1831 C 13 June [O.S. 1 June] 1894) was a Russian realist painter famous for his works on historical and religious motifs. Nikolai Ge was born in Voronezh to a Russian noble family of French origin. His grandfather emigrated to Russia in the 18th century. His parents died when he was still a child, so Nikolai was raised by his serf nurse. He graduated from the First Kiev Gymnasium and studied at the physics-mathematics department of Kiev University and Saint Petersburg University. In 1850 he gave up his career in science and entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He studied in academy under the historical painter Pyotr Basin until 1857. He graduated from the academy in 1857 with a gold medal for his painting The Witch of Endor Calling Up the Spirit of the Prophet Samuel. According to Ge himself, during that period he was strongly influenced by Karl Brullov. His gold medal provided him a scholarship for studying abroad . He visited Germany, Switzerland, France and in 1860 settled in Italy. In Rome he met Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov who strongly influenced Ge. In 1861 Ge painted The Last Supper; in 1863 he took the painting with him to Saint Petersburg. Ge found his own interpretation of the classical subject ?? he emphasized the motif of discord among those who had formerly shared the same views. The painting (bought by Tsar Alexander II of Russia) made so strong impression that Ge was made a professor of Imperial Academy of Arts. In 1864 he returned to Florence where he became a friend of a major Russian pro-Western writer and thinker Alexander Herzen and painted his portrait. The same year he also painted Messengers of the Resurrection and the first version of the Christ on the Mount of Olives.  Related Paintings of Nikolai Ge :. | Peter the Great Interrogating the Tsarevich Alexei Petrovich at Peterhof, | Christ praying in Gethsemane | Quod Est Veritas Christ and Pilate | Carrara | The Last Supper |
Related Artists:
Samuel Hieronymous Grimm
Swiss Painter, 1733-1794 Swiss painter and draughtsman, active in England. He studied in Berne under Johann Ludwig Aberli and became established as a painter of topographical views in oil and watercolour. His early surviving works (e.g. River Landscape and Landscape with Chasseurs; Basle, priv. col.) are principally tinted drawings of landscapes and alpine scenery, with scenes of rustic life in the foreground; they display his characteristically charming and informal style. He also produced many decorative book illustrations: the frontispiece and plates to Friedrich von Hagedorn's Poetische Werke (1769-72) are among his finest. By 1764 Grimm had abandoned oils and was painting only in watercolour. From 1765 to 1768 he travelled and painted in France; he then moved to England,
Adriaen van de Velde
(bapt. 30 November 1636, Amsterdam - bur. 21 January 1672, Amsterdam), was a Dutch animal and landscape painter, son of Willem van de Velde the Elder and brother of Willem van de Velde the Younger, the marine painter. Adriaen did not want to become a marine painter so he was trained in the studio of Jan Wynants, the landscape painter. There he made the acquaintance of Philip Wouwerman, who is believed to have aided him in his studies of animals, and to have exercised a powerful and beneficial influence upon his art. Having made exceptionally rapid progress, he was soon employed by his master to introduce figures into his landscape compositions, and he rendered a similar service to Hobbema, Ruysdael, Verboom and other contemporary artists. According to Houbraken, he died while in collaboration with Jan van der Heyden and Frederik de Moucheron, painting animals on their paintings.[1] His favourite subjects were scenes of open pasture land, with sheep, cattle and goats, which he executed with dexterity, with much precision of touch and truth of draughtsmanship, and with clear silvery colouring. He painted a few small winter scenes with skaters, and several religious subjects, such as the Descent from the Cross, for a Roman Catholic hidden church in Amsterdam. In addition to his paintings, of which nearly two hundred have been catalogued, he executed about twenty etchings, several of which appear from their dates to have been done in his fourteenth year. They are distinguished by directness of method and by delicacy and certainty of touch. Van de Velde lived in Kalverstraat, near the Regulierspoort.
Legros, Alphonse
French-born British Painter and Sculptor, 1837-1911 British etcher, painter, sculptor and teacher of French birth. He is said to have been apprenticed at the age of 11 to a sign-painter, at which time he may also have attended classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Dijon. He was employed as assistant on a decorative scheme in Lyon Cathedral before moving in 1851 to Paris, where he worked initially for the theatre decorator C. A. Cambon (1802-75). He soon became a pupil of Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran, whose methodical instruction and liberality in fostering individual talent proved of lasting benefit to Legros. In 1855 he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, attending irregularly until 1857. During this period Legros had a taste for early Netherlandish art and for French Romanticism, which was later superseded by his admiration for Claude, Poussin and Michelangelo.