Francisco Goya
1746-1828
Goya is considered the 18th Century's foremost painter and etcher of Spanish culture, known for his realistic scenes of battles, bullfights and human corruption. Goya lived during a time of upheaval in Spain that included war with France, the Inquisition, the rule of Napoleon's brother, Joseph, as the King of Spain and, finally, the reign of the Spanish King Ferdinand VII. Experts proclaim these events -- and Goya's deafness as a result of an illness in 1793 -- as central to understanding Goya's work, which frequently depicts human misery in a satiric and sometimes nightmarish fashion. From the 1770s he was a royal court painter for Charles III and Charles IV, and when Bonaparte took the throne in 1809, Goya swore fealty to the new king. When the crown was restored to Spain's Ferdinand VII (1814), Goya, in spite of his earlier allegiance to the French king, was reinstated as royal painter. After 1824 he lived in self-imposed exile in Bordeaux until his death, reportedly because of political differences with Ferdinand. Over his long career he created hundreds of paintings, etchings, and lithographs, among them Maya Clothed and Maya Nude (1798-1800); Caprichos (1799-82); The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 (1814); Disasters of War (1810-20); and The Black Paintings (1820-23). Related Paintings of Francisco Goya :. | Spring | El si pronuncian y la mano Alargan al primero que llega | Details of The Burial of the Sardine | The Bullfight | The Hermitage of St Isidore | Related Artists: Salomon GessnerSwiss Painter, 1730-1788,a bookseller's son, was apprenticed to the bookseller Spener in Berlin. Giving up this employment, he lived for a time by painting and engraving, for which he had a considerable talent. In 1750 he settled in Zurich, continuing to live by painting, including painting on porcelain. He began to write idylls in poetic prose, beginning with Daphnis (1754). His Idyllen (1756) achieved a nation-wide success. In Der Tod Abels (1758) he attempted an epic in prose, which was followed by two plays (Schaferspiele), two stories, including Der erste Schiffer, and a few more idylls, Neue Idyllen (1772). In his idylls, Geßner, who is indebted to Theocritus and Virgil, creates an idealized, orderly, almost horticultural state of nature, from which everything rough and craggy has been eliminated; his shepherds are similarly untouched by the ruder aspects of country life. His work embodies the city-dweller's longing for a nature which he does not know, and this explains its instant popularity. W. Raabe uses Gebner's Idyllen, the publication of which coincided with the outbreak of the Seven Years War Theodor Hosemannpainted Blick uber die Havel auf das winterliche Brandenburg in 1838 MALLET, Jean-BaptisteFrench Painter, 1759-1835,French painter. A pupil of Simon Julien in Toulon, he was then taught by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon in Paris. He exhibited at every Salon between 1793 and 1827, obtaining a second class medal in 1812 and a first class medal in 1817. He executed very few portraits (Chenier, Carcassonne, Mus. B.-A., is an exception), preferring to paint nymphs bathing and graceful classical nudes such as the Graces Playing with Cupid (Arras, Abbaye St Vaast, Mus. B.-A.). He established his reputation with gouache genre scenes of fashionable and often libertine subjects, always elegant and refined, in the style of Louis-Philibert Debucourt and Louis-Leopold Boilly, and remarkable for the delicacy and brilliance of their brushwork: for example At the Laundry Maid's and the Painful Letter (both Paris, Mus. Cognacq-Jay). They reveal a knowledge of 17th-century Dutch painting in the treatment of details (transparent crystal, reflections on silk or satin) as well as the choice of themes: Military Gallant (Paris, Mus. Cognacq-Jay). Mallet's meticulously precise paintings are one of the best records of fashionable French furnishings and interiors at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.
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