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 Jonathan Buttall | Cornard wood | Portrait of Mrs Margaret Gainsborough | Detail of Landscape with a Peasant on a path | Self-Portrait |
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Robert Wilhelm Ekman
(August 13, 1808 - February 19, 1873), aka R. W. Ekman, was a significant teacher and painter of the Finnish romantic portraits and early national romanticism. Robert Ekman was born in Uusikaupunki, Finland to an upper class family. His father was Karl Kristoffer Ekman, a medical doctor and a mayor. Mother was Sara Elisabet (maiden name Gadolin). Robert Ekman's both parents died when he was about 10 years old. They left behind five orphans who were placed in foster homes. Schooling was incomplete and there was no chance of academic education. Robert Ekman first studied in Finland under the guidance of Gustaf Wilhelm Finnberg, but in 1824, with his brother Fredrubjm begun studies in Kungliga Akademien för de Fria Konsterna (The royal academy for free arts) in Stockholm. Already as a student Ekman specialized in portraying the life of the common people, instead of Classicism of the academic arts. Ekman graduated in 1836, and was granted a generous traveling scholarship for excelling in his studies. That supported him working in Holland, France and Italy between years 1837-1844. As the scholarship was not plausible otherwise, Ekman took the Swedish citizenship.
Aved, Jacques-Andre-Joseph
French Painter, 1702-1766
Cornelis van Spaendonck Prints
Dutch 1756-1840 Cornelis van Spaendonck (7 December 1756 - 22 December 1839) was a Dutch painter who was a native of Tilburg. Spaendonck initially worked under artist Guillaume-Jacques Herreyns (1743-1827) in Antwerp, and in 1773 moved to Paris to study and work with his brother, floral painter G??rard van Spaendonck (1746-1822). From 1785 to 1800, Cornelis van Spaendonck was head of the porcelain works at S??vres. Due to difficulties encountered as an administrator, he was relieved of his directorship in 1800, but remained at S??vres as a designer and artist until 1808. In 1789 Spaendonck became a member of the Acad??mie des Beaux Arts. He painted throughout his lifetime, and displayed his works at the Salons of Paris until 1833. Most of Spaendonck's works were created with oils and gouache, and he is remembered for his lush still-lifes of flowers. Among his paintings were subjects such as De Fleurs Et Fruits, Vase De Fleurs, Bouquet De Different Fleurs, Fleurs Du Jardin, Corbeille Fleurs, et al. At his death in 1840 there were 29 paintings in his studio, which were auctioned soon afterwards.