(8 March 1826, in Vastemõisa near Suure-Jaani, Viljandi County, Estonia - 22 April 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia) was an Estonian painter. He is considered to have been the first professional Estonian painter. He distinguished himself primarily by his portraiture and to a lesser extent by his landscape paintings. Some of his most notable pictures depict the Estonian rural life in the second half of the 19th Century. Johann Köler was the seventh child born to a peasant family. Despite the poverty of the parents Köler managed to attend the elementary and the district schools in Viljandi. Then he attended a workshop of master painters in Cesis (then in Livonia). In 1846, Köler travelled to St. Petersburg to work as a sign writer, where his talent was soon discovered. From 1848 to 1855 Johan Köler studied drawing and painting at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. During 1857 Köler travelled to Paris via Berlin, later returned to Germany then travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1858, he travelled across the Alps to Milan, Geneva, Florence and Rome. There, he studied in a private academy and devoted his time to watercolor technique. In Rome during 1859 he presented his composition "Christ on the Cross". Answering the call of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Köler returned to the city in 1861. From 1862 to 1874 he was a teacher of the Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna, the daughter of Czar Alexander II of Russia. In 1869-1870, he worked as a lecturer at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1886 to 1889 Johan Köler worked in Vienna, Nice and Paris.  Related Paintings of Johann Koler :. | Italian landscape | A Roman Woman | Portrait of the Daughter of Nikolai Petrovitsch Semjonov | Portrait of Hugo Treffner | Portrait of Hugo Treffner |
Related Artists:
Lionel Walden
(1861-1933) was born in Norwich, Connecticut in 1861. He first became interested in art in Minnesota, where the family moved when his father became rector of an Episcopal Church there. As a young man, Walden moved to Paris where he studied painting with Carolus-Duran. In around 1893-97, Walden was in England, living in Falmouth. Paintings of Cardiff in Wales are in museums in Cardiff and Paris. Walden received medals from the Paris Salon and was made a Knight of the French Legion of Honor. He visited to Hawaii in 1911 and several times thereafter. Walden died in Chantilly, France in 1933. According to David H. Forbes, author of Encounters with Paradise: Views of Hawaii and its People, 1778-1941, Lionel Walden "was the finest seascape painter to work in Hawaii". The Brooklyn Museum, the Henry Art Gallery (University of Washington, Seattle), the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Isaacs Art Center (Waimea, Hawaii), and the Musee d'Orsay are among the public collections holding works by Lionel Walden.
Joseph Blondel
Merry-Joseph Blondel (Paris, July 5, 1781 - Paris, June 12, 1853) was a French neo-classic painter. After a first training in the Dilh et Guerhard porcelain factory, he later was a painting student of Jean-Baptiste Regnault. He won in 1803 Price of Rome with his painting Enee portant son pere Anchise. He lived in Villa Medicis, in Rome, Italy, from 1809 to 1812, and won a gold award for his painting Mort de Louis XII. He then started a career as an interior decorator (Fontainebleau Castel, Brongniart Palace, Louvre Museum, Senat).
Sophie Gengembre Anderson
Sophie Gengembre Anderson (1823 - 10 March 1903) was a French-born British artist who specialised in genre painting of children and women, typically in rural settings. Her work is loosely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Sophie was born in Paris, the daughter of Charles Gengembre, an architect, and his English wife. She had two brothers, Philip and Henry P. She was largely self-taught in art, but briefly studied portraiture with Charles de Steuben in Paris in 1843. The family left France for the United States to escape the 1848 revolution, first settling in Cincinnati, Ohio, then Manchester, Pennsylvania, where she met and married British genre artist Walter Anderson.