1738-1820 Benjamin West Locations Benjamin West RA (October 10, 1738 ?C March 11, 1820) was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. He was the second president of the Royal Academy serving from 1792 to 1805 and 1806 to 1820. In 1760, sponsored by Smith and William Allen, reputed to be the wealthiest man in Philadelphia, West traveled to Italy where he expanded his repertoire by copying the works of Italian painters such as Titian and Raphael. As painted by Gilbert Stuart, 1783-84West was a close friend of Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait he painted. Franklin was also the godfather of West's second son, Benjamin. In 1763, West moved to England, where he was commissioned by King George III to create portraits of members of the royal family. The king himself was twice painted by him. He painted his most famous, and possibly most influential painting, The Death of General Wolfe, in 1770, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1771. Although originally snubbed by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the famous portrait painter and President of the Royal Academy, and others as over ambitious, the painting became one of the most frequently reproduced images of the period. In 1772, King George appointed him historical painter to the court at an annual fee of £1,000. With Reynolds, West founded the Royal Academy of Arts in 1768. He was the second president of the Royal Academy from 1792 to 1805. He was re-elected in 1806 and was president until his death in 1820. He was Surveyor of the King's Pictures from 1791 until his death. Many American artists studied under him in London, including Charles Willson Peale, Rembrandt Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully. [3] West is known for his large scale history paintings, which use expressive figures, colours and compositional schemes to help the spectator to identify with the scene represented. West called this "epic representation". He died in London.  Related Paintings of Benjamin West :. | The death of general Wolf | The Departure of Regulus (mk25) | Edward III Crossing the Somme (mk25) | Tod des General Wolfe in der Schacht von Quebec | Self-portrait |
Related Artists:
Edouard Castres
Swiss 1838 - 1902 Swiss painter. His father was a clock engraver, and he initially trained as an enamellist. He took drawing lessons from Barthelemy Menn and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1859. He soon decided to concentrate on oil painting. He was assistant to the genre and figure painter Eduardo Zamacois y Zabala (1842-71). In the Franco-Prussian War he joined the Red Cross, moving into Switzerland at the beginning of February 1871 with the army led by Gen. Bourbaki. He painted military scenes from sketches carried out on the battlefield and received consistently good reviews, which also brought financial success. He was commissioned by a Belgian panorama company to record the entry of the French army into Switzerland, which he had witnessed in 1871. He spent the winter of 1876-7 on site at Les Verrieres, painting preparatory studies, and in 1881 he completed the panorama, Gen. Bourbaki's Army Retreating into Switzerland (Lucerne, Panorama). He was aided by nine assistants, recruited from among Menn's pupils, who included Ferdinand Hodler. The work was exhibited in Geneva and was brought to a rotunda in Lucerne in 1889. Among panorama paintings it is a work of a high order: despite the colossal dimensions and the barely comprehensible mass of people depicted, the dominant impression is of individual suffering.
Cuzco School
The Cuzco School (Escuela Cuzqueña) was a Roman Catholic artistic tradition based in Cusco, Peru (the former capital of the Inca Empire) during the Colonial period, in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. It was not limited to Cuzco only, but spread to other cities in the Andes, as well as to present day Bolivia and Ecuador.
Johan Christoffer Boklund
(15 July 1817 - 9 December 1880) was a Swedish history, genre, and portrait painter from Kulla-Gunnarstorp in Scania.He was the son of a gardener. At the age of fifteen, Boklund came to Lund, where he worked on illustrations for Sven Nilsson's works on Scandinavian fauna (under the supervision of Magnus Körner). He then became a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen where J. L. Lund was his teacher. In 1837, Boklund went to Stockholm and began studying at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts. He made a living as a lithograph and drawing teacher, and produced several small genre paintings of the everyday life (such as Flicka med blomster (English: Girl with flowers) and Köksinteriör (English: Kitchen interior)) and history paintings of the 17th century (such as Gustaf Adolfs afsked från Maria Eleonora (English: Gustaf Adolf's farewell from Maria Eleonora), which was awarded with a medal at the academy). Together with fellow Swedish painter Johan Fredrik Höckert, Boklund traveled to Munich in Germany in 1846 and stayed there for eight years. During the summers he went on study trips to Bavaria, Tyrol, and northern Italy. During this period, Boklund primarily devoted his painting to the history genre with subjects from the 17th century, but he also made some paintings depicting picturesque and architectural interior. In 1853, he sent his painting Den nyfikne trumpetaren (English: The curious trumpet player) home to Sweden and it earned him a scholarship from the government. This allowed Boklund to move to Paris, where he worked at Thomas Couture's atelier from 1854 to 1855. In December 1855 he returned to Sweden.