reinier van Persijn, and printed by Danckerts. The poem in Latin at the bottom was written by Caspar Barlaeus.Cornelis is mentioned in Houbraken's Schouburg as being one of the many teachers of Joachim von Sandrart in 1640-41, though considering Sandrart's age and experience (he had just returned to the North from his Grand Tour to Italy), this was more of a collaboration. Since Filippo Baldinucci later wrote a biograhical sketch on Pietro Danckerse de Ry in his list of artists called the Notizie, it is possible that Danckerts visited Italy at some time. In any case Sandrart engraved some of Peter's paintings after this period. Peter was active until 1640 in Amsterdam, and then he moved to Warsaw, Danzig, and Vilnius in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. He was active in Poland as the court painter and architect of the Polish King Władysław IV Vasa. According to Houbraken a poem was written in his honor that applauds his work in Poland. He died as the result of a highway robbery in the Redininkai Forest near Vilnius, Lithuania.
Henry Sargent
1770-1845 Henry Sargent Gallery Henry Sargent (baptized November 25, 1770 ?? February 21, 1845), American painter and military man, was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts. One of seven children born to Daniel and Mary (Turner) Sargent and the brother of Lucius Manlius Sargent, he was a great-grandson of William Sargent, who received a grant of land at Gloucester in 1678. His father was a prosperous and public-spirited merchant. Henry was sent as a young boy to Dummer Academy, South Byfield, and then, the family having moved to Boston, he continued his studies under local teachers. After a period in the counting house of Thomas Handasyd Perkins, he continued his commercial apprenticeship with his father, but suddenly, as he was attaining his majority, without having previously shown special partiality for the arts of design, he determined to become an artist. An elder brother's efforts in this direction seem to have stimulated him, and his mother encouraged him. John Trumbull, who visited Boston in 1790, saw some of his work and found it promising. In 1793 Sargent went to London, where he studied with Benjamin West and had courteous treatment from John Singleton Copley. A letter of Sargent's dated March 27, 1795 shows that he found living in London expensive and the painter's profession much depressed. He returned to Boston in 1799, still strongly conscious of "the apathy then existing towards the arts". Accordingly, in that same year he took a commission in the national army then being raised under the command of Alexander Hamilton. This service was brief, but it gave Sargent a taste for military life which motivated his long connection with the Massachusetts militia. In or shortly after 1799 he joined the Boston Light Infantry, which had been organized the year before and of which his brother, Daniel Sargent, was captain. Records of the adjutant-general's office in the Massachusetts State House show that Henry Sargent became first lieutenant of this company on October 1, 1804, and captain on March 31, 1807. Of a tall, thin, Yankee build, he was a handsome officer and an efficient drill master. During the War of 1812 his company aided in the fortification of Fort Strong, and on May 31, 1815, he was appointed aide-de-camp to the governor, with the rank of colonel. In 1812, 1815, 1816, and 1817 he was a member of the Massachusetts Senate. On April 2, 1807, Sargent married Hannah, the daughter of Samuel and Isabella (Pratt) Welles, of Boston, and they had two daughters who died in infancy and two sons, one of whom was Henry Winthrop Sargent. In the course of the following decade, growing deafness caused him gradually to withdraw from public services and to devote himself entirely to his painting and to mechanical inventions; he achieved no particular fame in the latter field. His painting was that of a diligent and gifted artist whose talent fell short of genius. His portraits were less masterful than those of his fellow townsman, Gilbert Stuart, with whom he was personally intimate. Like Copley, whom he somewhat resembled as a painter, Sargent enjoyed intensive elaboration of textures and accessories. He had a capacity for doing canvases that required sustained effort. The well-known Landing of the Pilgrims, at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, attributed to him, is not representative of his best work. Far better are the two conversation pieces, The Dinner Party (ca. 1821) and The Tea Party (ca. 1824), owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. These have something of the exquisiteness of the so-called Little Dutchmen and they give fascinating glimpses of social life in Boston homes of the early 19th century. An altar painting, The Christ Crucified, which Sargent made for the Holy Cross Church, Boston, won contemporary favor. The full-length portrait of Peter Faneuil, in Faneuil Hall, if by Sargent, to whom it is ascribed, must be a copy after John Smibert. Sargent's self-portrait is at the Museum of Fine Arts; his likenesses of Jeremy Belknap, D.D., and John Clarke, D.D., both friends of his parents, are at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Continuing to paint at intervals down into old age, he was elected in 1840 an honorary member of the National Academy of Design and in 1845, president of the newly-organized Artists' Association of Boston.
Gaetano Gandolfi
(August 31, 1734 - June 20, 1802) was an Italian painter of the late Baroque and early Neoclassic period, active in Bologna. Gaetano was born in San Matteo della Decima, near Bologna, to a family of artists. Ubaldo Gandolfi was his brother, Mauro Gandolfi was his son, and Democrito Gandolfi was his grandson. Gaetano became a "student" at the Accademia Clementina in Bologna, where he was taught by Felice Torelli and Ercole Lelli. In the academy, he was the recipient of several prizes for both figure drawing and sculpture. Later, in an autobiography, Gaetano claimed Felice Torelli (1667 - 1748) as his master. Other sources mention Ercole Graziani the Younger (1688 - 1765) and Ercole Lelli. He traveled to England, and became strongly influenced by Tiepolo. Gaetano died in Bologna, Italy.