French Rococo Era Painter, 1732-1806 was a French painter and printmaker whose late Rococo manner was distinguished by remarkable facility, exuberance, and hedonism. One of the most prolific artists active in the last decades of the Ancien Regime, Fragonard produced more than 550 paintings , of which only five are dated. Among his most popular works are genre paintings conveying an atmosphere of intimacy and veiled eroticism. He was born at Grasse, Alpes-Maritimes, the son of François Fragonard, a glover, and Françoise Petit. He was articled to a Paris notary when his father's circumstances became strained through unsuccessful speculations, but showed such talent and inclination for art that he was taken at the age of eighteen to François Boucher, who, recognizing the youth's rare gifts but disinclined to waste his time with one so inexperienced, sent him to Chardin's atelier. Fragonard studied for six months under the great luminist, then returned more fully equipped to Boucher, whose style he soon acquired so completely that the master entrusted him with the execution of replicas of his paintings. Though not yet a pupil of the Academy, Fragonard gained the Prix de Rome in 1752 with a painting of "Jeroboam Sacrificing to the Golden Calf", but before proceeding to Rome he continued to study for three years under Charles-Andre van Loo. In the year preceding his departure he painted the "Christ washing the Feet of the Apostles" now at Grasse cathedral. On September 17, 1756, he took up his abode at the French Academy in Rome, then presided over by Charles-Joseph Natoire. While at Rome, Fragonard contracted a friendship with a fellow painter, Hubert Robert. In 1760, they toured Italy together, executing numerous sketches of local scenery. It was in these romantic gardens, with their fountains, grottos, temples and terraces, that Fragonard conceived the dreams which he was subsequently to render in his art. He also learned to admire the masters of the Dutch and Flemish schools (Rubens, Hals, Rembrandt, Ruisdael), imitating their loose and vigorous brushstrokes. Added to this influence was the deep impression made upon his mind by the florid sumptuousness of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, whose works he had an opportunity to study in Venice before he returned to Paris in 1761. In 1765 his "Coresus et Callirhoe" secured his admission to the Academy. It was made the subject of a pompous (though not wholly serious) eulogy by Diderot, and was bought by the king, who had it reproduced at the Gobelins factory. Hitherto Fragonard had hesitated between religious, classic and other subjects; but now the demand of the wealthy art patrons of Louis XV's pleasure-loving and licentious court turned him definitely towards those scenes of love and voluptuousness with which his name will ever be associated, and which are only made acceptable by the tender beauty of his color and the virtuosity of his facile brushwork;   Related Paintings of Jean-Honore Fragonard :. | Inspiration | The Adoration of the Shepherds. | The Bathers | The Blind man bluff game | Selbstportrat, Oval |
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Jacopo Vignali
Italian painter who died on 03 August 1664 Italian painter. At an early age he entered the studio of Matteo Rosselli in Florence, and his first works, Virgin and Saints (1616; Florence, S Brigida, Santuario della Madonna del Sasso) and the ceiling painting Love of the Fatherland (1616; Florence, Casa Buonarroti), were influenced by Rosselli and Ludovico Cigoli. In 1616 he enrolled at the Accademia del Disegno in Florence, becoming an academician in 1622. In the 1620s he moved away from Rosselli's influence and developed a style distinguished by dramatic light effects, rich colour and painterly technique and by the expression of deep emotion. The decade opened with the Investiture of St Benedict (1620; Florence, Semin. Maggiore), one of a series of works painted in honour of St Benedict for the Confraternit? di S Benedetto Bianco, to which Vignali had belonged since 1614. Having learnt the technique of fresco painting from Rosselli, he also began to work in that medium and was involved in the decoration of the Casa Buonarroti throughout the decade, the ceiling fresco Jacob's Dream dating from 1621.
John Neagle
1796-1860 John Neagle Gallery Neagle's training in art began with instruction from the drawing-master Pietro Ancora and an apprenticeship to Thomas Wilson, a well-connected painter of signs and coaches in Philadelphia. Wilson introduced him to the painters Bass Otis and Thomas Sully, and Neagle became a protege of the latter. In 1818 Neagle decided to concentrate exclusively on portraits, setting up shop as an independent master. Aside from brief sojourns in Lexington, Kentucky, and New Orleans, Louisiana, he spent his career in Philadelphia. In May 1826 he married Sully's stepdaughter Mary, and for a time the son-in-law and father-in-law dominated the field of portraiture in the city. Neagle served as Director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and was also a founder and president (1835-43) of the Artist's Fund Society of Philadelphia.
Gerard Seghers
(Antwerp, 1591-18 March 1651), also Zegers, was a Flemish Baroque painter and one of the leading Caravaggisti in the Southern Netherlands. He was the son of an innkeeper but not related to the jesuit and painter Daniel Seghers. He was possibly a student of either Abraham Janssens or Hendrick van Balen, and he showed great talent, because in 1608 aged only 17 he is listed as a master in the Guild of St. Luke. It was during his trip to Italy around 1613 that he came under the influence of Caravaggio's followers. Bartolomeo Manfredi, in particular, was influential. Many other Dutch and Flemish painters were working in the style there, such as Gerard Honthorst, which is strongly characterized half-length figures illuminated by strong lighting and dramatic chiaroscuro. One work from this period is his Judith with the Head of Holofernes in the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Antica, Rome. Caravaggism, both in history and monumental genre paintings, continued to mark Seghers's works when he returned to Antwerp around 1620. The Patient Job, National Gallery, Prague.He married on his return to Antwerp (ca.1621) with Catharina Wouters (d.1656), with whom he had eleven children. His son Jan-Baptist Seghers (1624-1670) also became a painter. After 1630, his palette lightens up considerably and the influence of Peter Paul Rubens is noticeable in paintings like the Adoration of the Magi (1630) in the Church of Our Lady, Bruges.