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 :. | William Rush Carving his Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River | Portrait | The Portrait of Asbury W-Lee | Study for William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River | Portrait |
Related Artists:
geoorg engelhard schroder
1684+1750 study of a hand . nationalmuseum
Wilhelm Gentz
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Richard Brakenburgh
(1650, Haarlem - 1702, Haarlem), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. According to Houbraken he was a light-hearted poet from Haarlem. He was the pupil of Hendrik Mommers who went on to paint clever genre scenes in the manner of Adriaen van Ostade. Though some said he was the pupil of Bernard Schendel, they were the same age and painted in similar styles. He was successful enough at his art that his Frisian widow was able to purchase an annuity after his death in Friesland. According to the RKD he is registered in Leeuwarden during the years 1670-1687.He is known for both Italianate landscapes and portraits. He painted similar subjects to those of Schendel, representing merry-makings and drunken assemblies. His pictures are ingeniously composed, and well coloured, something in the manner of Adriaan van Ostade, though greatly inferior. They are painted with facility, although they have the appearance of being very highly finished; and he perfectly understood the management of chiaroscuro. His greatest defect is his incorrect drawing of the figure, which he appears not to have studied from nature. The Vienna Gallery has two 'Peasant Scenes' by him, said to have been painted in 1690; the Berlin Museum one, and the Amsterdam Gallery one. In the Brussels Gallery is a 'Children's Feast,' signed and dated 1698; and the Rotterdam Museum has a 'Doctor's Visit,' signed and dated 1696. In Windsor Castle are two good 'Artists' Studios ' by him. He also sometimes practised the art of engraving. He was the teacher of Wigerus Vitringa, Abraham Pardanus, and Gillis de Winter. He was followed by Jan Steen and Bernardus van Schijndel. He died at Haarlem in December 1702 and was buried in January 1703.