September 27, 1840 ?C December 7, 1902,Illustrator Thomas Nast was the first American celebrity cartoonist, famous for helping to turn out New York corrupt politicians and for creating peristent iconographic images of Santa Claus. Nast, from a family of German immigrants, began working in New York City as a cartoonist at the age of 15. He had a long association with Harper Weekly (1861-86), during which his battlefield illustrations and skilled caricatures made him famous in the U.S. and abroad (Van Gogh was a collector). Nast was an opinionated, progressive Republican, and his illustrated attacks on the leader of New York Democrats, William Boss Tweed, are said to have helped bring down an era of government corruption. One of the most influential caricaturists of his time, he is credited with creating the image of Santa as a chubby fellow in a red suit. Nast also came up with the image of an ass to represent Democrats (around 1870) and an elephant to represent Republicans (1874). His popularity waned in the 1880s, and he parted ways with Harper Weekly over political and artistic differences. Failing to succeed with his own publication or as a painter, he managed to be appointed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1902 to a diplomatic position in Ecuador, where he contracted yellow fever and died. Now officially embraced icons, the animal symbols of the two political parties were meant by Nast to be unflattering.   Related Paintings of Thomas Nast :. | Netherlandish Proverbs (mk08) | The Bucintore Returning to the Molo on Ascension Day | Farmhous in a Wheat Field (nn04) | Madona of the Forgiving | chidren wrestling |
Related Artists:
Antonio Carnicero
1748-1814 Italian Antonio Carnicero Location Antonio Carnicero (1748- 1814) was a Spanish painter of the Neoclassic style. Born in Salamanca and died in Madrid. He was trained with his father, Alejandro Carnicero, a sculptor. He then traveled to Rome and returned to be named chamber painter for King Charles III. He also worked as an engraveor. He illustrated and edition of Don Quixote.
PIOLA, Domenico
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1627-1703 was a Genoese painter of the Baroque period. His family studio was highly prolific. He apprenticed with his family, including his elder brother, Pellegro Piola, as well as with Domenico Fiasella. Other members of the Piola family, who were artists included Domenico's brother, Giovanni Andrea and his three sons Paolo Gerolamo, Anton Maria, and Giovanni Battista; his two sons-in-law, Gregorio de Ferrari and Domenico Parodi; and his brother-in-law Stefano Camogli. The large family studio, called Casa Piola excelled in both quadratura fresco decoration and canvases. Generations of artists, down to the 20th century, descended from the line of Piola-De Ferrari, including Giovanni Maria De Simoni, who died in 1913 in the original residence of Domenico's family. Domenico was also a well-known printmaker and draughtsman.
Louisa Anne Meredith
English miniaturist, watercolourist, engraver, poet, writer and botanist . 1812-1895 was an English and Australian writer and illustrator. Louisa Anne Meredith, the daughter of Thomas Twamley and Louisa Ann Meredith, was born near Birmingham, England on 20 July 1812. She was educated chiefly by her mother, and in 1835 published a volume, Poems, which was favourably reviewed. This was followed in 1836 by The Romance of Nature, mostly in verse, of which a third edition was issued in 1839. Another volume was published in the same year, The Annual of British Landscape Scenery, an account of a tour on the River Wye from Chepstow to near its source at Plynlimon. Shortly afterwards Miss Twamley was married to her cousin, Charles Meredith. Charles had emigrated to Van Dieman's Land in 1821 with his father George and family. They had been pioneers of grazing, whaling and other activities around Swansea on Tasmania's East Coast. Charles had become a squatter in the Canberra district of New South Wales They sailed for New South Wales in June 1839, and arrived at Sydney on 27 September 1839. After travelling into the interior as far as Bathurst, Mrs Meredith returned to the coast and lived at Homebush for about a year. By the time of his return to New South Wales, severe economic depression caused by excessive land speculation had destroyed the value of Charles' property, and towards the end of 1840 they relocated to Tasmania. An interesting account of her first 11 years in Australia is given in her two books, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales (1844), reprinted at least twice, and My Home in Tasmania (1852), which was soon republished in the United States of America under the title Nine Years in Australia. For much of her life Mrs Meredith lived on properties around Swansea. In 1860 she published Some of My Bush Friends in Tasmania which contained elaborate full-colour plates printed by the new chromolithography process. The illustrations were drawn by herself, and simple descriptions of characteristic native flowers were given. In the following year an account of a visit to Victoria in 1856, Over the Straits, was published, and in 1880 Tasmanian Friends and Foes, Feathered, Furred and Finned. This went into a second edition in 1881. In 1891, in her eightieth year, Mrs Meredith went to London to supervise the publication of Last Series, Bush Friends in Tasmania. Published at the outset of a severe financial depression in the Australian colonies, this project and the collapse of the bank where most of her savings were held ruined her financially. She died at Melbourne on 21 October 1895 and was survived by sons Owen and George. Mrs Meredith was the author of two novels, Phoebe's Mother (1869), which had appeared in the Melbourne weekly The Australasian in 1866 under the title of Ebba, and Nellie, or Seeking Goodly Pearls (1882). Mrs Meredith took great interest in politics, her husband Charles being a Member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council for several terms between the mid 1850s until just before his death in 1881.