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 :. | Mr and Mrs Andrews | Landguard Fort | Detail of Landscape with a Peasant on a path | Detail of Conversation in a Park | Princess Augusta aged |
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Richard Caton Woodville
1856 - 1927 was an English artist and illustrator, who is best known for being one of the most prolific and effective painters of battle scenes in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries. The son of American Richard Caton Woodville (The First), who was also a talented artist, Woodville studied at the Dusseldorf School under the great Prussian military artist Wilhelm Camphausen, and then Eduard von Gebhardt, before briefly studying in Russia and then Paris under Gerome. Woodville spent most of his career working for the Illustrated London News where he quickly developed a reputation as a talented reporter and writer, but was also published in Cornhill Magazine, Strand Magazine, and The Tatler. Richard Caton Woodville first experienced battle first-hand when he was sent by the Illustrated London News to report upon the Russo-Turkish War (1877 C 1878), and then again in the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War where he made numerous sketches, and also obtained photographs of the trenches at Tel-e-Kebir for his friend and co-artist Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville whom had been commissioned to paint a scene of the battle. In 1879 Woodville's Before Leuthen, Dec 3rd, 1757 was exhibited in the Royal Academy. It proved popular, and afterwards he began to regularly be exhibited in Burlington House, where 21 of his battle paintings were eventually shown. His most popular works there were ones that dealt with contemporary wars, such as the Second Anglo-Afghan War, Candahar [sic], and Maiwand, Saving the Guns (Walker Art Gallery), the Zulu War, and the First Boer War. His works from Egypt were exhibited at the Fine Art Society in 1883, where his painting The Moonlight Charge at Kassassin proved very popular. The following year he exhibited by Royal Command another painting he had done of the war in Egypt, entitled The Guards at Tel-e-Kebir (Royal Collection). He continued to paint scenes of battle, and few battles or wars that Great Britain fought during his life were not touched upon by him, including the Second Boer War, and World War I. Despite his precocious talent for capturing the dramatic moments of contemporary battles, Woodville also enjoyed recreating historical scenes in both oil, and watercolour. The Illustrated London News commissioned him to complete a commemorative special series recreating the most famous British Battles of history. He depicted The Charge of the Light Brigade (Royal Collection, Madrid) and The Charge of the 21st Lancers at Omdurman (Walker Art Gallery), Battle of Blenheim, Battle of Badajos and several Battle of Waterloo pictures. During World War I, Woodville was compelled to return to the depiction of current events, and three of his Great War works were displayed in the Royal Academy.
BUYTEWECH, Willem
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1591-1624 Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. Although he was born and died in Rotterdam, stylistically he belongs to the generation of young artists working in Haarlem at the beginning of the 17th century. He was nicknamed 'Geestige Willem' (Dut.: 'inventive, or witty, Willem') by his contemporaries, and during his short career he made an important and highly personal contribution to the new approach to realism in Dutch art. He was one of the first to paint interiors with merry companies
Frans van Leemputten
painted Aan de Schelde-arm in 1884