French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | The Grand Jatte of Sunday afternoon | Bathers of Asnieres | Ein Abend in Grandcamp | The Grand Jatte of Landscape | Bathers at Asnieres |
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Johannes Hubertus Leonardus de Haas
(25 March 1832 - 4 August 1908) was a Dutch animal and landscape painter, and a peripheral figure of the Hague School. Born at Hedel, De Haas spend his youth in Amsterdam where he got his first art education at evening-classes at the Koninklijke Academie. Consequently he moved to Haarlem where he was apprenticed to the artist Pieter Frederik van Os. During his stay in Haarlem he befriended Paul Gabriël and Hendrik Dirk Kruseman Van Elten who were also studying with Van Os. In 1853, together with his two friends, De Haas decided to go to Oosterbeek. Here they came into contact with the influential landscape painter Johannes Warnardus Bilders and the group of painters which had gathered around him, many of whom would later be part of the Hague School. De Haas also met his future wife in Oosterbeek, Bilders' daughter, Caroline. In 1855 he received good reviews for his pictures that were exhibited in Paris from the noted art critic Jean Baptiste Gustave Planche. In 1857 De Haas first went to Brussels, where he became friends with Willem Roelofs. De Haas frequently returned to the Netherlands and Oosterbeek for inspiration and Caroline. From 1860 his friend Gabriël also lived in Brussels, and De Haas often painted cattle in the landscapes of both Roelofs and Gabriel, fitting in perfectly with both their styles. In 1860 he won the gold medal at the exhibition of Utrecht. From 1861 until 1869 De Haas is permanently settled in Brussels, painting mainly on the coasts of Flanders and Picardie in northern France. He married Caroline Bilders in 1862, and in 1864 they are briefly joined by her brother, the promising painter Gerard Bilders. In 1865 Caroline dies at the age of 24 of tuberculosis, leaving him with a young son. During his stay in Brussels De Haas is instrumental in passing on the style of the Barbizon school to the painters at Oosterbeek.
claude vignon
Claude Vignon (19 May 1593 - 10 May 1670) was a leading French painter and engraver working in the Baroque manner. He was born at Tours and received early training in Paris. About 1610 he travelled to Rome where his mature style was formed in the circle of French painters there that included Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boulogne, a prominent member of the Caravaggisti working, like Bartolomeo Manfredi, in the manner established by Caravaggio. He returned from Italy, after a tour in Spain, in 1623. His paintings are represented in most of the major museums.
Joseph Mallord William Turner
English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.