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 :. | Clara(Clara J.Mather) | Dirge | Home Scene | Biglen Brothers, Turning the Stake | William Rush schnitzt die allegorische Figur des Schuylkill River |
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Nicolas Bernard Lepicie
was a French painter (16 June 1735 - 15 September 1784), the son of two reputed engravers at the time, Francois-Bernard and Renee-Elisabeth, was introduced to the artistic and cultural environment by his parents. Nicolas-Bernard studied with reputed artists of the century including Carle Vanloo. In 1769 he was accepted to the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. Three years later, in 1770, he became an assistant professor and, in 1777, a professor. Important names such as Carle Vernet, Jean-Frederic Schall, Jean-Antoine-Theodore Giroust, Jean-Joseph Taillasson, Henri-Pierre Danloux, Jean-Baptiste Regnault and Nicolas-Antoine.
AACHEN, Hans von
German Mannerist Painter, 1552-1615 (b Cologne, 1552; d Prague, 4 March 1615). German painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and Bohemia. One of the foremost painters of the circle gathered at the Prague court of Emperor Rudolf II.
Pavel Chistyakov
(July 5 [O.S. June 23] 1832 - November 11, 1919) was a Russian painter and teacher of art. He studied at the St.Petersburg Academy of arts (1849-1861) under Petr Basin. He was a pensioner of the Academy of Arts in Paris and in Rome (1862?C1870). He taught in the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1860-1864), and in St.Petersburg (from 1872) he was the professor-head of workshop (1908-1910) and managing mosaic branch (1890-1912). The art-pedagogical system of Chistiakov, whose students included Viktor Vasnetsov, Mikhail Vrubel, Vasily Polenov, Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, and Vasily Surikov, developed in constant struggle against the inert system of academism and played a huge role in the development of realism in Russian art of the second half of the 19th century. The main goal of Chistiakov was the preparation of the artist-citizen possessing high professional skill. His pedagogical method assumed the merger of the direct perception of nature by the artist with its scientific study. In creative practice he aspired to dramatization of a historical plot and psychological saturation in historical and genre portraits (Head of a Ciucciara, 1864, in the Russian Museum,