(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 :. | Portrait of Hugo Treffner | Portrait of the Daughter of Nikolai Petrovitsch Semjonov | Philipp Karell | Portrait of Hugo Treffner | A Roman Woman |
Related Artists:
Jean-Louis Voille
painted Ivan Perfilevich Elagin in 1789
Aubrey Beardsley
English Art Nouveau/Golden Age Illustrator, 1872-1898 English draughtsman and writer. He was brought up in Brighton, in genteel poverty, by his mother. She gave her children an intensive education in music and books, and by the time he was sent to boarding-school at the age of seven Beardsley was exceptionally literate and something of a musical prodigy. He was also already infected with the tuberculosis that eventually killed him. There is evidence that his talent for drawing was highly developed by the age of ten, and he was subsequently encouraged by his housemaster at Brighton Grammar School, Arthur William King. Beardsley left school at the end of 1888, and in January 1889 became a clerk at the Guardian Life and Fire Insurance Company in the City of London. Attacks of haemorrhaging of the lungs forced him to abandon his job at the end of 1889. On the strength of a short story sold to Tit Bits he tried to pursue a literary career, but when his health improved in the spring of 1890, he returned both to his job and to drawing. Final affirmation of the direction of his art came in July 1891, when he showed his work to Edward Burne-Jones, who told Beardsley: 'I seldom or never advise anyone to take up art as a profession, but in your case I can do nothing else.
Jacopino del Conte
Italian Painter, ca.1510-1598 was an eminent Italian Mannerist painter, active in both Rome and Florence. A native of Florence, Jacopino del Conte was born the same year as another Florentine master Cecchino del Salviati (whom Conte outlived by 35 years) and, like Salviati and a number of other painters, he initially apprenticed with the influential painter and draftsman Andrea del Sarto. Conte's first frescoes, including Annunciation to Zachariah (1536), Preaching of Saint John the Baptist (1538), and Baptism of Christ (1541) were in the Florentine-supported Oratory of San Giovanni Decollato, located in Rome. The Preaching fresco was based on a drawing by Perin del Vaga. In 1547?C48, in collaboration with Siciolante da Sermoneta, Conte completed the fresco decoration of the chapel of San Remigio in San Luigi dei Francesi. In 1552, he painted another work for the San Giovanni Decollato Oratory, the altarpiece Deposition, whose designs are sometimes attributed to Daniele da Volterra.