1806-1858
Russian Alexander Ivanov Galleries
was a Russian painter who adhered to the waning tradition of Neoclassicism but found little sympathy with his contemporaries.
Ivanov studied together with Karl Briullov at the Imperial Academy of Arts under his father, Andrey A. Ivanov. He spent most of his life in Rome where he befriended Gogol and succumbed to the influence of the Nazarenes. He has been called the master of one work, for it took 20 years to complete his magnum opus, The Appearance of Christ before the People (1837-57).
It was for the next generation of art critics to do him justice. Some of the numerous sketches he had prepared for The Appearance have been recognized as masterpieces in their own right. Although Ivanov's major painting is a gem of the Tretyakov Gallery, the most comprehensive collection of his works can be viewed at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg. Related Paintings of Alexander Ivanov :. | The Appearance of Christ ot the People | Nude Boy | Christ-s First Appearance to the People | Angel Striking Zacharlas dumb | The Appearance of Christ to the People | Related Artists:
Nikolai Ge1831 C 13 June [O.S. 1 June] 1894) was a Russian realist painter famous for his works on historical and religious motifs.
Nikolai Ge was born in Voronezh to a Russian noble family of French origin. His grandfather emigrated to Russia in the 18th century. His parents died when he was still a child, so Nikolai was raised by his serf nurse. He graduated from the First Kiev Gymnasium and studied at the physics-mathematics department of Kiev University and Saint Petersburg University.
In 1850 he gave up his career in science and entered the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. He studied in academy under the historical painter Pyotr Basin until 1857. He graduated from the academy in 1857 with a gold medal for his painting The Witch of Endor Calling Up the Spirit of the Prophet Samuel. According to Ge himself, during that period he was strongly influenced by Karl Brullov.
His gold medal provided him a scholarship for studying abroad . He visited Germany, Switzerland, France and in 1860 settled in Italy. In Rome he met Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov who strongly influenced Ge. In 1861 Ge painted The Last Supper; in 1863 he took the painting with him to Saint Petersburg. Ge found his own interpretation of the classical subject ?? he emphasized the motif of discord among those who had formerly shared the same views. The painting (bought by Tsar Alexander II of Russia) made so strong impression that Ge was made a professor of Imperial Academy of Arts.
In 1864 he returned to Florence where he became a friend of a major Russian pro-Western writer and thinker Alexander Herzen and painted his portrait. The same year he also painted Messengers of the Resurrection and the first version of the Christ on the Mount of Olives.
Birch, William RussellAmerican, 1755-1834
Richard WilsonWelsh Romantic Painter, ca.1713-1782
was a Welsh landscape painter, and one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Wilson has been described as '...the most distinguished painter Wales has ever produced and the first to appreciate the aesthetic possibilities of his country.' Wilson is considered to be the father of landscape painting in Britain. The son of a clergyman, Wilson was born in Penegoes, Montgomeryshire. The family was an old and respected one, and Wilson was first cousin to Charles Pratt, 1st Earl Camden. In 1729 he went to London where he began as a portrait painter, under the apprentership of an obscure artist, Thomas Wright. From 1750 to 1757 he was in Italy and adopted landscape on the advice of Francesco Zuccarelli. Painting in Italy and afterwards in England, he was the first major British painter to primarily concentrate on landscape. He composed well, but saw and rendered only the general effects of nature thereby creating a personal, ideal style influenced by Claude Lorrain and the Dutch landscape tradition. According to John Ruskin, he "paints in a manly way, and occasionally reaches exquisite tones of colour." He concentrated on painting Italianate landscapes and landscapes based upon classsical literature, but when his painting The Destruction of the Children of Niobe (c.1759-60) won high acclaim he gained many commissions from wealthy families seeking classical potrayals of their estates.