John Thomson (14 June 1837 - 29 September 1921) was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer and traveller. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artifacts of eastern cultures. Upon returning home, his work among the street people of London cemented his reputation, and is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881. The son of William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and retail trader, and his wife Isabella, Thomson was born the eighth of nine children in Edinburgh in the year of Queen Victoria's accession. After his schooling in the early 1850s, he was apprenticed to a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, thought to be James Mackay Bryson. During this time, Thomson learned the principles of photography and completed his apprenticeship around 1858. During this time he also undertook two years of evening classes at the Watt Institution and School of Arts (formerly the Edinburgh School of Arts, later to become Heriot-Watt University). He received the "Attestation of Proficiency" in Natural Philosophy in 1857 and in Junior Mathematics and Chemistry in 1858. In 1861 he became a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, but by 1862 he had decided to travel to Singapore to join his older brother William, a watchmaker and photographer.   Related Paintings of John Thomson :. | St. Mark's Square with Charlatans | Peasant Family in a Cottage Interior | La baigneuse blonde | Cider Making | The Taking of the English Flagship the Royal Prince |
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Gerard Hoet
(1648 - 1733), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Gerard Hoet trained with his father and brother who were glass painters, and Warnard van Rijsen, who lived in Zaltbommel, and who himself was a pupil of Cornelis van Poelenburgh in Utrecht. In 1672 Hoet moved to The Hague, but when the Count of Salis bought paintings at his mother's house in Zaltbommel, he returned to paint for him. He accompanied him to Rees, Germany, where he met the Utrecht painters Jan van Bunnik, Justus Nieuwpoort and Andries de Wit.With De Wit he returned to Utrecht, where he worked for Frederick Nassau de Zuylestein briefly before visiting the Hague and Amsterdam. He then travelled to France on the promise of a Marquis who wanted to give him a commission, but this promise falling through, he made some engravings of paintings by Francisque Millet.He then wanted to travel to England, but having written to his compatriot Lucas Vorsterman, he received word that there was more work to be had in Paris. Hoet travelled to Paris where he spent more than a year, before returning to the Netherlands via Brussels.In Brussels he met the painter Adriaen Frans Boudewyns, who convinced him to stay a while. After eight months, Hoet returned to Utrecht, where he worked for William Nassau de Zuylestein, 1st Earl of Rochford. He married and settled in Heemstede (Utrecht), where he found work for the lord of the castle there
SALVIATI, Cecchino del
Italian painter, Florentine school (b. 1510, Firenze, d. 1563, Roma).
Edvard Petersen
(4 February 1841 - 5 December 1911) was a Danish painter. He also designed the Stork Fountain on Amagertorv in Copenhagen From 1851 he attended the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. In the 1860s and 1870s he painted romantic landscape paintings under influence of Vilhelm Kyhn. He was a close friend of fellow painter Theodor Philipsen and together they went on several travels, including two stays in Italy between 1875 and 1880 and a visit to France.The friendship did not seem to influence Petersen's rather conservative style of painting and his works from the times abroad are generally traditional paintings of local life. In the 1880s Petersen painted a number of figure paintings of street life in Copenhagen under influence of French Realism. His most famous paintings are Emigrants on Larsens Plads (1880) and A Return, the America Liner at Larsens Plads (894). With his Stork Fountain proposal, Petersen won the competition for the design of a new fountain on Amagertorv in Copenhagen in 1888. The sculptor Vilhelm Bissen moulded the birds and the fountain was inaugurated in 1904