English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Sunset | Number seven | The Grand Canal - Scene - A Street In Venice | Fishing boats entering calais harbor | Black spot |
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Ludovico Mazzolino
(1480 - c. 1528) - also known as Mazzolini da Ferrara, Lodovico Ferraresa, and Il Ferrarese - was an Italian Renaissance painter active in Ferrara and Bologna. He was born and died in Ferrara. He appears to have studied under such as Lorenzo Costa, who also trained Dosso Dossi and Cosimo Tura, and came under the influence of Ercole Roberti. In 1521 he married Giovanna, the daughter of Bartolomeo Vacchi, a Venetian painter. Much of his work was commissioned by the duke Ercole I d'Este from Ferrara. Mazzolino was influenced by il Garofalo and Boccaccino. He is known for devotional cabinet pictures, in a style somewhat regressive, or primitive, relative to the modern classicism then emerging. For example, his Massacre canvas has a turbulent and cartoonish crowding. The exact date, or even year, of his death is not known, but he died during a plague which devastated the area.
Antoine Rivalz
(1667, Toulouse - 1735) was a French painter. The son of Jean-Pierre Rivalz (who painted and designed the city's hôtel de ville), Antoine was the official painter to the town of Toulouse, a talented portraitist of the society of the city in the 18th century. He also produced a large number of drawings. Antoine Rivalz began his training in the studios of his father Jean-Pierre, the sculptor Marc Arcis and the artist Raymond Lafage. In his training, he was particularly interested in studying classical works and the Baroque Italian masters. From 1685 to 1687 he trained at the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture in Paris. On his return to Toulouse he received his first two commissions. In 1687 he set out for Rome, where he stayed for more than ten years. In 1694 he won second prize at the Accademia di San Luca with a drawing of The fall of the giants, with first prize going to Antonio Balestra and Felice Nardi. In Rome he became friends with other artists such as Carlo Maratta, Luigi Garzi and Benedetto Luti, and was more and more in demand for commissions from families in both Rome and Toulouse. In 1703, he returned to Toulouse and was made painter of the city's hôtel de ville, a post he held until his death. Supported by an important studio, he received a large number of commissions - commemorative paintings, paintings of ordinance and armour, architectural projects, restorations. This post, however, allowed him above all to forge productive relations with the city's upper classes and benefit from a near-monopoly on public, religious and private commissions in the city. He married his first cousin Louise Rivalz, with whom he had six children, including the future artist Pierre Rivalz, known as the "chevalier Rivalz". In 1726 he set up Toulouse's first art school and in 1750 letters patent from Louis XV turned it into the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture de Toulouse, the only one in France (after that in Paris) to be allowed to bear that title.
Dirck de Quade van Ravesteyn
Flemish painter 1565-1620