(21 May 1688 - 30 May 1744) was an eighteenth-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson. Pope is famous for his use of the heroic couplet. Pope was born to Edith Pope (1643-1733) and Alexander Pope Senior. (1646-1717) a linen merchant of Plough Court, Lombard Street, London, who were both Catholics. Pope's education was affected by the penal law in force at the time upholding the status of the established Church of England, which banned Catholics from teaching, attending a university, voting, or holding public office on pain of perpetual imprisonment. Pope was taught to read by his aunt, then went to Twyford School in about 1698-9. He then went to two Catholic schools in London. Such schools, while illegal, were tolerated in some areas. In 1700, his family moved to a small estate at Popeswood in Binfield, Berkshire, close to the royal Windsor Forest. This was due to strong anti-Catholic sentiment and a statute preventing Catholics from living within 10 miles (16 km) of either London or Westminster. Pope would later describe the countryside around the house in his poem Windsor Forest. Pope's formal education ended at this time, and from then on he mostly educated himself by reading the works of classical writers such as the satirists Horace and Juvenal, the epic poets Homer and Virgil, as well as English authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, William Shakespeare and John Dryden. He also studied many languages and read works by English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. After five years of study, Pope came into contact with figures from the London literary society such as William Wycherley, William Congreve, Samuel Garth, William Trumbull, and William Walsh. At Binfield, he also began to make many important friends. One of them, John Caryll (the future dedicatee of The Rape of the Lock), was twenty years older than the poet and had made many acquaintances in the London literary world. He introduced the young Pope to the aging playwright William Wycherley and to William Walsh, a minor poet, who helped Pope revise his first major work, The Pastorals. He also met the Blount sisters, Teresa and (his alleged future lover) Martha, both of whom would remain lifelong friends. From the age of 12, he suffered numerous health problems, such as Pott's disease (a form of tuberculosis that affects the bone) which deformed his body and stunted his growth, leaving him with a severe hunchback. His tuberculosis infection caused other health problems including respiratory difficulties, high fevers, inflamed eyes, and abdominal pain. He never grew beyond 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) tall. Pope was already removed from society because he was Catholic; his poor health only alienated him further. Although he never married, he had many female friends to whom he wrote witty letters. He did have one alleged lover,  Related Paintings of Alexander Pope :. | Village Fete | Ludwig, Graf Von Langenstein | Virgin and Child | Satyr at the Peasants House | Winter Landscape (mk05) |
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Friedrich Hagedorn
(23 April 1708 - 28 October 1754), German poet, was born at Hamburg, where his father, a man of scientific and literary taste, was Danish minister. He was educated at the gymnasium of Hamburg, and later (1726) became a student of law at Jena. Returning to Hamburg in 1729, he obtained the appointment of unpaid private secretary to the Danish ambassador in London, where he lived till 1731. Hagedorn's return to Hamburg was followed by a period of great poverty and hardship, but in 1733 he was appointed secretary to the so-called "English Court" (Englischer Hof) in Hamburg, a trading company founded in the 13th century. He shortly afterwards married, and from this time had sufficient leisure to pursue his literary occupations till his death. Hagedorn is the first German poet who bears unmistakable testimony to the nation's recovery from the devastation wrought by the Thirty Years' War. He is eminently a social poet. His light and graceful love-songs and anacreontics, with their undisguised joie de vivre, introduced a new note into the German lyric; his fables and tales in verse are hardly inferior in form and in delicate persiflage to those of his master La Fontaine, and his moralizing poetry re-echoes the philosophy of Horace. He exerted a dominant influence on the German lyric until late in the 18th century. The first collection of Hagedorn's poems was published at Hamburg shortly after his return from Jena in 1729, under the title Versuch einiger Gedichte (reprinted by A. Sauer, Heilbronn, 1883). In 1738 appeared Versuch in poetischen Fabeln und Erzählungen; in 1742 a collection of his lyric poems, under the title Sammlung neuer Oden und Lieder; and his Moralische Gedichte in 1750. A collection of his entire works was published at Hamburg in 1757 after his death. The best is J.J. Eschenburg's edition (5 vols., Hamburg, 1800). Selections of his poetry with an excellent introduction in F. Muncker's Anakreontiker und preussisch-patriotische Lyriker (Stuttgart, 1894). See also H. Schuster, F. von Hagedorn und seine Bedeutung fer die deutsche Literatur (Leipzig, 1882); W. Eigenbrodt, Hagedorn und die Erzählung in Reimversen (Berlin, 1884).
Christian Rohlfs
German Painter, 1849-1938 German painter and printmaker. He studied painting at the Kunstschule in Weimar (1870). Prolonged illness forced him to interrupt his studies, which he resumed in 1874 under Ferdinand Schauss (1832-1916) and Alexandre Struys (1852-1941). Through visits to Paris in the 1870s, he came into contact with the art of the Barbizon school, painting en plein-air on his return to Weimar. Under the influence of Struys he painted figurative works, such as Roman Builders (1879; Menster, Westfel. Landesmus.), and nudes in the tradition of academically enlightened Realism. In 1881 Rohlfs worked in a studio under Max Thedy (1858-1924). From c. 1883 he painted mainly landscapes with the approval of Ludwig von Gleichen-Russwurm (1836-1901), who was studying with Theodor Hagen (1842-1919), and was influenced in an indirect way by Albert Brendel (1827-95), who had taught at Weimar from 1875. He often chose formats that were unusually large for landscape paintings in this period, presenting landscape in a similar way to history painting. Atmosphere and light played an important role even in these early pictures, for example Sawmill at Ehringsdorf on the Ilm (930x780 mm, 1883; Weimar, Schlossmus.). From 1884 he worked as an independent painter. After 1885 colour became increasingly important for its own sake; light and shade were suggested purely by colour, which was applied in impasto spots and brushstrokes to create chiaroscuro values that determined the form, for example Wild Garden near Weimar (1888; Weimar, Schlossmus.). By the end of the 1880s he had developed an independent style parallel to Impressionist painting. When he saw works by Monet exhibited in Weimar in 1897, these corroborated his own efforts.
Ludolf Bakhuizen
(December 28, 1630 - November 17, 1708) was a German-born Dutch Golden Age painter who was the leading Dutch painter of maritime subjects after the two Willem van de Veldes (father and son) left for England in 1672. He was born in Emden, East Frisia, and came to Amsterdam in about 1650, working as a merchant's clerk and a calligrapher. He discovered so strong a genius for painting that he relinquished the business and devoted himself to art from the late 1650s, initially in pen drawings. He studied first under Allart van Everdingen and then under Hendrik Dubbels, two eminent masters of the time, and soon became celebrated for his sea-pieces, which often had rough seas. He was an ardent student of nature, and frequently exposed himself on the sea in an open boat in order to study the effects of storms. His compositions, which are numerous, are nearly all variations of one subject, the sea, and in a style peculiarly his own, marked by intense realism or faithful imitation of nature. In his later years Bakhuizen employed his skills in etching; he also painted a few examples each of several other genres of painting, such as portraits, landscapes and genre paintings.