French Cubist Painter, 1881-1955,was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker,Leger was born in the Argentan, Orne, Basse-Normandie, where his father raised cattle. Fernand Leger initially trained as an architect from 1897-1899 before moving in 1900 to Paris, where he supported himself as an architectural draftsman. After military service in Versailles in 1902-1903, he enrolled at the School of Decorative Arts; he also applied to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts but was rejected. He nevertheless attended the Beaux-Arts as a non-enrolled student, spending what he described as "three empty and useless years" studying with Gerome and others, while also studying at the Academie Julian. He began to work seriously as a painter only at the age of 25. At this point his work showed the influence of Impressionism, as seen in Le Jardin de ma mere (My Mother's Garden) of 1905, one of the few paintings from this period that he did not later destroy. A new emphasis on drawing and geometry appeared in Leger's work after he saw the Cezanne retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1907. In 1909 he moved to Montparnasse and met such leaders of the avant-garde as Archipenko, Lipchitz, Chagall, and Robert Delaunay. His major painting of this period is Nudes in the Forest (1909-10), in which Leger displayed a personal form of Cubism??his critics called it "Tubism" for its emphasis on cylindrical formsethat made no use of the collage technique pioneered by Braque and Picasso. In 1910 he joined with several other artists, including Delaunay, Jacques Villon, Henri Le Fauconnier, Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia, and Marie Laurencin to form an offshoot of the Cubist movement, the Puteaux Group??also called the Section d'Or (The Golden Section). Leger was influenced during this time by Italian Futurism, and his paintings, from then until 1914, became increasingly abstract. Their vocabulary of tubular, conical, and cubed forms are laconically rendered in rough patches of primary colours plus green, black and white, as seen in the series of paintings with the title Contrasting Forms. Leger's experiences in World War I had a significant effect on his work. Mobilized in August 1914 for service in the French Army, he spent two years at the front in Argonne. He produced many sketches of artillery pieces, airplanes, and fellow soldiers while in the trenches, and painted Soldier with a Pipe (1916) while on furlough. In September 1916 he almost died after a mustard gas attack by the German troops at Verdun.  Related Paintings of Fernand Leger :. | Iwo women | Two women with flowers in hand | Femme Assise | motber and cbild | motber and cbild |
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Giovanni Giacometti
1868-1933 Swiss Giovanni Giacometti Galleries was a Swiss painter. He was the father of the artists Alberto and Diego Giacometti and the architect Bruno Giacometti.
Johann Gottfried Steffan
1815-1905 Swiss painter. He moved to Munich in 1833 after an apprenticeship as a lithographer in Wedenswil. He studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste and the Polytechnikum in Munich. He was impressed by Carl Rottmann's Italian landscapes and decided to devote himself to landscape painting. He travelled to Italy in 1845 and to Paris in 1855; he subsequently began to concentrate on painting lake and mountain scenes, for example Lake Starnberg in a Storm (1873; Zurich, Ksthaus), at which he was highly successful. He undertook numerous study-visits to Bavaria and Switzerland, often accompanied by his pupils Traugott Schiess (1834-69) and Otto Frölicher. In Munich Steffan became friendly with Rudolf Koller, Johann Caspar Bosshardt (1823-87) and Arnold Becklin, and under his leadership the 'Schweizer', as these artist-friends were known collectively, formed their own group.
Peter Buell Porter
(August 14, 1773 - March 20, 1844) was an American lawyer, soldier and politician who served as United States Secretary of War from 1828 to 1829. He graduated from Yale College in 1791, studied law in Litchfield, Connecticut, was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in Canandaigua, New York in 1793. He served as clerk of Ontario County from 1797 to 1804 and was a member of the New York State Assembly in 1802 and again in 1828. In the fall of 1809, Porter moved to Black Rock, New York and was elected as a Democratic-Republican to the Eleventh and Twelfth United States Congresses, serving from March 4, 1809 to March 3, 1813, but declined renomination. During his service in Congress, he was a leading figure among Congressional "war hawks" and Chairman of the Committee that recommended preparation for war with Great Britain. At the same time, from 1810 to 1816, he was a member of the Erie Canal Commission, a commission on inland navigation established in 1810 by the New York state Legislature to survey a canal route from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes. During the War of 1812, Porter was initially quartermaster general of the New York State Militia from May to October 1812. He participated in and criticized General Alexander Smyth's abortive operations against British Canada in 1812, culminating in a bloodless duel between the two. The historian John R. Elting wrote of the duel, stating "Unfortunately, both missed."[1] He later raised and commanded a brigade of New York militia that incorporated a Six Nations Indian contingent and led his command with distinction. For his actions, he was presented a gold medal under joint resolution of Congress dated November 3, 1814 "for gallantry and good conduct" during the Battle of Chippewa, the Battle of Niagara, and the Battle of Erie. Porter was Secretary of State of New York from February 1815 to February 1816. He was also elected to the Fourteenth United States Congress. Although his term in Congress began on March 4, 1815, the actual Session began only in December, and he took his seat on December 11, 1815. On January 23, 1816, he resigned, having been appointed a Commissioner under the Treaty of Ghent, which caused a controversy as to the constitutionality of sitting in Congress and holding this commissionership at the same time. In 1817, his political friends of Tammany Hall printed ballots with his name and distributed them among their followers to vote for Porter for Governor of New York at the special election which was held after the resignation of Governor Daniel D. Tompkins. DeWitt Clinton, the otherwise unopposed candidate, was fiercely hated by the Tammany organization, and Porter received about 1,300 votes although he was not really running for the office. Porter became a regent of the University of the State of New York in 1824, and served in that capacity until 1830. From May 16, 1828 to March 9, 1829, Porter served as Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President John Quincy Adams, and was an advocate for the removal of Eastern Indians beyond the Mississippi. He moved to Niagara Falls in 1836 and was a presidential elector on the Whig ticket in 1840. He died at Niagara Falls in 1844, and was interred in Oakwood Cemetery. Fort Porter and Porter Avenue at Buffalo were named in his honor.