French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | La visite a la nourrice | Koresus und Kallirhoe | Recreation by our Gallery | Portrait of Denis Diderot | Badende |
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RILEY, John
English Baroque Era Painter, 1646-1691 English painter. He was the son of John Riley of St Botolphs, Bishopsgate, and a pupil of Isaac Fuller and Gerard Soest. He is said to have worked independently for some years, but he made no impact before Lely's death in 1680. Riley maintained a prolific and successful practice as a portrait painter over the next decade against keen foreign competition.
FERNANDES, Vasco
Portuguese painter (active 1500-1542 in Viseu) Portuguese painter. He was the leading painter of northern Portugal during the first half of the 16th century, and it is probable that he received his training abroad. Fernandes is the best-documented Portuguese artist of the period; there are nearly 100 works attributed to him, some of which are securely documented and record his activity either alone or in collaboration with the Viseu painter GASPAR VAZ. Fernandes's most important work was carried out in Lamego and in Viseu, where the term Gr?o ('Great') used in praise of him is first recorded (Ribeiro Botelho Pereira). In 1753 the Director of the Dresden Gallery, Pietro Guarienti, first used the epithet when he referred to Fernandes by the name of Gran Vasco. The many myths about the painter and his work developed from this date and were not clarified until 1846
Sir John Lavery,RA
1856-1941 The artist John Lavery was born in Belfast, and studied in Scotland at the Glasgow School of Art from about 1874. He was in London from 1879-81 (he studied at Heatherley's School of Art for six months), and later in Paris, where he was influenced by Bastien-Lepage. He then returned to Glasgow, becoming a leading member of informal group of painters known as the Glasgow School (James Guthrie was another member), with work characterised by lack of a storyline, but great energy. Lavery achieved his pinnacle in the 1880s, with exhibitions in Europe and America, and as a leading portraitist, he was chosen to paint the State visit of Queen Victoria to the International Exhibition in Glasgow, 1888 - there were some 250 portraits in that picture. From 1890 he visited Morocco frequently, and he changed his British base to London in 1896, where he used a studio belonging to Alfred East. He was elected ARA in 1911,