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 :. | Lake | Der Genfer See von Montreux aus gesehen | Impression of Number three | Castle | Chichester Canal (mk31) |
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Ridolfo Schadow
1786-1822 Rome,Sculptor, son of Johann Gottfried Schadow. He trained in his father's studio in Berlin, exhibiting statues and reliefs at the Berlin Akademie exhibitions between 1802 and 1810. Work from this period included both mythological and religious subjects, such as the plaster relief The Flood (c. 1804; Berlin, Alte N.G.). In 1810, with his brother Wilhelm Schadow, Ridolfo moved to Rome, in 1811 taking over the Roman sculpture studio of Christian Daniel Rauch. Schadow's first Roman work, a statue of Paris (destr.; several copies, e.g. bronze, 1820; Potsdam, Schloss Charlottenhof) was exhibited at the Berlin Akademie in 1812, and it reveals the influence of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Although homesickness and lack of confidence drove Schadow briefly back to Berlin, he soon returned to Rome, along with Rauch. From this point Schadow's work is markedly individual: he brought a realistic, genre treatment to his figures, which drew on both classical tradition and the formal language of idealizing early 19th-century painting. He chose subjects that offered scope for idealization within a realistic context, as in the seated figures of a Woman Fastening her Sandals (marble, 1813; Munich, Bayer. Nmus.), a Woman Spinning (marble, 1816; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and a Girl with Doves (Innocence) (marble, 1820; Berlin, Alte N.G.). Under the influence of his brother Wilhelm and of Friedrich Overbeck, Schadow converted to Catholicism in 1814. His early death interrupted work on the plaster model for a sculptural group,
John Giles Eccardt
John Giles Eccardt (1720 - 1779) was a German-born British portrait painter. He came to England in the company of the French painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo for whom he worked as an assistant. When Van Loo departed the country, Eccardt remained and set up a portrait-painting business. In the following years he did portraits of a number of leading members of British society including twenty six of his chief patron Horace Walpole. He died in 1779.
Anastagio Fontebuoni
Firenze 1571 -1626