English Rococo Era/Romantic Painter, 1727-1788 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's 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.   Related Paintings of GAINSBOROUGH, Thomas :. | Thomas Graham | The Artist s Daughters with a Cat | River Landscape dg | Conversation in a Park sd | Mrs Sarah Siddons dfg |
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Regis Francois Gignoux
Regis François Gignoux (1816-1882) was a French painter who was active in the United States from 1840 to 1870. He was born in Lyon, France and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts under the French historical painter Hippolyte Delaroche, who inspired Gignoux to turn his talents toward landscape painting. Gignoux arrived in the United States from France in 1840 and eventually opened a studio in Brooklyn, New York. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, and was the first president of the Brooklyn Art Academy. George Inness, John LaFarge (1835-1910), and Charles Dormon Robinson were his students. By 1844, Gignoux had opened a studio in New York City and became one the first artists to join the famous Tenth Street Studio, where other members included Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Church, Jasper Francis Cropsey, and John Frederick Kensett. He returned to France in 1870 and died in Paris in 1882.
Taddeo di Bartolo
Italian Gothic Era Painter, ca.1362-1422 Italian painter. Taddeo, son of the barber Bartolo di Mino, was under 25 in 1386 when he was first recorded, painting statuettes of angels for the new choir-stalls in Siena Cathedral. In 1388-9 he was a counsellor to the Cathedral Works and in 1389 he was first listed as an independent painter. His earliest dated work is the polyptych of the Virgin and Child with Saints (1389; sold London, Christie's, 8 Dec 1950), painted for the chapel of S Paolo at Collegarli, near San Miniato al Tedesco.
Philip Alexius de Laszlo
Philip Alexius de Laszlo, MVO (30 April 1869 Budapest - 22 November 1937 London) was a Hungarian painter known particularly for his portraits of royal and aristocratic personages. Laszlo was born in Budapest as Laub Fulop Elek (Hungarian style with the surname first), the eldest son of a Jewish tailor. The family changed its name to Laszlo in 1891. As a young man, Laszlo apprenticed to a photographer while studying art, eventually earning a place at the National Academy of Art, where he studied under Bertalan Szekely and Karoly Lotz. He followed this with studies in Munich and Paris. Laszlo's portrait of Pope Leo XIII earned him a Grand Gold Medal at the Paris International Exhibition in 1900. In 1903 Laszlo moved from Budapest to Vienna. In 1907 he moved to England. He remained based in London for the rest of his life while traveling the world to fulfill commissions. Laszlo's patrons awarded him numerous honors and medals. In 1909 he was named an honorary Member of the Royal Victorian Order by King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. In 1912 he was ennobled by King Franz Joseph of Hungary; his surname became "Laszlo de Lombos". The family later shortened the name to "de Laszlo". Laszlo became a British citizen in 1914 but was interned for over twelve months in 1917 and 1918 during the First World War.