1776-1837 British John Constable Locations 1837). English painter and draughtsman. His range and aspirations were less extensive than those of his contemporary J. M. W. Turner, but these two artists have traditionally been linked as the giants of early 19th-century British landscape painting and isolated from the many other artists practising landscape at a time when it was unprecedentedly popular. Constable has often been defined as the great naturalist and deliberately presented himself thus in his correspondence, although his stylistic variety indicates an instability in his perception of what constituted nature. He has also been characterized as having painted only the places he knew intimately, which other artists tended to pass by. While the exclusivity of Constable approach is indisputable, his concern with local scenery was not unique, being shared by the contemporary Norwich artists. By beginning to sketch in oil from nature seriously in 1808, he also conformed with the practice of artists such as Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777-1843), William Alfred Delamotte, Turner and, particularly, the pupils of John Linnell. Turner shared his commitment to establishing landscape as the equal of history painting, despite widespread disbelief in this notion. Nevertheless, although Constable was less singular than he might have liked people to believe, his single-mindedness in portraying so limited a range of sites was unique, and the brilliance of his oil sketching unprecedented, while none of his contemporaries was producing pictures resembling The Haywain (1821; London, N.G.) or the Leaping Horse (1825; London, RA). This very singularity was characteristic of British artists at a time when members of most occupations were stressing their individuality in the context of a rapidly developing capitalist economy  Related Paintings of John Constable :. | Weymouth Bay | horizon of trees 27September 1821 | Hampstead Heath looking to Harrwo | The Valley Farm | Hampstead Heath |
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ANDREA DA MURANO
Italian painter, Venetian school (known 1462-1502) Italian painter. He is first recorded working as a gilder at S Zaccaria, Venice, in 1463-5. He was one of a number of artists from the island of Murano. Among these he is closest to Bartolomeo Vivarini, whose pupil he may have been. The two collaborated in 1468 on a narrative canvas (destr.) for the Scuola di S Marco, Venice, which probably depicted scenes from the Life of Abraham. The rather harsh sculptural quality of his forms owes much to the influence of Mantegna and Donatello in Padua, and his work has often been associated (and sometimes confused) with that of Andrea del Castagno. He did not, however, ignore the more recent developments of Giovanni Bellini. His triptych depicting SS Vincent Ferrer, Roch, Sebastian and Peter Martyr, with a lunette of the Madonna of Mercy and Four Saints (Venice, Accad.), probably painted in the late 1470s, shows a real concern with light and colour. By the mid-1480s Andrea had settled in Castelfranco on the mainland, chiefly painting altarpieces in the (by then well established) Venetian sacra conversazione form. The altarpiece (1484-1502) in the parish church at Trebaseleghe, nr Padua, is a variation on the form, with Christ embracing the plague saints Sebastian and Roch above and other saints and musicians below, all showing the high degree of expression characteristic of his works. It is one of his finest paintings and also perhaps the most expensive Venetian altarpiece of its day. The altarpiece depicting the Virgin Enthroned with SS Peter, Nicholas of Bari, John the Baptist and Paul (1502; Mussolente, Santuario della Madonna dell' Acqua) is typical of Andrea's work and shows both the strengths and limitations of his art: firm draughtsmanship and expressive qualities combined with a rather conservative composition and somewhat ungainly figures.
Eugene Bidau
French 19th Century
Carl Blechen
German Romantic, 1798-1840 was a German painter, specializing in fantastic landscapes, sometimes with demons and grotesque figures. Born in Cottbus, he drew the attention of prominent architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who cast him as a decorative painter. Blechen however aimed for higher work and began producing landscape paintings. In 1827 he went to Italy