Danish Painter, 1849-1927 He studied at the Kongelige Akademi for de Sk?nne Kunster, Copenhagen (1871-5), where his teachers Wilhelm Marstrand and Frederik Vermehren encouraged his interest in genre painting. He first visited Skagen in 1874 and settled there in 1880, having found that subject-matter drawn from local scenery was conducive to his artistic temperament. In Will he Manage to Weather the Point? (1880; Copenhagen, Kon. Saml.) several fishermen stand on the shore, evidently watching a boat come in. The firmly handled composition focuses on the group of men (the boat itself is invisible); each figure is an individual portrait that captures a response to the moment. Ancher's skill at grouping large numbers of figures with heroic monumentality compensates for his lacklustre colour sense. A change in his use of colour is noticeable in the works produced after an influential visit to Vienna in 1882; he was deeply impressed by the Dutch Old Masters at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, especially the Vermeers. Their effect on his painting can be seen in the Sick Girl (1883),   Related Paintings of Michael Ancher :. | fire fiskere ved en bad pa skagens strand | Promenade on Skagen Beach (nn02) | An unfinished portrait of Adrian Stokes | A Crew Rescued | en laegpraedikant holder gudstjeneste pa skagen sonderstrand |
Related Artists:
John George Brown
1831-1913 John George Brown Galleries John George Brown (November 11, 1831 - February 8, 1913), American painter, was born in Durham, England, on 11 November 1831. He studied at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the Edinburgh Academy, and after moving to New York City in 1853, he studied with Thomas Seir Cummings at the schools of the National Academy of Design, of which he became a member in 1863.New International Encyclopedia He was its vice-president, 1899-1904, and originated the idea of the removal of the Academy to a new site in 110th Street. In 1866 he became one of the charter members of the Water-Color Society, of which he was president from 1887 to 1904. He generally confined himself to representations of street child life, bootblacks, newsboys, etc.; his Passing Show (Paris, Salon, 1877) and Street Boys at Play (Paris Exhibition, 1900) are good examples of his popular talent. Brown's art is best characterized as British genre paintings adapted to American subjects. Essentially literary, it is executed with precise detail, but is poor in color, and more popular with the general public than with connoisseurs.
GUARDI, Francesco
Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1712-ca.1793 The records of his parish in Venice show that Francesco Guardi was baptized on Oct. 5, 1712. His father, Domenico, who died when Francesco was 4, had a workshop. Francesco and his elder brother, Gian Antonio, worked in a small studio, carrying out such orders as they could get for almost anything the client wanted:mythological pictures, genre, flower pieces, battle scenes, altarpieces, and even, on rare occasions, frescoes. They did not hesitate to copy compositions by other artists, but what they borrowed they always transformed into something more capricious, less stable, more fragmentary in the refraction of light. Francesco did not emerge as an independent personality until 1760, when his brother died. Then, 48 years old, he married, established his own studio, and devoted himself chiefly to painting views of Venice. For the most part he worked in obscurity, ignored by his contemporaries. He was not even admitted to the Venetian Academy until he was 72 years old. Guardi and Canaletto have always been compared to one another because the buildings they chose to paint were often the same. But the way each artist painted them is very different. Canaletto's world is constructed out of line. It provides solid, carefully drawn, three-dimensional objects that exist within logically constructed three-dimensional space. Guardi's world is constructed out of color and light. The objects in it become weightless in the light's shimmer and dissolve in a welter of brushstrokes; the space, like the forms in space, is suggested rather than described. Canaletto belonged essentially to the Renaissance tradition that began with Giotto and, as it grew progressively tighter and more controlled, pointed the way to neoclassicism. Guardi belonged to the new baroque tradition that grew out of the late style of Titian and, as it became progressively looser and freer, pointed the way toward impressionism. Such differences appear even in Guardi's early view paintings, where he was obviously trying to copy Canaletto, such as the Basin of San Marco. The famous buildings are there, but they are far in the background, insubstantial, seeming to float. In front is a fleet of fishing boats, their curving spars seeming to dance across the surface of the canvas. What is important for Guardi is not perspective but the changing clouds and the way the light falls on the lagoon. Guardi became increasingly fascinated by the water that surrounds Venice. In late works, such as the famous Lagoon with Gondola, buildings and people have been stripped away until there is nothing but the suggestion of a thin line of distant wharfs, a few strokes to indicate one man on a gondola, a long unbroken stretch of still water, and a cloudless sky. Guardi also painted the festivals that so delighted visitors to the city, such as the Marriage of Venice to the Sea. This was a symbolic ceremony in which the doge, in the great gilded galley of the head of state, surrounded by a thousand gondolas, appeared before all Venice, in Goethe's image, "raised up like the Host in a monstrance." Of all Guardi's paintings the most evocative are his caprices, the landscapes born out of his imagination though suggested by the ruined buildings on the lonely islands of the Venetian lagoon. A gentle melancholy clings to such scenes.
L ESTIN, Jacques de
French painter , b. 1597, Troyes, d. 1661, Troyes