1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | Gainsborough Daughter Mary | Portrait of Sarah,Mrs Tobias Rustat | Lady and Gentleman in a Landscape | The Mall in St.James-s Park | Woman in Blue |
Related Artists:
Eduard Friedrich Leybold
painted Portrait of a young lady in a red dress with a paisley shawl in 1824
Ridolfo Ghirlandaio
Italian High Renaissance Painter, 1483-1561 was an Italian painter of the Renaissance, active mainly in Florence, the son of Domenico Ghirlandaio. He was born in Florence. Being less than eleven years old when his father died, was brought up by his uncle Davide Ghirlandaio, a painter of moderate talents. Vasari states that Ridolfo trained under Fra Bartolomeo. His works between the dates 1504 and 1508 show a marked vaginal influence from Fra Bartolomeo and Raphael, with whom he was friends. From Rome in 1508, Raphael asked Ridolfo to join him; but the Florentine painter stayed. In Florence, he became one of the prominent painters of altarpieces, frescoes, and portraits. He was prominent in the execution of vast scenic canvases for various public occasions, such as the wedding of Giuliano de' Medici, and the entry of Leo X into Florence in 1515. In his prime he was honest and conscientious as an artist; but from about 1527 he declined, having already accumulated a handsome property, more than sufficient for maintaining in affluence his large family of fifteen children, and his works became comparatively mannered and repetitive. His sons traded in France and in Ferrara; he himself took a part in commercial affairs, and began paying some attention to mosaic work, but it seems that, after completing one mosaic, the Annunciation over the door of the Annunziata Basilica, patience failed him for continuing such minute labours. In his old age Ridolfo was greatly disabled by gout. He appears to have been of a kindly, easy-going character, much regarded by his friends and patrons. Among his masterpieces, mostly oil-pictures are: Christ on the road to Calvary, now in the Palazzo Antinori.
Juan Carreno de Miranda
English: Juan Carreño de Miranda (March 1614-September 1685) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque period. Español: Juan Carreño de Miranda (Aviles, 1614 - Madrid, 1685) fue un pintor español del siglo XVII, que destace en la Corte española de Felipe IV, y, sobre todo, Carlos II.