1815-1905 German Adolph von Menzel Gallery His father was the headmaster of a school for girls, and intended to educate his son as a professor; but he would not thwart his taste for art. Left an orphan in 1832, Menzel had to maintain his family. In 1833 Sachse of Berlin published his first work, an album of pen-and-ink drawings reproduced on stone, to illustrate Goethe's little poem, Kunstlers Erdenwallen. He executed lithographs in the same manner to illustrate Denkw??rdigkeiten aus der brandenburgisch-preussischen Geschichte; The Five Senses and The Prayer, as well as diplomas for various corporations and societies. From 1839 to 1842 he produced 400 drawings, largely introducing to Germany the technique of wood engraving, to illustrate the Geschichte Friedrichs des Grossen (History of Frederick the Great) by Franz Kugler. He subsequently brought out Friedrichs der Grossen Armee in ihrer Uniformirung (The Uniforms of the Army under Frederick the Great), Soldaten Friedrichs der Grossen (The Soldiers of Frederick the Great); and finally, by order of the king Frederick William IV, he illustrated the works of Frederick the Great, Illustrationen zu den Werken Friedricks des Grossen (1843-1849). By these works Menzel established his claim to be considered one of the first, if not actually the first, of the illustrators of his day in his own line. Pencil drawing by Menzel, 1891.Meanwhile Menzel had set himself to study unaided the art of painting, and he soon produced a great number and variety of pictures, always showing keen observation and honest workmanship in subjects dealing with the life and achievements of Frederick the Great, and scenes of everyday life, such as In the Tuileries, The Ball Supper, and At Confession. Among the most important of these works are The Forge (1875) and The Market-place at Verona. Invited to paint The Coronation of William I at Koenigsberg, he produced an exact representation of the ceremony without regard to the traditions of official painting. In Germany he received many honors, and was the first painter to be given the Order of the Black Eagle in 1898 which included a title of nobility, becoming von Menzel.  Related Paintings of Adolph von Menzel :. | Head of a Girl | Sister Emily Sleeping | The Berlin-Potsdam Railway | Atelierwand | Weekday in Paris |
Related Artists:
LISS, Johann
German Baroque Era Painter, ca.1597-1631
Andrei Ryabushkin
(Russian:29 October [O.S. 17 October] 1861 - 10 May [O.S. 27 April] 1904) was a Russian painter. His major works were devoted to life of ordinary Russians of the 17th century. Andrey Petrovich Ryabushkin was born in the village Stanichnaya sloboda, Borisoglebskiy uezd, Tambov gubernia in 1861. His father and brother were icon painters, and he started to help them from his early childhood. At 14 years old he became an orphan. A student of Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture A. Kh. Preobrazhensky, who spent the summer in the village, happened to see the boyes drawings and was greatly impressed by them. He started to give him lessons and helped him to enter the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Ryabushkin was one of the youngest student of the school at all times. Ryabushkin stayed for seven years (1875-82) in the Moscow School, learning from Vasily Perov and Illarion Pryanishnikov. His first large work Peasant Wedding was bought by Pavel Tretyakov in 1880. After the death of Vasiliy Perov, Ryabushkin moved to Saint Petersburg in 1882, and entered the Imperial Academy of Arts where he learned from Pavel Chistyakov. The classes soon disappointed him, however, and he began to spend more and more time either in the library of the academy or sketching in the streets. His studies at the academy came to an end in 1892. He did not receive an award for his diploma work, Descent from the Cross, as was expected, because he did not follow the approved project. But the work was so good that the president of the academy, Grand Duke Vladimir Konstantinovich, provided Ryabushkin with a stipend for travel and studies abroad from his own means. Instead of going to Italy or Paris, Ryabushkin chose to make a tour of ancient Russian towns (Novgorod, Kiev, Moscow, Uglich, Yaroslavl). The inhabitants of them became his first models and his first critics.
Roelandt Savery
1576-1639 Roelandt Savery Gallery Like so many other artists, Savery's Anabaptist family fled North from the Spanish occupied Southern Netherlands when Roelant was about 4 years old and settled in Haarlem around 1585. He was taught painting by his older brother Jacob Savery (c.1565-1603) and Hans Bol. After his schooling, Savery traveled to Prague around 1604, where he became court painter of the Emperors Rudolf II (1552-1612) and Mathias (1557-1619), who had made their court a center of mannerist art. Between 1606-1608 he traveled to Tyrol to study plants. Gillis d'Hondecoeter became his pupil. Before 1616 Savery moved back to Amsterdam, and lived in the Sint Antoniesbreestraat. In 1618 he settled in Utrecht, where he joined the artist's guild a year later. His nephew Hans would become his most important assistant. In 1621 Savery bought a large house on the Boterstraat in Utrecht. The house had a large garden with flowers and plants, where a number of fellow painters, like Adam Willaerts were frequent visitors. Savery had kept his house in Amsterdam, and had one child baptized in Nieuwe Kerk (Amsterdam). Savery was friends with still life painters like Balthasar van der Ast and Ambrosius Bosschaert. In the 1620s he was one of the most successful painters in Utrecht, but later his life got troubled, perhaps because of heavy drinking. Though he would have pupils until the late 1630s, amongst which Allaert van Everdingen and Roelant Roghman, he went bankrupt in 1638 and died half a year later.