French (1880-1950) Louis Icart was born in Toulouse, France. He began drawing at an early age. He was particularly interested in fashion, and became famous for his sketches almost immediately. He worked for major design studios at a time when fashion was undergoing a radical change-from the fussiness of the late nineteenth century to the simple, clingy lines of the early twentieth century. He was first son of Jean and Elisabeth Icart and was officially named Louis Justin Laurent Icart. The use of his initials L.I. would be sufficient in this household. Therefore, from the moment of his birth he was dubbed 'Helli'. The Icart family lived modestly in a small brick home on rue Traversi??re-de-la-balance, in the culturally rich Southern French city of Toulouse, which was the home of many prominent writers and artists, the most famous being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Icart fought in World War I. He relied on his art to stem his anguish, sketching on every available surface. It was not until his move to Paris in 1907 that Icart would concentrate on painting, drawing and the production of countless beautiful etchings, which have served (more than the other mediums) to indelibly preserve his name in twentieth century art history. When he returned from the front he made prints from those drawings. The prints, most of which were aquatints and drypoints, showed great skill. Because they were much in demand, Icart frequently made two editions (one European, the other American) to satisfy his public. These prints are considered rare today, and when they are in mint condition they fetch high prices at auction. Art Deco, a term coined at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, had taken its grip on the Paris of the 1920s. By the late 1920s Icart, working for both publications and major fashion and design studios, had become very successful, both artistically and financially. His etchings reached their height of brilliance in this era of Art Deco, and Icart had become the symbol of the epoch. Yet, although Icart has created for us a picture of Paris and New York life in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in his own style, derived principally from the study of eighteenth-century French masters such as Jean Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honor?? Fragonard. In Icart's drawings, one sees the Impressionists Degas and Monet and, in his rare watercolors, the Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. In fact, Icart lived outside the fashionable artistic movements of the time and was not completely sympathetic to contemporary art. Nonetheless, his Parisian scenes are a documentation of the life he saw around him and they are nearly as popular today as when they were first produced. In 1914 Icart had met a magical, effervescent eighteen-year-old blonde named Fanny Volmers, at the time an employee of the fashion house Paquin. She would eventually become his wife and a source of artistic inspiration for the rest of his life.   Related Paintings of Louis Lcart :. | Finney | Big skirt | Storm Rain Bird | Cat | Dream Girls |
Related Artists:
Mauritz F H Haas
Dutch (Resident in US) 1832-1895
Vladimir Borovikovsky
1757-1825,Russian painter of Ukrainian birth. Along with Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky, Borovikovsky is one of the three great Russian portrait painters of the second half of the 18th century. He was trained by his father and brothers, who were icon painters. His early works were also icons, such as the Mother of God (1784; Kiev, Mus. Ukrain. A.) and King David (1785; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.); they are archaic in style and resemble portraits produced by Ukrainian folk artists. At the end of the 1780s Borovikovsky moved to St Petersburg and took up portrait painting. He was aided by advice from Levitsky and took lessons from Johann Baptist Lampi (i). He soon became established, gaining a reputation as a brilliant colourist, and he received many commissions. Throughout his career, however, he continued to paint icons from time to time. In 1795 he became a member of the St Petersburg Academy of Arts; he was also closely connected with many of the chief exponents of Russian culture in the city. The number of his surviving works is large (at least 400 portraits). He had his own workshop, and he would often rely on assistants to paint the less important parts of a portrait. His sitters included members of the imperial family, courtiers, generals, many aristocrats and figures from the Russian artistic and literary worlds. Most of his portraits are intimate in style. A particularly touching example is the portrait of Ol ga Filippova, the wife of a close friend (c. 1790; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), who is seen in a white peignoir with a park in the background. The portrait is painted in a flowing style; the combination of light, subdued tones, typical of Borovikovsky, gives an impression of tender femininity and quiet contemplation.
Jacob de Backer
(c. 1555 - c. 1585) was a Flemish Mannerist painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp between about 1571 and 1585. According to the RKD he was born in Antwerp in c.1540/45 and died there c.1591-1600.De Backer was abandoned by his father as a young boy. Carel van Mander reports that the artist studied with Antonio van Palermo and Hendrik van Steenwijk I, but that Palermo worked him so hard that the young de Backer died in the arms of his master's daughter at the age of thirty. Although the artist painted in the high mannerist style of Giorgio Vasari, he never appeared to travel to Italy. A series of the "Seven Deadly Sins", however, was bought in Antwerp by Alessandro Farnese's secretary Cosimo Masi in 1594 and taken to Italy.These paintings are now in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. Other attributable works include a Last Judgment triptych by him or his studio for Christophe Plantin's tomb in the Antwerp Cathedral (c. 1589; illustrated right), and an Allegory of the Three Ages of Man in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. He is not to be confused with the Dutch Golden Age painter Jacob Adriaensz Backer from