1856-1925 John Singer Sargent Locations John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 ?C April 14, 1925) was the most successful portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. Before Sargent??s birth, his father FitzWilliam was an eye surgeon at the Wills Hospital in Philadelphia. After his older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (n??e Singer) suffered a mental collapse and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic ex-patriates for the rest of their lives. Though based in Paris, Sargent??s parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While she was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic, and there Sargent was born in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife??s entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living an isolated life with their children and generally avoiding society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad of whom two lived past childhood. Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, ??He is quite a close observer of animated nature.?? Contrary to his father, his mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to give him formal schooling failed, owning mostly to their itinerant life. She was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from the Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son??s interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career. At thirteen, his mother reported that John ??sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist.?? At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as ??willful, curious, determined and strong?? (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, ??I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michael Angelo and Titian.??  Related Paintings of John Singer Sargent :. | The Garden Wall | Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife | George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston | Woman with Collie (mk18) | Self Portrait |
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Frans de Momper
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1603-1660 Painter and draughtsman, nephew of (1) Josse de Momper II. In 1629 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. He left Antwerp for the northern Netherlands, working initially at The Hague; by 1647 he was in Haarlem and the following year Amsterdam, where he married in 1649. In 1650 Frans returned to Antwerp, where he painted numerous monochrome landscapes in the manner of Jan van Goyen. Paintings such as the Valley with Mountains (c. 1640-50; Philadelphia, PA, Mus. A.) prefigure the imaginative landscapes of Hercules Segers. The impression of vast panoramic spaces in Frans's work is adopted from his uncle's art. Frans executed a number of variations on the theme of a river landscape with boats and village (e.g. pen-and-ink drawing, Edinburgh, N.G.). In the late painting Landscape with a Ch?teau Encircled by Doves (Bordeaux, Mus. B.-A.), the low horizon and light-filled sky are adopted from the new Dutch school of tonal landscape painting, while the delicacy of the figures, feathery trees and buildings are features of the Italo-Flemish tradition exemplified by his uncle. Similar qualities of refinement and luminosity characterize the Winter Landscape (c. 1650; Prague, N.G., Sternberk Pal.),
Jean-Louis Hamon
Plouha 1821 - Saint - Raphael, 1874. French Academic Painter, 1821-1874. Studied under Charles Gleyre. French Academic Painter, 1821-1874. Studied under Charles Gleyre. French painter and designer. He was encouraged to practise drawing by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine at Lannion. Through the intervention of Felicite-Robert de Lamennais (1782-1854), he was made drawing-master at a religious seminary at Ploermel, Brittany, although at this stage he had received no instruction and had never seen an oil painting. In 1840 he asked his conseil general for help and left for Paris the following year with a grant of 500 francs. He went to Delaroche's studio, where he made friends with Picou, Jean-Leon Gereme, Jean Aubert (1824-1906) and Jean Eugene Damery (1823-53). Charles Gleyre, who took over Delaroche's studio in 1843, encouraged and protected him during years of poverty.
Luke Fildes
1844-1927 English painter and illustrator. He first studied art at the Mechanics Institute in Liverpool and at the nearby Warrington School of Art. In 1863 he won a scholarship that enabled him to study at the South Kensington Art School in London and subsequently at the Royal Academy Schools.