American Painter and Printmaker, 1834-1903 James Abbott McNeill Whistler's deft brushwork and mighty ego made him one of London's best-known painters in the second half of the 1800s. Born in Massachusetts, Whistler spent most of his adult life in England and France, in an era when an American artist in Europe was something of a rarity. He specialized in landscapes and (especially later in his career) portraits; stylistically he is often linked with Claude Monet and August Renoir, though he was not exactly part of the Impressionist movement. His etchings also are highly regarded. Witty, cranky and a bit of a devil, Whistler was a regular gadabout in British society. He had a famous long-running feud with the playwright Oscar Wilde, each of them trying to outwit the other with cutting public remarks. Some critics of the era considered Whistler's work to be smudgy and too radical; after viewing Whistler's 1875 study of fireworks over the Thames, Nocturne in Black and Gold: the Falling Rocket, John Ruskin wrote: "I have seen, and heard, much of cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." Whistler successfully sued Ruskin for libel but was awarded only a farthing in damages,  Related Paintings of James Mcneill Whistler :. | Portrait of Painter-s Mother | nocturne in black and gold the falling rocket | Wapping | Whistlers Mother | Peacock Room fron the Frederic Leyland House |
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Frits Thaulow
Norwegian Impressionist Painter, 1847-1906 .Norwegian painter and engraver. Originally wanting to become a marine painter he studied at the art academy in Copenhagen (1870-73) as well as with the Danish marine specialist C. F. S?rensen (1818-79). He spent two winters at Karlsruhe (1873-4, 1874-5) as the pupil of Hans Gude and then went to Paris, where he spent much of the period 1875-9. His marines and coastal pictures, some of which were accepted at the Paris Salon, were only moderately successful, but he acquired a fair knowledge of contemporary French Realist art and felt that Norwegian artists should learn from it.
Francois Barraud
14 November 1899 - 11 September 1934) was a Swiss painter. Barraud was the eldest of four brothers who all painted or sculpted at various points in their lives. The brothers, François, Aime, Aurele and Charles, were largely self-taught artists having been raised as professional plasterers and house painters.Barraud attended evening classes at the local art school in 1911 together with his brothers.In 1919, he exhibited his paintings in La Chaux-de-Fonds and participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Basel.Encouraged by the success of the exhibitions he left Switzerland in 1922, and moved to Reims in France where he worked as a house painter for two years. He married Marie, a French woman, in 1924. Marie subsequently featured as a model in several of his paintings. Around 1924 or 1925, Barraud found work in Paris as an artist and craftsman. While living in Paris he studied painting at the Louvre. François Barraud painted mainly still lifes, female nudes and portraits, including several double portraits of himself and his wife, Marie His precise, realist style of painting developed under the influence of the old Flemish and French masters he had studied at the Louvre. Barraud suffered periods of illness throughout his life and died of tuberculosis in Geneva, in 1934, at the age of 34. Arthur Stoll held a major collection of François Barraud's works. His works are also held in the Musee des beaux-arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Coninx Museum in Zurich and the Foundation for Art, Culture and History in Winterthur.
Thomas Stothard
English Neoclassical Painter, 1755-1834,English illustrator, painter and designer. He was one of the most popular, prolific and successful artists of his time and was highly regarded by such contemporaries as Thomas Lawrence and Walter Scott. He was the son of a prosperous publican and completed his apprenticeship as a silk weaver (1770-77), before studying at the Royal Academy, London (1777-c. 1783). From the beginning of his career, book illustration was his main area of activity. His earliest surviving works are in the decorative Rococo mode, but he soon adopted the more idealistic Neo-classicism of John Hamilton Mortimer and James Barry. Together with his friends and near contemporaries, William Blake and John Flaxman, Stothard developed an austere, linear style of draughtsmanship.