American Realist Painter, 1844-1916. Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 ?C June 25, 1916) was a realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was a highly influential presence in American art. The difficulties which beset him as an artist seeking to paint the portrait and figure realistically were paralleled and even amplified in his career as an educator, where behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and damaged his reputation. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".  Related Paintings of Thomas Eakins :. | Rancher at the desolate field | Sailboats Racing on the Delaware | Miss Amelia C. Van Buren | Gross doctor's clinical course | Between Rounds |
Related Artists:
Jean Beraud
1848-1935 French Jean Beraud Galleries Berauds father (also called Jean) was a sculptor and was likely working on the site of St. Isaacs Cathedral at the time of his sons birth. Berauds mother was one Genevieve Eugenie Jacquin; following the death of Beraudes father the family moved to Paris. B??raud was in the process of being educated as a lawyer until the occupation of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. Beraud became a student of Leon Bonnat, and exhibited his paintings at the Salon for the first time in 1872, however he only gained recognition in 1876, with his On the Way Back from the Funeral. He exhibited with the Society of French Watercolorists at the 1889 Worldes Fair in Paris. He painted many scenes of Parisian daily life during the Belle epoque, in a style that stands somewhere between the academic art of the Salon and that of the Impressionists. He received the Legion d honneur in 1894. Berauds paintings often included truth based humour and mockery of late 19th century Parisian life. Along with frequent appearances of biblical characters in then contemporary situations. Paintings such as Mary Magdalene in the House of the Pharisees aroused controversy when exhibited because of these themes. Towards the end of the 19th century Beraud dedicated less time to his own painting, but worked in numerous exhibition committees including the Salon de la Societe Nationale. Beraud never married and has no children, he is buried in Montparnasse Cemetery beside his mother.
Ivan Bilibin
(Russian, 16 August [O.S. 4 August] 1876 - 7 February 1942) was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg. He studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, then under Ilya Repin in St. Peterburg. In 1902-1904 Bilibin travelled in the Russian North, where he became fascinated with old wooden architecture and Russian folklore. He published his findings in the monograph Folk Arts of the Russian North in 1904. Another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints. Bilibin gained renown in 1899, when he released his illustrations of Russian fairy tales. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons. He was the designer for the 1909 premiere production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel. The October Revolution, however, proved alien to him. After brief stints in Cairo and Alexandria, he settled in Paris in 1925. There he took to decorating private mansions and Orthodox churches. He still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia. He delivered lectures in the Soviet Academy of Arts until 1941. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad.
Perry, Lilla Calbot
American, 1848-1933