1805-1881
British
Samuel Palmer Galleries
English painter, draughtsman and etcher. Palmer was a key figure of English Romantic painting who represented, at least in his early work, its pastoral, intuitive and nostalgic aspects at their most intense. He is widely described as a visionary and linked with his friend and mentor William Blake, though he stood at an almost opposite extreme in his commitment to landscape and his innocent approach to its imagery. He had none of Blake irony or complexity and was inspired by a passionate love of nature that found its philosophical dimension in unquestioning Neo-Platonism. Related Paintings of Samuel Palmer :. | Study for The Watermill | Self-Portrait | Cart Shed and Lane | The Rest on the Flight into Egypt 2 | The Harvest Moon | Related Artists:
Jonathan RichardsonEnglish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1664-1745
Thomas Couture1815-1879
French
Thomas Couture Location
French painter and teacher. A student of Antoine-Jean Gros in 1830-38 and Paul Delaroche in 1838-9, he demonstrated precocious ability in drawing and was expected to win the Prix de Rome. He tried at least six times between 1834 and 1839, but achieved only second prize in 1837 (entry untraced). Disgusted with the politics of the academic system, Couture withdrew and took an independent path. He later attacked the stultified curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and discouraged his own students from entering this institution. He first attained public notoriety at the Paris Salon with Young Venetians after an Orgy (1840; Montrouge, priv. col., see Boime, p. 85), the Prodigal Son (1841; Le Havre, Mus. B.-A.) and the Love of Gold (1844; Toulouse, Mus. Augustins). These early canvases are treated in a moralizing and anecdotal mode; the forms and compositional structures, like the debauched and corrupt protagonists, are sluggish and dull. Yet what made his work seem fresh to the Salon audience was his use of bright colour and surface texture derived from such painters as Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps and Eugene Delacroix, while his literary bent and methodical drawing demonstrated his mastery of academic tradition. The critics Thophile Gautier and Paul Mantz (1821-95) proclaimed him as the leader of a new school that mediated between the old and the new, and looked to him for a revitalization of Salon painting. The air of compromise his works projected made him appear a cultural representative of the juste milieu policies of Louis-Philippe.
Clara SouthernAustralian artist, 1860-1940
Australian painter. One of the first generation of progressive, professionally educated Australian women artists, she began her training as a pupil of Mme Mouchette, painter, schoolmistress and founder of the Alliance Fran?aise in Melbourne; and later took lessons from Walter Withers. As a student at the National Gallery of Victoria (1883-7) she was nicknamed 'Panther' for her lithe beauty. From mid-1888 she shared a teaching studio with Jane Sutherland in the new purpose-built Grosvenor Chambers, where Tom Roberts was a neighbour. She had 'caught the "Impressionist" fever', reported Table Talk (2 Aug 1889), and showed 'a great variety of charming little sketches, which however are not intended for exhibition'. She showed with the Victorian Artists' Society (1889-1917): mainly subjects around Kyneton and Melbourne's outer suburbs, painted in the fresh, quasi-Impressionist style characteristic of the Heidelberg school.