1824-1898 French Pierre Puvis de Chavannes Art Galleries Born in Lyons on Dec. 14, 1824, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes belonged to the generation of Gustave Courbet and ??douard Manet, and he was fully aware of their revolutionary achievements. Nevertheless, he was drawn to a more traditional and conservative style. From his first involvement with art, which began after a trip to Italy and which interrupted his intention to follow the engineering profession that his father practiced, Puvis pursued his career within the scope of academic classicism and the Salon. Even in this chosen arena, however, he was rejected, particularly during the 1850s. But he gradually won acceptance. By the 1880s he was an established figure in the Salons, and by the 1890s he was their acknowledged master. In both personal and artistic ways Puvis career was closely linked with the avant-grade. In the years of his growing public recognition, when he began to serve on Salon juries, he was consistently sympathetic to the work of younger, more radical artists. Later, as president of the Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts - the new Salon, as it was called - he was able to exert even more of a liberalizing influence on the important annual exhibitions. Puvis sympathy to new and radical artistic directions was reflected in his own painting. Superficially he was a classicist, but his personal interpretation of that style was unconventional. His subject matter - religious themes, allegories, mythologies, and historical events - was clearly in keeping with the academic tradition. But his style eclipsed his outdated subjects: he characteristically worked with broad, simple compositions, and he resisted the dry photographic realism which had begun to typify academic painting about the end of the century. In addition, the space and figures in his paintings inclined toward flatness, calling attention to the surface on which the images were depicted. These qualities gave his work a modern, abstract look and distinguished it from the sterile tradition to which it might otherwise have been linked. Along with their modern, formal properties, Puvis paintings exhibited a serene and poetic range of feeling. His figures frequently seem to be wrapped in an aura of ritualistic mystery, as though they belong in a private world of dreams or visions. Yet these feelings invariably seem fresh and sincere. This combination of form and feeling deeply appealed to certain avant-garde artists of the 1880s and 1890s. Although Puvis claimed he was neither radical nor revolutionary, he was admired by the symbolist poets, writers, and painters - including Paul Gauguin and Maurice Denis - and he influenced the neoimpressionist painter Georges Seurat. During his mature career Puvis executed many mural paintings. In Paris he did the Life of St. Genevieve (1874-1878) in the Panth??on and Science, Art, and Letters (1880s) in the Sorbonne. In Lyons he executed the Sacred Grove, the Antique Vision, and Christian Inspiration (1880s) in the Mus??e des Beaux-Arts. He painted Pastoral Poetry (1895-1898) in the Boston Public Library. These commissions reflect the high esteem with which Puvis was regarded during his own lifetime. Among his most celebrated oil paintings are Hope (1872) and the Poor Fisherman (1881). He died in Paris on Oct. 10, 1898.  Related Paintings of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes :. | Marseilles,Gateway to the Orient | The Dream (mk19) | Young Girls at the Seaside (mk19) | The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist | Woman on the Beach |
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Frederick Walker,ARA,RWS
1840-1875 English painter and illustrator. He acquired his training in drawing and painting through study in the British Museum (where he copied heavily from the Antique), a short period spent in an architect's office, life classes at Leigh's school, a studentship at the Royal Academy and three years' employment as a draughtsman on wood with the commercial engraver Josiah Wood Whymper (1813-1903).
Janis Rozentals
(March 18, 1866, Bebri Farmstead, Saldus parish, Courland Governorate - December 26, 1916) was a Latvian painter. Rozentels received the basic education at H.Krause's Elementary School in Saldus and Kuldega District School. At the age of fifteen the boy left for Riga and consistently tried to realize his dream about art, later entering St.Petersburg Academy of Art. During study vacations the developing artist visited his native land to relax from the hectic rhythm of the large city, paint motifs from nature and commissioned portraits. For his diploma work he took as models the young educated Latvians and local farmers. A little later the artist decided to settle in Saldus as he wanted to live among his people and create art appropriate to its aspirations and feelings. In spring 1899 Rozentels bought a building plot at the Striķu street and set up a studio, but his intents were not well received in the provincial town and he moved to Riga two years later. Now a memorial museum is arranged in the building designed by the artist. Fateful turn in life of the painter happened in November, 1902, when Janis Rozentels got acquainted with Elli Forsell(1871 - 1943), a Finnish singer, in Riga. On February 20, 1903, they got married. They found home in a flat- studio, in Alberta street, in Riga. they had three children - Laila, Irja and Miķelis. World War I interrupted the family's life in Riga and in 1915 they relocated to Finland. He died suddenly on December 26, 1916 and was buried in Helsinki, though later was reburied in his homeland. Today, the Janis Rozentels Art Highschool in Riga is named after him, and has had his name since 1946.
Morphy, Garret
Irish, Active 1676-1716