Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Portrait of a patient at the Hospital Saint-Paul | Still Life with Bible | Portrait of Pere Tanguy (nn04) | Entrance to a Quarry near Saint-Remy (nn04) | The Bridge at Trinquetaille |
Related Artists:
Georges Rouget
Georges Rouget (1781, Paris - 1869, Paris) was a neoclassical French painter. After studying in the ? - ole des beaux-arts, Rouget entered David's studio in 1797 and rapidly became his favourite student. Rouget began his professional career as his master's main assistant until David's exile to Brussels, collaborating with him on the canvases Bonaparte at the Grand-Saint-Bernard, The Coronation of Napoleon (of which he made a copy signed by David), Leonidas at Thermopylae and on one of the three copies of the Portrait of Pope Pius VII. Though winning the second prize in the prix de Rome contest in 1803, he failed three times to win the first prize. He produced many canvases for the First French Empire and the Bonapartes, such as The Marriage of Napoleon and Marie Louise in 1811. A minor painter, he spent his whole career producing paintings of great moments in French history for whatever regime was in power at the time. Many of his paintings adorned the musee de Versailles opened by Louis-Philippe in 1837.
Polk, Charles Peale
American, 1767-1822 American painter. Orphaned as a child, he was raised in Philadelphia, PA, by his uncle, Charles Willson Peale, who taught him to paint. In 1791 Polk moved to Baltimore, MD, where he achieved limited success as a portrait painter. Seeking commissions, he moved to Frederick, MD, in 1796. Over the next five years during travels as an itinerant limner through western Maryland and Virginia he reached his mature style. Abandoning his academic training, Polk developed a distinctive but naive artistic vocabulary with a heightened palette, electric highlights and an exaggerated attenuation of the human form. The portraits of Isaac Hite and his wife Eleanor Madison Hite, as well as James Madison sr and Eleanor Conway Madison (all Middletown, VA, Belle Grove), were commissioned in 1799 and are accepted as his masterpieces. Isaac Hite also commissioned the quintessentially 'republican' portrait of Thomas Jefferson (New York, Victor Spark priv. col.), executed at Monticello in 1799. In 1801 Polk moved to Washington, DC, working as a clerk in the Treasury. During the next 16 years he painted few portraits in oil
Mednyanszky, Laszlo
Hungarian, 1852-1919 Ladislaus Josephus Balthasar Eustachius Mednyenszky was a Hungarian painter in the Impressionist tradition. Despite an aristocratic background, he spent most of his life moving around Europe working as an artist. Mednyenszky spent considerable periods in seclusion but mingled with people across society - in the aristocracy, art world, peasantry and army - many of whom became the subjects of his paintings. His most important works depict scenes of nature and poor, working people, particularly from his home region in Upper Hungary. Medny nszky was born in Beck, the Kingdom of Hungary (now Beckov in Slovakia), to Eduard Mednyenszky and Maria Anna Mednyenszky, (nee Szirmay) both from landowning families. Mednyenszky's family moved in 1861 to the chateau of his grandfather, Baltazer Szirmay, at Nagyőr (Strežky), near Szepesbela (Spišsk Bele) in north-eastern Hungary. This was to be the setting for many of his works. Medny nszky met the Austrian artist Thomas Ender in 1863 when Ender visited the chateau at Nagyőr. Ender took an interest in Mednyenszky's early efforts at drawing, lending his assistance to improve Mednyenszky's skills. Mednyenszky attended a grammar school in K??smerk (Kežmarok), near his home, then attended the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Munich in 1872 - 1873. Dissatisfied in Munich, he moved to Paris to attend the École des Beaux-Arts. After the death of his professor, Isidore-Alexandre Augustin Pils, in 1875, Mednyenszky left the École and began practicing independently from Montmartre. Mednyenszky returned to Nagyőr after 1877 to continue painting, and subsequently travelled widely in Europe, between his childhood homes in Upper Hungary and Budapest, Vienna, Paris and beyond. Mednyenszky visited the Szolnok artists' colony in the autumn of 1877 and Italy in 1878. His mother died in 1883, after which he lived in seclusion in Nagyőr. He returned to Nagyőr in 1887 to help deal with an outbreak of cholera but soon fell ill himself, with pneumonia. He spent much of 1889-1892 in Paris and returned regularly to Nagyőr until 1900.