1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | Portrait of Uvedale Tomkins Price | Portrait of Mr and Mrs Andrews | The Painter-s Daughters chasing a Butterfly | Self-portrait with and Daughter | Bumper,a Bull Terrier |
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GUARIENTO d Arpo
Italian painter (active 1338-1368 in Padua)
Julius Paulsen
Danish, 1860-1940 Danish painter. He studied at the Kongelige Akademi for de Skenne Kunster, Copenhagen (1879-82), but found the training there uninspired and soon attached himself to more radical artists such as Peder Severin Kreyer and Laurits Regner Tuxen. A turning-point in his career came in 1885 when, with Viggo Johansen, he went to Paris. On the way they visited Amsterdam, where the art of Rembrandt made a great impact on Paulsen; in Paris he showed interest in Courbet and Monet. From 1886 his time was shared between landscape, figure and portrait painting. His first landscape, From the Village of Ry (1886; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.), is an early example of his personal blend of Romanticism and Symbolism; it shows a golden sunset colouring the houses and gardens of the small village. His View from the Harbour after Sunset (1891; Copenhagen, Hirschsprungske Saml.) has much in common with Monet, the Copenhagen skyline barely discernible through a deep blue and iridescent atmosphere. A later visit to Paris inspired such sunlit townscapes as Under Pont des Arts in Paris, Midday Sun (1919; Copenhagen, Stat. Mus. Kst), the shimmering, sketchy surface of which is dominated by fresh blues and greens; the painting incorporates a favourite Impressionist motif, the curved filigree of the iron bridge, which both frames the scene and lends it tension.
carl kylberg
Carl Oscar Kylberg, född 23 september 1878 på Vasängen i Fridene församling, död 6 januari 1952 i Stockholm, svensk konstnär och representant för Göteborgskoloristerna. Carl Kylberg var son till kontorschef Gustaf Kylberg och friherrinnan Eleonora von Essen och storebror till konstnären Erik Kylberg. Hans fastrar och farbror var konstnärerna Regina Kylberg-Bobeck, Marina Kylberg och Hjalmar Kylberg. Farfadern Lars Wilhelm Kylberg var konstnär vid sidan av lantbruket på familjegodset Såtenäs i Västergötland. Kylberg studerade först vid tekniska skolan i Stockholm och i Berlin för att bli arkitekt men övergick till måleri omkring 1900. Han studerade under en tid vid Valand i Göteborg som elev till Carl Wilhelmson. Hans verk kännetecknas ofta av ett glödande oljemåleri med starka färger och han avbildade ofta landskap och figurkompositioner på ett avskalat man??r. Under senare delen av sitt konstnärskap skapade han en mängd religiösa motiv. Kring 1930-talet fick han sitt genombrott och han kom att ställa ut, förutom i Sverige även i Köpenhamn, Paris, London, Budapest och i USA men hans måleri var för många provocerande och 1938 gick regeringen in och stoppade ett köp av målningen Uppbrottet för Nationalmuseum i Stockholm. En av hans mest välkända målningar är Hemkomsten från 1938 som hänger på Göteborgs konstmuseum och som föreställer ett skepp i silhuett mot en nästan brinnande gul himmel och ett rödfärgat hav. Denna målning förevigades också 1978 på ett svenskt frimärke av valören 90 öre. Sedan 1980-talet har många av hans tavlor sålts för rekordpriser vid olika internationella konstauktioner.