French (1880-1950) Louis Icart was born in Toulouse, France. He began drawing at an early age. He was particularly interested in fashion, and became famous for his sketches almost immediately. He worked for major design studios at a time when fashion was undergoing a radical change-from the fussiness of the late nineteenth century to the simple, clingy lines of the early twentieth century. He was first son of Jean and Elisabeth Icart and was officially named Louis Justin Laurent Icart. The use of his initials L.I. would be sufficient in this household. Therefore, from the moment of his birth he was dubbed 'Helli'. The Icart family lived modestly in a small brick home on rue Traversi??re-de-la-balance, in the culturally rich Southern French city of Toulouse, which was the home of many prominent writers and artists, the most famous being Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Icart fought in World War I. He relied on his art to stem his anguish, sketching on every available surface. It was not until his move to Paris in 1907 that Icart would concentrate on painting, drawing and the production of countless beautiful etchings, which have served (more than the other mediums) to indelibly preserve his name in twentieth century art history. When he returned from the front he made prints from those drawings. The prints, most of which were aquatints and drypoints, showed great skill. Because they were much in demand, Icart frequently made two editions (one European, the other American) to satisfy his public. These prints are considered rare today, and when they are in mint condition they fetch high prices at auction. Art Deco, a term coined at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, had taken its grip on the Paris of the 1920s. By the late 1920s Icart, working for both publications and major fashion and design studios, had become very successful, both artistically and financially. His etchings reached their height of brilliance in this era of Art Deco, and Icart had become the symbol of the epoch. Yet, although Icart has created for us a picture of Paris and New York life in the 1920s and 1930s, he worked in his own style, derived principally from the study of eighteenth-century French masters such as Jean Antoine Watteau, François Boucher and Jean Honor?? Fragonard. In Icart's drawings, one sees the Impressionists Degas and Monet and, in his rare watercolors, the Symbolists Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau. In fact, Icart lived outside the fashionable artistic movements of the time and was not completely sympathetic to contemporary art. Nonetheless, his Parisian scenes are a documentation of the life he saw around him and they are nearly as popular today as when they were first produced. In 1914 Icart had met a magical, effervescent eighteen-year-old blonde named Fanny Volmers, at the time an employee of the fashion house Paquin. She would eventually become his wife and a source of artistic inspiration for the rest of his life.   Related Paintings of Louis Lcart :. | Black hat | Kiss of the motherland | Hing Wah Street West Foot | Four Seasons Summer | Wind and the line |
Related Artists:
NEER, Eglon van der
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1634-1703 Son of Aert van der Neer. His birth date is based on Houbraken's statement that the artist was 70 years old when he died. He apparently studied first with his father and then with the genre and history painter Jacob van Loo. According to Houbraken, van der Neer was in France c. 1654, where he served as painter to the Counts of Dona, Dutch governors of the principality of Orange. He returned to Holland by 1659 and is recorded as a resident of Amsterdam at the time of his marriage to Maria van Wagensvelt in Rotterdam on 20 February 1659.
Henry Inman
American Painter, 1801-1846,was an American portrait, genre, and landscape painter.He was born at Utica, N. Y., October 20, 1801, and was for seven years an apprentice pupil of John Wesley Jarvis in New York City. He was the first vice president of the National Academy of Design. He excelled in portrait painting, but was less careful in genre pictures. Among his landscapes are "Rydal Falls, England," "October Afternoon," and "Ruins of Brambletye." His genre subjects include "Rip Van Winkle," "The News Boy," and "Boyhood of Washington;" his portraits, those of Henry Rutgers and Fitz-Greene Halleck in the New York Historical Society, of Bishop White, Chief Justices Marshall and Nelson, Jacob Barker, William Wirt, Audubon, DeWitt Clinton, Martin Van Buren, and William H. Seward.
James Seymour
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