British 1723-1792 Sir Joshua Reynolds Locations Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723. As one of eleven children, and the son of the village school-master, Reynolds was restricted to a formal education provided by his father. He exhibited a natural curiosity and, as a boy, came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. Showing an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable portrait painter Thomas Hudson, with whom he remained until 1743. From 1749 to 1752, he spent over two years in Italy, where he studied the Old Masters and acquired a taste for the "Grand Style". Unfortunately, whilst in Rome, Reynolds suffered a severe cold which left him partially deaf and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. From 1753 until the end of his life he lived in London, his talents gaining recognition soon after his arrival in France. Reynolds worked long hours in his studio, rarely taking a holiday. He was both gregarious and keenly intellectual, with a great number of friends from London's intelligentsia, numbered amongst whom were Dr Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, Edmund Burke, Giuseppe Baretti, Henry Thrale, David Garrick and fellow artist Angelica Kauffmann. Because of his popularity as a portrait painter, Reynolds enjoyed constant interaction with the wealthy and famous men and women of the day, and it was he who first brought together the famous figures of "The" Club. With his rival Thomas Gainsborough, Reynolds was the dominant English portraitist of 'the Age of Johnson'. It is said that in his long life he painted as many as three thousand portraits. In 1789 he lost the sight of his left eye, which finally forced him into retirement. In 1791 James Boswell dedicated his Life of Samuel Johnson to Reynolds. Reynolds died on 23 February 1792 in his house in Leicester Fields, London. He is buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Related Paintings of Sir Joshua Reynolds :. | Mrs. Richard Paul Jodrell | mrs richard hoare and child | lady bampfylde | Portrait of Jane Fleming, Countess of Harrington wife of Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Harrington | Portrait of Lady Cockburn and her three oldest sons |
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Robert William Vonnoh
American portrait and landscape painter, 1858-1933 was an American Impressionist painter known for his portraits and landscapes.
Eliseu Visconti
1867-1944 Eliseu Visconti Gallery Brazilian painter and decorative artist, of Italian birth. He was taken as an infant from Italy to Rio de Janeiro. In 1884 he began studying in Rio de Janeiro at the Academia Imperial das Belas Artes and the Liceu Imperial de Artes e Of?cios under Victor Meirelles de Lima, Henrique Bernardelli (1837-1946) and Rodolfo Amoedo (1857-1941). He was active in efforts to eliminate the academy's rigid academic discipline. He went to Paris in 1892 and attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts D?coratifs, where he was taught by Eug?ne-Samuel Grasset. At the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, Visconti won a silver medal for the paintings Youth (1898) and Dance of the Wood Nymphs (1899; both Rio de Janeiro, Mus. N. B.A.). Following the Pre-Raphaelites, his main influences were Botticelli and other painters of the Italian Renaissance, but he was also affected by Grasset and Art Nouveau. On his return to Brazil, among the works exhibited in 1901 in Rio de Janeiro were a series of ceramic objects with Brazilian floral motifs and designs for postage stamps. His florid style began to give way to Impressionism in the stage curtain, circular ceiling panel and proscenium frieze he executed for the Rio de Janeiro Teatro Municipal (1906-7; in situ). In 1906 he became director of painting at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro.
Master Francke
German painter (early 15th century, active in Hamburg). respectively German for "Master Francke" and Latin for "Brother Francke", was a North German Gothic painter and Dominican friar, born ca. 1380 in the Lower Rhine region or possibly Zutphen in the Netherlands, who died ca. 1440, probably in Hamburg, where he was based at the end of his known career. He is called "Fratre Francone Zutphanico" ("Brother Frank of Zutphen") in one document. He may have trained as an illuminator and painter in France or the Netherlands, and later worked in Munster, before joining in St John's Friary in Hamburg by 1424 at the latest. Two main altarpieces attributed to him survive, dedicated to St Thomas of Canterbury and Saint Barbara, in an unusually intense style, showing awareness of French and Early Netherlandish court art. He probably arrived in Hamburg after the death in 1415 of the previous leading artist there, Master Bertram, and shows little or no influence from him, but he may have been influenced by the more courtly style of Conrad von Soest, about ten years older than Francke, who worked to the south in Westphalia. The Hamburg association of traders to England commissioned an altarpiece from "Mester Francke[nn]" in 1424; the contract does not survive, but is mentioned in their memorial book. This is probably the "St Thomas (of Canterbury) Altarpiece", completed in 1436, of which parts survive in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg. The rather earlier St Barbara Altarpiece may have been commissioned for Finland, where it surfaced a century ago. The "Thomas Altar" has eight surviving scenes, but is missing its main panel and several others. The "Barbara Altar" has also eight scenes, on both sides of the wings to a carved wood central panel by another artist. At least two other panels are in museum collections. Francke was almost entirely forgotten after the Renaissance until the end of the 19th century when, like Master Bertram, he was rediscovered and published by Alfred Lichtwart, Director of the Hamburg Kunsthalle