British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | Portrait of Charles Coote | lady caroline fox | Lord Heathfield of Gibraltar | Portrait of Lady Elizabeth Hamilton | elizabeth gunning , duchess of hamilton and argyll |
Related Artists:
carle vernet
Antoine Charles Horace Vernet aka. Carle Vernet (14 August 1758 - 17 November 1835) was a French painter, the youngest child of Claude Joseph Vernet, and the father of Horace Vernet. The Battle of Wagram; colored litho by Carle Vernet and Jacques SwebachBorn in Bordeaux, Vernet was a pupil of his father and of Nicolas-Bernard Lepicie. Strangely, after winning the grand prix (1782), his father had to recall him back from Rome to France to prevent him from entering a monastery. In his Triumph of Paulus Aemilius, he broke with tradition and drew the horse with the forms he had learnt from nature in stables and riding-schools. His hunting-pieces, races, landscapes, and work as a lithographer were also very popular. Carle's sister was executed by the guillotine during the Revolution. After this, he gave up art. When he again began to produce under the French Directory (1795 - 1799) , his style had changed radically. He started drawing in minute detail battles and campaigns to glorify Napoleon. His drawings of Napoleon's Italian campaign won acclaim as did the Battle of Marengo, and for his Morning of Austerlitz Napoleon awarded him the Legion of Honour. Louis XVIII of France awarded him the Order of Saint Michael.
Dominique Vivant Denon
French, 1747-1825,French savant, he accompanied the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt (1798) as leader of the learned Commission on the Sciences and Arts that was to study Ancient Egyptian buildings and architecture and herald the birth of modern Egyptology. In 1802 he published his Voyage dans la Basse et la Haute Egypte pendant les campagnes du general Bonaparte (Journey in Lower and Upper Egypt during the campaigns of General Bonaparte). An accurate source-book of Ancient Egyptian architecture, it had an extraordinary impact, triggering the C19 Egyptian Revival that at first was correctly described as Egyptomania, and was a major influence on Neo-Classicism. Denon was Director-General of Museums, and was in charge of the Musee Napoleon (now the Louvre).
Matthias Grunewald
German Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1470-1528,was an important German Renaissance painter of religious works, who ignored Renaissance classicism to continue the expressive and intense style of late medieval Central European art into the 16th century. Only ten paintings (several consisting of many panels) and thirty-five drawings survive, all religious, although many others were lost at sea in the Baltic on their way to Sweden as war booty. His reputation was obscured until the late nineteenth century, and many of his paintings were attributed to Albrecht D??rer, who is now seen as his stylistic antithesis. His largest and most famous work is the Isenheim Altarpiece in Colmar, Alsace (now in France). The details of his life are unusually unclear for a painter of his significance at this date, despite the fact that his commissions show that he had reasonable recognition in his own lifetime. His real name remains uncertain, but was definitely not Grunewald; this was a mistake by the 17th-century writer, Joachim von Sandrart, who confused him with another artist. He is documented as "Master Mathis" or "Mathis the Painter" (Mathis der Maler), and as using as surname both Gothart and Neithardt - this last may have been his surname, or more likely that of his wife. He was probably born in Wurzburg in the 1470s. It is possible he was a pupil of Hans Holbein the Elder. From about 1500 he seems to have lived at Seligenstadt, when not working elsewhere. His first dated painting is probably in Munich, dated 1503 on a much later note which apparently records an older inscription. From about 1510 to 1525 he served in the Rhineland as court painter,