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 :. | Crisp apple | Black fan | Remembrance | Russia's rain | Breast story 3 |
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RAEBURN, Sir Henry
Scottish Romantic Painter, 1756-1823 Scottish painter. He is perhaps the best known of all Scottish painters, with a critical reputation rivalling that of Allan Ramsay. He was almost exclusively a portrait painter, and his work did much to define Scottish society in a period of immense vigour and intellectual distinction. The demand for his work was sufficient to sustain a career wholly in Scotland, although he occasionally regretted his lack of first-hand knowledge of portrait painting in London. His working life, which was largely confined to Edinburgh
Antonio Mancini
(14 November 1852 - 28 December 1930) was an Italian painter. Mancini was born in Rome and showed precocious ability as an artist. At the age of twelve, he was admitted to the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, where he studied under Domenico Morelli (1823-1901), a painter of historical scenes who favored dramatic chiaroscuro and vigorous brushwork, and Filippo Palizzi (1818-1899), a landscape painter. Mancini developed quickly under their guidance, and in 1872, he exhibited two paintings at the Paris Salon. Mancini worked at the forefront of Verismo movement, an indigenous Italian response to 19th-century Realist aesthetics. His usual subjects included children of the poor, juvenile circus performers, and musicians he observed in the streets of Naples. His portrait of a young acrobat in "Saltimbanco" (1877-78) exquisitely captures the fragility of the boy whose impoverished childhood is spent entertaining pedestrian crowds. While in Paris in the 1870s, Mancini met Impressionists Edgar Degas and Édouard Manet. He became friends with John Singer Sargent, who famously pronounced him to be the greatest living painter. His mature works show a brightened palette with a striking impasto technique on canvas and a bold command of pastels on paper. In 1881, Mancini suffered a disabling mental illness. He settled in Rome in 1883 for twenty years, then moved to Frascati where he lived until 1918. During this period of Mancini's life, he was often destitute and relied on the help of friends and art buyers to survive. After the First World War, his living situation stabilized and he achieved a new level of serenity in his work. Mancini died in Rome in 1930 and buried in the Basilica Santi Bonifacio e Alessio on the Aventine Hill. His painting,The Poor Schoolboy, exhibited in the Salon of 1876, is in the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Its realist subject matter and dark palette are typical of his early work. Paintings by Mancini also may be seen in major Italian museum collections, including Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome, and Museo Civico-Galleria d'Arte Moderna in Turin. The Philadelphia Art Museum holds fifteen oil paintings and three pastels by Mancini that were a gift of New York art dealer Vance N. Jordan.
Gustave Moreau
French 1826-1898 Moreau's main focus was the illustration of biblical and mythological figures. As a painter of literary ideas rather than visual images, he appealed to the imaginations of some Symbolist writers and artists, who saw him as a precursor to their movement. His father, Louis Jean Marie Moreau, was an architect, who recognized his talent. His mother was Adele Pauline des Moutiers. Moreau studied under François-Édouard Picot and became a friend of Th??odore Chass??riau, whose work strongly influenced his own. Moreau carried on a deeply personal 25-year relationship, possibly romantic, with Adelaide-Alexandrine Dureux, a woman whom he drew several times.[1] His first painting was a Piet?? which is now located in the cathedral at Angoul??me. He showed A Scene from the Song of Songs and The Death of Darius in the Salon of 1853. In 1853 he contributed Athenians with the Minotaur and Moses Putting Off his Sandals within Sight of the Promised Land to the Great Exhibition. Oedipus and the Sphinx, one of his first symbolist paintings, was exhibited at the Salon of 1864. Over his lifetime, he produced over 8,000 paintings, watercolors and drawings, many of which are on display in Paris' Mus??e national Gustave Moreau at 14, rue de la Rochefoucauld (IXe arrondissement). The museum is in his former workshop, and was opened to the public in 1903. Andr?? Breton famously used to "haunt" the museum and regarded Moreau as a precursor to Surrealism. He had become a professor at Paris' École des Beaux-Arts in 1891 and counted among his many students the fauvist painters, Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Moreau is buried in Paris' Cimeti??re de Montmartre. In Alan Moore's graphic novel, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it is implied that he was a nephew of Doctor Moreau, and he based a few of his paintings on the Doctor's creations.