French Post-Impressionist Painter, 1839-1906 During the second half of the 19th century French impressionism created a dramatic break with the art of the past. In conception and appearance the style was radically new and, although it initially inspired public ridicule, it soon affected nearly every ambitious artist in western Europe. The new vision emerged during the 1870s, chiefly in the art of Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, and Camille Pissarro. For each of these artists impressionism was an illusionistic style which differed from the tradition of Renaissance illusionism in its greater emphasis upon vibrant, natural color and on an immediate confrontation with the phenomena of the visible world. As the style developed during the 1880s, however, it increasingly became characterized by paintings which were flat rather than illusionistic. In other words, the impressionists insistence upon a direct application of pigment to canvas resulted in surfaces which declared themselves first of all as surfaces - and, consequently, in paintings which declared themselves first of all as paintings rather than as windows which looked out upon the natural world. The tendency toward flatness persisted into the last years of the 19th century, its pervasiveness giving the impression that illusionistic space - fought for, won, and defended since the very beginning of the Renaissance - had finally been sacrificed by the medium of painting. Paul C??zanne worked within and finally emerged from this trend. As a painter, he matured slowly, his greatest works coming during the last 25 years of his life. During this period he scored a remarkable and heroic achievement: he restored to painting the space and volume that had seemingly been lost to it. But he did it in a totally unprecedented way: not by return to the illusionism of the past but by the creation of a spatial illusionism that did not violate flatness. C??zanne was born on Jan. 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence. His father, Philippe Auguste, was the cofounder of a banking firm which prospered throughout the artist life, affording him financial security that was unavailable to most of his contemporaries and eventually resulting in a large inheritance. In 1852 C??zanne entered the Coll??ge Bourbon, where he met and became friends with Émile Zola. This friendship was decisive for both men: with youthful romanticism they envisioned successful careers in the Paris art world, C??zanne as a painter and Zola as a writer. Consequently, C??zanne began to study painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts in Aix in 1856. His father opposed the pursuit of an artistic career, and in 1858 he persuaded C??zanne to enter law school at the University of Aix. Although C??zanne continued his law studies for several years, he was simultaneously enrolled in the School of Design in Aix, where he remained until 1861. In 1861 C??zanne finally convinced his father to allow him to go to Paris. He planned to join Zola there and to enroll in the École des Beaux-Arts. But his application was rejected and, although he had gained inspiration from visits to the Louvre, particularly from the study of Diego Vel??zquez and Caravaggio, C??zanne experienced self-doubt and returned to Aix within the year. He entered his father banking house but continued to study at the School of Design. The remainder of the decade was a period of flux and uncertainty for C??zanne. His attempt to work in his father business was abortive, and he returned to Paris in 1862 and stayed for a year and a half. During this period he met Monet and Pissarro and became acquainted with the revolutionary work of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. C??zanne also admired the fiery romanticism of Eug??ne Delacroix paintings. But he was never entirely comfortable with Parisian life and periodically returned to Aix, where he could work in relative isolation. He retreated there, for instance, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).  Related Paintings of Paul Cezanne :. | Le Festin | The Strangled Woman | Cypriot Joachim | Stilleben mit Cupido | Farm Courtyard in Auvers |
Related Artists:
Antonio Cavallucci
(21 August 1752 - 18 November 1795) was an Italian painter of the late Baroque. Cavallucci was born in Sermoneta in the Lazio. His artistic talents were recognized in an early stage by Francesco Caetani, Duke of Sermoneta in 1738-1810. In 1765, he brought the 13 year old Cavallucci to Rome, where he became a pupil of Stefano Pozzi and three years later of Gaetano Lapis. He also studied drawing at the Accademia di San Luca (c. 1769-1771). His earliest work dates from the mid-1760s. It is a tempera frieze in the Casa Cavallucci in Sermoneta. His first portrait was of his benefactor Duke Francesco Caetani. This portrait is only preserved as an engraving in 1772 by Pietro Leone Bombelli (1737-1809). His first major commission was the decoration of five audience chambers in the Caetani Palace in Rome in 1776. He painted mythological scenes and allegories appropriate for each room. In the early 1780s he painted mostly portraits, such as those of Francesco Caetani and Teresa Corsini, Duchess of Sermoneta. The Origin of Music (1786) is probably the most important painting of his mid-career. It was based on the illustrations in the book Iconologia (1593) from Cesare Ripa. The commissions kept coming under his new patron, Cardinal Romualdo Braschi-Onesti (1753-1817), nephew of the pope Pius VI. He has painted the portraits of his new benefactor and of the pope in 1788. He was inducted into the Accademia di San Luca in 1786, Academy of Arcadia in 1788, and the Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon in 1788. He is said to have painted St Benedict Joseph Labre while the saint was in ecstasy, or (as is perhaps more plausible), having seen the saint in ecstasy, to have brought him to his studio and painted his portrait there. In later years he worked for Cardinal Francesco Saverio Zelada, decorating his titular church San Martino ai Monti in Rome. Cavallucci died in Rome in 1795. He was influenced by Pompeo Batoni and Anton Raphael Mengs. There is in his art some of the northern European feeling that had made its way into Rome at the end of the eighteenth century. The Portuguese painter Domingos Sequeira was one of his pupils.
Peter Graham
painted Spate in the Highlands e1868
HIGHMORE, Joseph
English Painter, 1692-1780 English painter and writer. The son of a coal merchant and the nephew of Thomas Highmore (1660-1720), Serjeant-Painter to the King, he was articled to an attorney on 18 July 1707. Bored with his duties, he attended Kneller's Academy from 1713 and in 1715 abandoned law, setting up as a portrait painter in the City of London. From 1720 he attended the St Martin's Lane Academy, where he was able to study contemporary French styles in art and design, particularly that of Gravelot. He read widely and mastered Brook Taylor's system of perspective (1715). He also attended William Cheselden's anatomy lectures and contributed designs to that author's Anatomy of the Human Body (1722).