English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Mortlake Terrace, der Wohnsitz von W. Sliam Moffat, Sommerarbend | Volcano erupt | Constance (mk31) | Cockpit | Sunset |
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Pascal Adolphe Jean Dagnan-Bouveret
1852-1929 The popular French naturalist painter Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan-Bouveret is best known for his painstakingly detailed paintings of peasant scenes. Dagnan-Bouveret also created portraits and religious paintings. Pascal-Adolphe-Jean Dagnan was born in Paris on Jan. 7, 1852. His father moved to Brazil when he was 16, but he decided to stay in France with his mothers father. Later Dagnan-Bouveret added his grandfathers family name Bouveret to his own. Dagnan-Bouveret entered art school in Paris at age 17 and studied under the well-known academic painter Gerome. During this period Dagnan-Bouveret entered his paintings in several official competitions and placed highly in several. In 1878 Dagnan-Bouveret moved to the region known as the Franche-Comte, where he produced many landscapes and still life paintings. Dagnan-Bouveret won recognition in 1880 with his oil painting An Accident, which depicts a peasant boy with an injured hand visiting the doctor. Considered one of his finest paintings, it exemplifies Dagnan-Bouverets attempt to examine the psychology of his subjects through the use of well-rendered detail. Dagnan-Bouveret took advantage of new photographic technology to bring greater detail and heightened realism to his paintings. Dagnan-Bouveret used this technique especially in his paintings of peasants, such as Horses at the Watering Trough (1885). Dagnan-Bouveret was known to select people from his village, dress them in historical costumes, and then take photographs, which he then used with sketches as the basis of his paintings. By the 1890s his popularity as a portrait painter among wealthy patrons allowed him to explore more personal themes. Many of Dagnan-Bouverets later paintings, such as Supper at Emmaus (1896 C97), were religious in nature. Dagnan-Bouveret died in Quincey, Haute-Saone, France, on July 3, 1929.
William Morris Prints
English Pre-Raphaelite Writer and Designer, 1834-1896 was an English architect, furniture and textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Born in Walthamstow in north London, Morris was educated at Marlborough and Oxford. In 1856, Morris became an apprentice to Gothic revival architect G. E. Street. That same year he founded the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, an outlet for his poetry and a forum for development of his theories of hand-craftsmanship in the decorative arts. In 1861, Morris founded a design firm in partnership with the artist Edward Burne-Jones, and the poet and artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti which had a profound impact on the decoration of churches and houses into the early 20th century. Morris's chief contribution was as a designer of repeating patterns for wallpapers and textiles, many based on a close observation of nature. Morris was also a major contributor to the resurgence of traditional textile arts and methods of production. Morris wrote and published poetry, fiction, and translations of ancient and medieval texts throughout his life. His best-known works include The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858), The Earthly Paradise (1868?C1870), A Dream of John Ball and the utopian News from Nowhere. Morris was an important figure in the emergence of socialism in Great Britain, founding the Socialist League in 1884, but breaking with the movement over goals and methods by the end of that decade. Morris devoted much of the rest of his life to the Kelmscott Press which he founded in 1891. The 1896 Kelmscott edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer is considered a masterpiece of book design.
Nils von Dardel
Swedish, 1888-1943,Swedish painter. After a short time at the School of Art in Stockholm, which he found too conservative, he travelled for the first time to Paris in 1910. There he immediately made contact with the Scandinavian artists who were pupils of Matisse and with them made his debut in Stockholm in 1912 as a member of the Man of the Year 1909 group. Under the influence of Cubism, Dardel painted a townscape of Senlis, in a style that eventually developed into the sophisticated naivety of Funeral in Senlis (1913; Stockholm, Mod. Mus.).