Russian Rococo Era Painter , 1727/1729-1802 Russian painter and teacher. He came from a family of serfs, belonging to the Counts Sheremetev, that produced several painters and architects. In about 1746-7 he was a pupil of Georg Christoph Grooth (1716-49), who painted portraits of the Sheremetev family. With Grooth, Argunov worked on the decoration of the court church at Tsarskoye Selo (now Pushkin). A full-length icon of St John of Damascus (1749; Pushkin, Pal.-Mus.), in Rococo style, is distinguished by its secular, decorative character. The Dying Cleopatra (1750; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.) is typical of Rococo decorative painting of the mid-18th century, with its striking combination of light, soft tones. Argunov subsequently painted in a quite different style, mainly producing portraits, of which about 60 are known. Among the first of these are pendant portraits of Ivan Lobanov-Rostovsky and his wife (1750 and 1754; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), in which the sitters are idealized, as in ceremonial court portraits.   Related Paintings of Ivan Argunov :. | Portrait of Princess Ekaterina Alexandrovna Lobanova-Rostovskaya, 1754 | Portrait of Countess Tolstaya | Portrait of Grand Duchess Catherine Alexeyevna | Portrait of Alexander Dmitriev | Portrait of Peasant Woman in Russian Costume |
Related Artists:
Peter Adolf Persson
painted View over the Landscape of Skane in 1889
MacDonald, Daniel
Irish Painter, 1821-1853
Paul Serusier
French Painter, 1863-1927 was a French painter who was a pioneer of abstract art and an inspiration for the avant-garde Nabi movement. He studied at the Academie Julian and was a monitor there in the mid 1880s. In the summer of 1888 he travelled to Pont-Aven and joined the small group of artists centered there around Paul Gauguin. While at the Pont-Aven artist's colony he painted a picture that became known as The Talisman, under the close supervision of Gauguin. The picture was an extreme exercise in Cloisonnism that approximated to pure abstraction. He was a Post-Impressionist painter, a part of the group of painters called Les Nabis. Serusier along with Paul Gauguin named the group. Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis became the best known of the group, but at the time they were somewhat peripheral to the core group.