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 :. | Der Park Petworth: Im Hintergrund die Kirche von Tillington | Woman in the black | Solidity | Ansicht von Orvieto | No title |
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einar hein
(Danish, 1875-1931
Hiram Powers
American Neoclassical Sculptor, 1805-1873, American sculptor. He grew up in Cincinnati, OH, and his career as a sculptor began when he created animated wax figures for a tableau of Dante's Inferno at Dorfeuille's Western Museum in Cincinnati, where he was supervisor of the mechanical department. He learnt to model clay and make plaster casts from Frederick Eckstein (c. 1775-1852). The portrait busts he created of his friends attracted the attention of the wealthy Nicholas Longworth, who financed trips for Powers to New York in 1829 and to Washington, DC, in 1834, when he sculpted President Andrew Jackson (marble, c. 1835; New York, Met.). Powers's strikingly lifelike bust, classicized only by the drapery, brought him commissions from other Washington luminaries, including John Marshall (marble, 1835; Washington, DC, US Capitol), Martin van Buren (marble, 1837; New York, NY Hist. Soc.)
Albin Egger Lienz
Albin Egger-Lienz (29 January 1868 - 4 November 1926) was an Austrian painter. He was born in Dölsach-Stribach near Lienz, in what was the county of Tyrol. As an artist, he had a special preference for rustic genre and historical paintings; under the influence of Ferdinand Hodler, Egger-Lienz abstracted his formal language into monumental expressiveness. He trained first under his father (a church painter), later he studied at the Academy in Munich where he was influenced by Franz Defregger and French painter Jean-François Millet. In 1899 he moved to Vienna. During 1911 and 1912 he was professor at the Weimar School of Fine Arts and he served as war painter during World War I. In 1918, he turned down a professorship at the Vienna Academy and settled in South Tyrol. Egger-Lienz died on 4 November 1926 in St. Justina-Rentsch, Bolzano, Italy.