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 :. | Plaster-Torso (female) in back view | Wheat Field under Clouded Sky (nn04) | Vincent van Gogh, pastel drawing by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec | The Artist's Room in Arles | Harvest at La Crau |
Related Artists:
Charles Roscoe Savage
1832-1909, He was a British-born landscape and portrait photographer who produced images of the American West. He is best known for his 1869 photographs of the linking of the first transcontinental railroad. Savage was born in Southampton, England, on August 16, 1832. At age 14, he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). After serving missions for the church in Switzerland and England, he emigrated to the United States during the winter of 1855?C56. He initially found work as a photographer in New York City, and headed west the following year. He first settled in Nebraska, then Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he established his first independent studio and gallery. In the spring of 1860, he traveled to Salt Lake City, Utah Territory with his family, where he established a photography studio with a partner, Marsena Cannon, an early Utah daguerreotypist and photographer. A year later, after Cannon moved to southern Utah, Savage established a partnership with artist George Ottinger. Many of Savage's photographs were reproduced in Harper's Weekly newspaper, which created a national reputation for the firm. This partnership continued until 1870. As a photographer under contract with the Union Pacific Railroad, Savage traveled to California in 1866 and then followed the rails back to Utah. He photographed the linking of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific on Promontory Summit, at Promontory, Utah in 1869
William Callow
British Painter, 1812-1908 1812-1908.English painter and engraver. The son of a carpenter and builder, Callow was apprenticed at the age of 11 to Theodore Fielding, with whom he remained for two years. Copley Fielding also took an interest in his progress. In 1825 Callow was articled to Theodore Fielding for eight years' instruction in watercolour drawing and aquatint engraving. However, in 1829 he left for Paris, at the invitation of Thales Fielding, to work for the publisher J. F. d'Ostervald. He lived and worked with Newton Fielding until 1830, when the events of the July Revolution forced them back to Britain. Callow was again in Paris by February 1831 and returned to London only in 1841.
Francois Bonvin
1817-1887 French Francois Bonvin Location Bonvin was born in humble circumstances in Paris, the son of a police officer and a seamstress. When he was four years old his mother died of tuberculosis and young Francois was left in the care of an old woman who underfed him. Soon his father married another seamstress and brought the child back into the household. Nine additional children were born, putting a strain on the familys resources, and to make matters worse his stepmother took to abusing and undernourishing Francois. The young Bonvin started drawing at an early age. His potential was recognized by a friend of the family, who paid for him to attend a school for drawing instruction at age eleven. This instruction ended after two years, when his father apprenticed him to a printer, and Bonvin was to remain mostly self-taught as an artist. He spent his free time at the Louvre where he especially appreciated the Dutch old masters. Bonvin married a laundress at the age of twenty, at about the same time that he secured a job at the headquarters of the Paris police. It was during this period in his life that he also contracted an illness which would trouble him for the rest of his life. Bonvin exhibited three paintings in the Salon of 1849, where he was awarded a third-class medal. He exhibited in the Salon of 1850 with Courbet, and won recognition as a leading realist, painting truthfully the lives of the poor which he knew at first hand. His paintings were well received by critics and by the public. Although his work had elements in common with Courbets, his modestly scaled paintings were not seen as revolutionary. He was awarded the Legion d honneur in 1870. His subjects were still life and the everyday activities of common people, painted in a style that is reminiscent of Pieter de Hooch and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. It is the latter who is especially recalled by Bonvins delicate luminosity. In 1881 he underwent an operation which did not restore him to health, and he became blind. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1886. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1887.