French Fauvist Painter and Sculptor, 1869-1954
Henri Matisse is considered the most important French artist of the 20th century and, along with Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential modernist painters of the last century. Matisse began studying drawing and painting in the 1890s. A student of the masters of Post-Impressionism, Matisse later made a reputation for himself as the leader of a group of painters known as Les Fauves. An ironic label given to them by a critic, the name reflected Matisse's aggressive strokes and bold use of primary colors. In 1905 Matisse gained sudden fame with three paintings, including Woman with the Hat, purchased by the wealthy American ex-patriot Gertrude Stein. Beyond painting, he worked with lithographs and sculpture, and during World War II he did a series of book designs. Later in his career he experimented with paper cutouts and designed decorations for the Dominican chapel in Vence, France. Along with Picasso, Related Paintings of Henri Matisse :. | Woman wearing a striped trousers | Coup de Soleil (mk35) | Game of Bowls | Odalisque with Raised Arms, | There is still life of oysters | Related Artists:
Peter F Rothermel1817-1895
Peter F Rothermel Gallery
Rothermel was born in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania in 1817, although some date his birth earlier in 1813 or 1814. He studied under John R. Smith and Bass Otis before studying in various places in Europe. He specialized in portraits and dramatic historical paintings. He served as Vice President of the Artists' Fund Society in 1844 and as Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts from 1847 to 1855.
His most famous paintings include Patrick Henry before the Virginia House of Burgesses (1851) and a massive oil painting of the Battle of Gettysburg that hangs in the State Museum of Pennsylvania. This latter work was commissioned by Gettysburg lawyer David McConaughy. Another of his more popular historical works is Columbus Before the Queen, painted in 1844.
FURINI, FrancescoItalian Baroque Era Painter, 1603-1646
Italian painter. He was one of the leading Florentine painters of the first half of the 17th century, famous for the ambiguous sensuality and sfumato effects of his many paintings of female nudes. He first studied with his father, Filippo Furini, nicknamed Pippo Sciamerone and described by Baldinucci as a portrait painter, and he completed his apprenticeship in the studios of Domenico Passignano and of Giovanni Bilivert. Inspired by an admiration for Classical sculpture, which he studied in the Medici collection in Florence, and for Raphael, he travelled to Rome, which he reached as early as 1619 (Gantelli, see 1972 exh. cat.). Here he came into contact with Bartolomeo Manfredi and with Giovanni da San Giovanni. In 1623 he assisted the latter on the frescoes of the Chariot of the Night in the Palazzo Bentivoglio (now Pallavicini-Rospigliosi), commissioned by Cardinal Guido Bentivoglio, and also perhaps on the lower paintings (1623-4) in the apse of the church of SS Quattro Coronati, Rome.
John PettieBritish Painter, 1839-1893
He was brought up in Edinburgh and East Lothian, and in 1855 he entered the schools of the Trustees' Academy, Edinburgh, sponsored by the history painter James Drummond (1816-77). He studied under Robert Scott Lauder, and among his fellow students were WILLIAM QUILLER ORCHARDSON, Thomas Graham (1840-1906), George Paul Chalmers (1833-78), John Burr (1831-93) and John MacWhirter, several of whom later became part of Pettie's circle of Scottish artist friends in London. Pettie first exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1858 with In Trabois House (untraced), a scene from Sir Walter Scott's The Fortunes of Nigel, and he began sending work to the Royal Academy in 1860. From 1858 he provided illustrations for the periodical Good Words, and, encouraged by the reviews received for his early Royal Academy exhibits, such as The Armourers (exh. RA 1860) and What D'Ye Lack' (exh. RA 1861), when Good Words transferred its headquarters, Pettie moved to London in 1862. He shared a studio in Fitzroy Square with Orchardson and Graham from 1863 until his marriage to Elizabeth Ann Bossom on 25 August 1865. He subsequently lived at various addresses, gravitating towards the wealthy artistic colony in St John's Wood, where in 1882, at 2 Fitzjohn's Avenue, he built a neo-Georgian house and studio, The Lothians (destr.). This reflected not only the professional circle in which Pettie moved but also the rapid financial success that he achieved in London. From the mid-1860s his most important patron was John Newton Mappin, founder of the Mappin Art Gallery,