American Realist Painter, 1844-1916. Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 ?C June 25, 1916) was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".  Related Paintings of Thomas Eakins :. | Landscape | Elizabeth and the Dog | Die Konzertsangerin | Portrait Einer Dame mit Setter | The Portrait of William |
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adriaen van ostade
Adriaen van Ostade (baptized as Adriaen Hendricx December 10, 1610 ?C buried May 2, 1685) was a Dutch genre painter. He was the eldest son of Jan Hendricx Ostade, a weaver from the town of Ostade near Eindhoven. Although Adriaen and his brother Isaack were born in Haarlem, they adopted the name "van Ostade" as painters. "Peasants in a Tavern" (c. 1635), at the Alte Pinakothek, MunichAccording to Jacobus Houbraken, he was taught from 1627 by Frans Hals, at that time the master of Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Miense Molenaer. At twenty-six he joined a company of the civic guard at Haarlem, and at twenty-eight he married. His wife died in 1640, and he speedily re-married. He again became a widower in 1666. In 1662 he took the highest honors of his profession with the presidency of the painters Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem. Among the treasures of the Louvre is a striking picture of a father sitting in state, his wife at his side, surrounded by his son, five daughters, and a young married couple in a handsomely furnished room. By an old tradition, Ostade here painted himself and his children in holiday attire; but the style is much too refined for the painter of boors, and Ostade had but one daughter.
Juriaen van Streeck
(1632 - 1687) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes. According to Houbraken, he was good at all sorts of still life subjects, including helmets, books, letters, musical instruments, and skulls or dead animals to indicate the transcience of life. He was a follower of Willem Kalf and influenced Barend van der Meer.Houbraken also wrote an entry for his son Hendrick van Streeck, who became a student of Emanuel de Witte and painted church interiors.
Richard Gerstl
(September 14, 1883 - November 4, 1908) was an Austrian painter and draughtsman known for his expressive psychologically insightful portraits, his lack of critical acclaim during his lifetime, and his affair with the wife of Arnold Schoenberg which led to his suicide. Richard Gerstl was born in a prosperous civil family, Emil Gerstl, a Jewish merchant, and Maria Pfeiffer, non-Jewish woman. He visited the Viennese Piaristengymnasium (de) (Bundesgymnasium Wien 8 (de), Josefstadt), but he had to leave because of difficulties of discipline. Early in his life, Gerstl decided to become an artist, much to the dismay of his father. After performing poorly in school and being forced to leave the famed Piaristengymnasium in Vienna as a result of "disciplinary difficulties," his financially stable parents provided him with private tutors. In 1898, at the age of fifteen, Gerstl was accepted the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna where he studied under the notoriously opinionated and difficult Christian Griepenkerl. Gerstl began to reject the style of the Vienna Secession and what he felt was pretentious art. This eventually prompted his vocal professor to proclaim, "The way you paint, I piss in the snow!" Frustrated with the lack of acceptance of his non-secessionist painting style, Gerstl continued to paint without any formal guidance for two years. For the summers of 1900 and 1901, Gerstl studied under the guidance of Simon Hollesy in Nagybenya. Inspired by the more liberal leanings of Heinrich Lefler (de), Gerstl once again attempted formal education. Unfortunately, his refusal to participate in a procession in honor of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria further ostracized him and led to his departure. Gerstl felt that taking part in such an event was "unworthy of an artist." His final exit from Lefler's studio took place in 1908. In 1904 and 1905, Gerstl shared a studio with his former academy classmate and friend, Viktor Hammer. Although Hammer had assisted in Gerstl's admittance to Lefler's tutelage and their relationship was friendly, it is difficult to determine how close the two men were as Gerstl did not associate with other artists. Regardless of their personal feelings, by 1906, Gerstl had acquired his own studio. Although Gerstl did not associate with other artists, he did feel drawn to the musically inclined; he himself frequented concerts in Vienna. Around 1907, he began to associate with composers Arnold Schoenberg and Alexander von Zemlinsky, who lived in the same building at the time. Gerstl and Schoenberg developed a mutual admiration based upon their individual talents. Gerstl apparently instructed Schoenberg in art.