English painter (b. 1769, Bristol, d. 1830, London). Thomas Lawrence was born in Bristol on May 4, 1769. At Devizes, where his father was landlord of the Black Bear Inn, Thomas's talents first became known. Fanny Burney, a prodigy herself, reports that in 1780 Sir Joshua Reynolds had already pronounced Lawrence the most promising genius he had ever met. When Thomas was 10, his father moved the family to Oxford and then to Bath to take advantage of the portrait skill of his son. At the age of 17 Lawrence began to paint in oil, all his previous work having been in pastel. In 1787 the family moved to London, and by 1789 he was challenging Reynolds. When Reynolds died in 1792, Lawrence was appointed to the lucrative post of painter in ordinary to the king. He soon became the foremost portrait painter in England, a position he maintained until his death. His portraits of women are models of beauty and elegance, whether the sitter be a tragic actress like Mrs. Siddons, a social figure like the Princess de Lieven, or a personal friend. At the close of the Napoleonic Wars, Lawrence was knighted and commissioned to paint the leading sovereigns and statesmen of Europe. When he returned to England in 1820, he was elected president of the Royal Academy; he handled the affairs of his office with tact and urbanity. He died on Jan. 7, 1830. Following the English masters of the 18th century, Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, and George Romney, Lawrence carried on the great tradition of society portraiture and raised it to new heights of dash and elegance, though not of psychological penetration. He was by no means an artist of the astonishing insight of Gainsborough, and he did not have the occasionally disconcerting originality of Reynolds. Lawrence had their faults: all were affected by the distorting demands of their fashionable clientele, and all succumbed to them. He had the least to say, and he reflected his sitters' own best views of themselves, yet even they must sometimes have been surprised at their own magnificence. Handsome his portraits undoubtedly are; all the women are strikingly beautiful, the men brave and distinguished. Lawrence enjoyed his great success. He lived for his work, never married, and was a prodigious worker. He was of an exceptionally generous nature, as an artist and as a man, with a rare talent for appreciating and encouraging the talents of others. He was an ardent collector of Old Master drawings; his collection, which was dispersed after his death,  Related Paintings of LAWRENCE, Sir Thomas :. | Queen Charlotte sg | Duke of Wellington on Copenhagen | The Children of John Angerstein John Julius William (1801-1866)Caroline Amelia (b.1879)Elizabeth Julia and Henry Frederic (mk05) | Portrait of Princess Sophia | Mr.and Mrs.John Julius Angerstein (mk05) |
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Frederic james Shields,ARWS
1833-1911
Frank Bernard Dicksee
(b. London, 27 November 1853 - 17 October 1928) was an English Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic historical and legendary scenes. He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time. Dicksee's father, Thomas Dicksee, was a painter who taught Frank as well as his brother Herbert and his sister Margaret from a young age. Dicksee enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1870 and achieved early success. He was elected to the Academy in 1891 and became its President in 1924. He was knighted in 1925, and named to the Royal Victorian Order by King George V in 1927. Dicksee painted the piece 'The Funeral of a Viking' in 1893, which now resides in Manchester City Art Gallery, having been there since 1928 when it was presented by Arthur Burton ESQ in memory of his mother to the Corporation of Manchester. Victorian critics gave it both positive and negative reviews, for its perfection as a showpiece and for its dramatic and somewhat staged setting, respectively. The painting was used by Swedish Viking/Black metal band Bathory for the cover of their 1990 album, Hammerheart.
Alexander Helwig Wyant
American Tonalist Painter, 1836-1892,American painter. He began as an itinerant painter of topographical landscapes along the banks of the Ohio River c. 1854, influenced by such landscape artists as Worthington Whittredge and George Inness. In 1863-4 Wyant moved to New York, where he was impressed by the paintings of the Norwegian artist Hans Gude in the Desseldorf Gallery. This led him to work with Gude in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1865. On his way both there and back, he studied paintings by Constable and used a more painterly technique especially for views of Ireland.