1724-1806 George Stubbs Galleries George Stubbs (born in Liverpool on August 25, 1724 ?C died in London July 10, 1806) was a British painter, best known for his paintings of horses. Stubbs was the son of a currier. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the end of Stubbs's life. Stubbs was briefly apprenticed to a Lancashire painter and engraver named Hamlet Winstanley, but soon left as he objected to the work of copying to which he was set. Thereafter as an artist he was self-taught. In the 1740s he worked as a portrait painter in the North of England and from about 1745 to 1751 he studied human anatomy at York County Hospital. He had had a passion for anatomy from his childhood, and one of his earliest surviving works is a set of illustrations for a textbook on midwifery which was published in 1751. In 1755 Stubbs visited Italy. Forty years later he told Ozias Humphry that his motive for going to Italy was, "to convince himself that nature was and is always superior to art whether Greek or Roman, and having renewed this conviction he immediately resolved upon returning home". Later in the 1754 he rented a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow,Lincolnshire, and spent 18 months dissecting horses. He moved to London in about 1759 and in 1766 published The anatomy of the Horse. The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy. Even before his book was published, Stubbs's drawings were seen by leading aristocratic patrons, who recognised that his work was more accurate than that of earlier horse painters such as James Seymour and John Wootton. In 1759 the 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large pictures from him, and his career was soon secure. By 1763 he had produced works for several more dukes and other lords and was able to buy a house in Marylebone, a fashionable part of London, where he lived for the rest of his life. Whistlejacket. National Gallery, London.His most famous work is probably Whistlejacket, a painting of a prancing horse commissioned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, which is now in the National Gallery in London. This and two other paintings carried out for Rockingham break with convention in having plain backgrounds. Throughout the 1760s he produced a wide range of individual and group portraits of horses, sometimes accompanied by hounds. He often painted horses with their grooms, whom he always painted as individuals. Meanwhile he also continued to accept commissions for portraits of people, including some group portraits. From 1761 to 1776 he exhibited at the Society of Artists, but in 1775 he switched his allegiance to the recently founded but already more prestigious Royal Academy. Stubbs also painted more exotic animals including lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys, and rhinoceroses, which he was able to observe in private menageries. He became preoccupied with the theme of a wild horse threatened by a lion and produced several variations on this theme. These and other works became well known at the time through engravings of Stubbs's work, which appeared in increasing numbers in the 1770s and 1780s. Mares and Foals in a Landscape. 1763-68.Stubbs also painted historical pictures, but these are much less well regarded. From the late 1760s he produced some work on enamel. In the 1770s Josiah Wedgwood developed a new and larger type of enamel panel at Stubbs's request. Also in the 1770s he painted single portraits of dogs for the first time, while also receiving an increasing number of commissions to paint hunts with their packs of hounds. He remained active into his old age. In the 1780s he produced a pastoral series called Haymakers and Reapers, and in the early 1790s he enjoyed the patronage of the Prince of Wales, whom he painted on horseback in 1791. His last project, begun in 1795, was A comparative anatomical exposition of the structure of the human body with that of a tiger and a common fowl, engravings from which appeared between 1804 and 1806. Stubbs's son George Townly Stubbs was an engraver and printmaker.  Related Paintings of George Stubbs :. | Dog | Mares and Foals in a Landscape | A self portrait by George Stubbs | vintergatans upplomst | The Milbanke and Melbourne Families |
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Stefan Luchian
Romanian Painter, 1868-1916 Romanian painter. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, graduating in 1889 and continuing his studies at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste in Munich and in Paris at the Academie Julian, where he was a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He rejected the rigidity of academic painting early in his career, however. The Last Autumn Race (1892; Bucharest, Mus. A.), one of the few paintings known from this period, clearly illustrates the influence of Manet and Impressionism on his early work. On his return to Romania in 1892 Luchian, unwilling to restrict his work to merely copying the French artists, struggled to create an original style. In 1900 he was left partially paralysed by a spinal disease, but he continued to work, and it is during the next years that he created his most accomplished works. His self-portraits (e.g. 1907; Bucharest, Mus. A.) are clear evidence of his determination to overcome this personal tragedy; far from inspiring pity, these paintings emphasize the depth and the strength of his inner life. It is in landscapes such as Willows at Chiajna (c. 1907; Cluj-Napoca, Mus. A.), however, that his commitment becomes even more apparent, with joyful rhythms created by means of broad brushstrokes and contrasts of bright colours next to delicate tones. Towards the end of his life Luchian became completely immobilized. During this time flowers were his favourite subject (e.g. Safta, the Flower Girl; Bucharest, N. Mus. A.; see also ROMANIA, fig. 9), and they became a metaphorical bridge between the artist and the outside world. The colours are still bright in these last paintings, and the loss of pastel tones makes the contrast more dramatic.
Vasily Surikov
Russian Painter, 1848-1916 Russian painter. He is principally noted for his treatment of episodes from the 17th century and the medieval period of Russian history. These works are remarkable for their thoroughly researched and detailed rendering of settings and costume and the drama of their presentation. Surikov was also an accomplished portrait painter and incorporated a large number of portrait studies into his history paintings.
Maria Catharina Wiik
(b Helsinki, 2 Aug 1853; d Helsinki, 19 June 1928). Finnish painter. She studied in Paris at the Academie Julian from 1875 to 1876 under Tony Robert-Fleury and continued her studies with him in the same studio between 1877 and 1880. Her paintings appeared at the Salon for the first time in 1880 (e.g. Marietta, 1880; Helsinki, priv. col., see Katerma, p. 31). The realist techniques Wiik absorbed in Paris came to form the basis of her work, tranquil in composition and restrained in colour. Her favourite subjects were relatively small-scale portraits such as Hilda Wiik (1881; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.) and still-lifes (e.g. Still-life, c. 1880; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.). Like many other foreign painters Wiik went to Brittany to paint. In 1883-4 she worked in Concarneau and Pont-Aven, where her enthusiasm for plein-air painting brought immediacy to her work and greater brightness to her colours (e.g. Breton Farm, 1883; Naantali, Fereningen Hedvigsminne). She preferred to record her impressions in portraits, although she also painted small, light-filled landscapes. In 1889 Wiik worked under the direction of Puvis de Chavannes in Henri Bouvet's studio in Paris, and in the same year she visited St Ives where she painted, among others, two major works: Out in the World (Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.) and the St Ives Girl (Helsinki, priv. col., see Katerma, p. 93). Both works show Wiik moving towards an ever more internalized and minimal mode of expression, thereby taking part in the process that led, in the 1890s, to a general abandonment of realism in favour of a greater emphasis on emotion. Out in the World, which shows an old woman's sad parting from a young girl who is leaving home to begin work, shows a change in technique with the use of more united colour surfaces and of tone painting. (This work was awarded a bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.) During the 1890s and the early 20th century Wiik's travels were concentrated in Scandinavia, although she visited Paris in 1905.