Alexander Nasmyth
Scottish Painter,
1758-1840
was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the father of Scottish landscape painting". Edinburgh Castle and Nor'Loch, circa 1780.Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the Royal High School and the Trustees Academy under Alexander Runciman, and, having been apprenticed as an heraldic painter to a coachbuilder, he, at the age of sixteen, attracted the attention of Allan Ramsay, who took the youth with him to London, and employed him upon the subordinate portions of his works. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh in 1778, and was soon largely patronized as a portrait painter. He also assisted Mr Miller of Dalswinton, as draughtsman, in his mechanical researches and experiments; and, this gentleman having generously offered the painter a loan to enable him to pursue his studies abroad, he left in 1782 for Italy, where he remained two years. Robert Burns, 1787.On his return he painted the excellent portrait of Robert Burns, now in the Scottish National Gallery, well known through Walker's engraving. Political feeling at that time ran high in Edinburgh, and Nasmyth's pronounced Liberal opinions, which he was too outspoken and sincere to disguise, gave offence to many of his aristocratic patrons, and led to the diminution of his practice as a portraitist. In his later years, accordingly, he devoted himself mainly to landscape work, and did not disdain on occasion to set his hand to scene-painting for the theatres. He has been styled, not unjustly, the father of Scottish landscape arte His subjects are carefully finished and coloured, but are wanting in boldness and freedom. Related Paintings of Alexander Nasmyth :. | Castle Huntly. | A Leningrad Theme | A Highland Loch Landscape | A Highland Loch Landscape | A View of the Town of Stirling on the River Forth | Related Artists: Joseph Van BredaelFlemish , 1688-1739
RAFFAELLO SanzioItalian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1520
Italian painter and architect. As a member of Perugino's workshop, he established his mastery by 17 and began receiving important commissions. In 1504 he moved to Florence, where he executed many of his famous Madonnas; his unity of composition and suppression of inessentials is evident in The Madonna of the Goldfinch (c. 1506). Though influenced by Leonardo da Vinci's chiaroscuro and sfumato, his figure types were his own creation, with round, gentle faces that reveal human sentiments raised to a sublime serenity. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome to decorate a suite of papal chambers in the Vatican. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are probably his greatest work; the most famous, The School of Athens (1510 C 11), is a complex and magnificently ordered allegory of secular knowledge showing Greek philosophers in an architectural setting. The Madonnas he painted in Rome show him turning away from his earlier work's serenity to emphasize movement and grandeur, partly under Michelangelo's High Renaissance influence. The Sistine Madonna (1513) shows the richness of colour and new boldness of compositional invention typical of his Roman period. He became the most important portraitist in Rome, designed 10 large tapestries to hang in the Sistine Chapel, designed a church and a chapel, assumed the direction of work on St. Peter's Basilica at the death of Donato Bramante, Reuben MoulthropAmerican portrait, miniature, wax sculptor
b.1763-d.1814
American painter. As proprietor of a waxworks museum and travelling waxworks exhibition, he was interested in modelling in wax in his early years. While moving around his native state, he was exposed to several artistic influences, beginning with Winthrop Chandler. His earliest portraits seem to date from about 1788, when he completed Mr and Mrs Samuel Hathaway (1788; New Haven, CT, Colony Hist. Soc. Mus.). Its dark, heavy outlines, its flatness and almost geometric forms derive from Chandler. The quality of Moulthrop's paintings was extremely uneven; many of the best of the surviving body of about 50 works date from around 1800. The Rev. Thomas Robbins which depicts the sitter's direct gaze and contains more detail than the earlier portraits, shows the artist at his most accomplished. In the last years of his brief career he appears to have been influenced by William Jennys and John Durand,
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