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 :. | Portrait | Portrait | Portrait | The Gross Clinic | The Portrait of Susan |
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Wijnand Nuyen
Dutch Painter, 1813-1839, Dutch painter and printmaker who specialised in landscapes, and was greatly influenced by the French Romantics. Born to a baker father who recognised his son's talent, Nuijen was apprenticed at age twelve to Andreas Schelfhout in Den Haag. Between 1825 and 1829 he studied at the Den Haag Tekenacademie, under Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove. In his short lifespan Nuijen turned into a prolific painter of rural and marine landscapes, spending much time on the Normandy and northern French coasts. Here he fell under the spell of painters who were working in France, such as Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) and Eugene Isabey (1803-1886), both of whom painted picturesque villages, Normandy harbours and seascapes, with a spontaneity Nuijen admired and adopted. His preoccupation with ruins is typically Romantic and his use of colour and texture is reminiscent of the watercolours of Turner. The Felix Meritis society of Amsterdam awarded him a medal in 1829 for his watercolour of a forest landscape. On completion of his tuition he travelled to Belgium, France and Germany, at times with his painting companion Antonie Waldorp [1803-1866]. Nuijen became a member of the Koninklijke Akademie in Amsterdam in 1836, and just before his death he married the daughter of Schelfhout, his former tutor. Nuijen was unusual among Dutch painters of the period, his theatricality and liberal style contrasting with the near photographic depiction that was then the norm. King William II greatly admired Nuijen's work and bought the "Shipwreck" in 1843,
Ludger tom Ring the Younger
(1522-1584) was a German painter and draughtsman. Ring was born in Menster. His father and brothers were also painters. Ring primarily painted portraits and still lifes. He died in Braunschweig in 1584.
Samuel Howitt
English, 1756-1822,was an artist from England. Samuel Howitt was born into a wealthy Quaker family in Nottinghamshire, England. He began painting as a hobby and to amuse his friends. Hunting and racing were his hobbies and he mimicked this interest in his work. Howitt's family experienced financial difficulties, so Howitt decided to move to London. In London, Howitt made a career out of his talent, flourishing as a professional artist. He was published often in The Sporting Magazine and went on to illustrate various books. Howitt is best known for his lively and exotic sporting scenes. His superior watercolors and aquatints depict dramatic racing and hunting scenes as well as an array of conventional and exotic animals. Howitt's work is included in the Mellon Collection, which possesses no fewer than 160 of his watercolors, and many of his aquatints. Howitt exhibited at the Royal Academy and illustrated several books, including his own entitled The British Sportsman c.1812 and British Preserve c.1824. Samuel Howitt, "genius, artist, sportsman", concentrated his considerable artistic talents on picturing scenes of horse-racing and hunting in all its aspects. Born in Nottinghamshire, England, Howitt was largely self-taught ,"although he must have been helped by his companions George Morland, Rowlandson and John Raphael Smith. Howitt's watercolours of hunting, shooting and racing have delightful spontaneity.