Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Enclosed Field with Ploughman (nn04) | Self-Portrait | Cows (nn04) | Thatched Cottages at Cordeville,at Auvers-sur-Oise (mk06) | Wheatfield at Auvers under Clouded Sky |
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Antoine Plamondon
(ca. 1804-1895) was a Canadian artist who painted mainly portraits and religious images in 19th-century Quebec. Plamondon was born in 1804 (or 1802) at L'Ancienne-Lorette, Quebec, the son of the village grocer. He went to school in Saint-Roch, a suburb of Quebec City, after which he was apprenticed to Joseph Legare (1795-1855), a picture restorer and amateur painter. In 1826 Plamondon travelled to Paris where he studied with classical portraitists such as Paulin Guerin (1783-1855). Works from this period are scarce. In 1830, after the Louis-Philippe uprisings, Plamondon returned to Quebec. While his portraits were of living subjects, many of his religious paintings (commissioned by various churches and religious orders around Quebec City) were based on engravings of old masters. His portrait work was notable for his full-face, close-up, and tightly comosed style as well as a concentration on the latest style of clothing. His later portraits showed more roundness in the modelling and far more space in the composition. By 1850 Plamondon had moved to the country at Neuville, with his mother, a brother, and a sister, where he lived until the 1890s. Much of his work during this period were religious paintings, copies of old masters, done for local churches. Plamondon never married. He was a lifelong monarchist and supporter of the Conservative Party, a friend of Sir George-Étienne Cartier and Sir Étienne Tache, but broke with the Conservatives over the execution of Louis Riel. His 1882 self-portrait was probably his last work He died in Neuville in 1895.
Paul Baudry
French Academic Painter, 1828-1886. Specializes in Portraits Specializes in Portraits.was a French painter. He studied under Michel Martin Drolling and carried off the Prix de Rome in 1850 by his picture of Zenobia found on the banks of the Araxes. His talent from the first revealed itself as strictly academical, full of elegance and grace, but somewhat lacking originality. In the course of his residence in Italy Baudry derived strong inspiration from Italian art with the mannerism of Correggio, as was very evident in the two works he exhibited in the Salon of 1857, which were purchased for the Luxembourg: The Martyrdom of a Vestal Virgin and The Child. His Leda, St John the Baptist, and a Portrait of Beul, exhibited at the same time, took a first prize that year. Throughout this early period Baudry commonly selected mythological or fanciful subjects, one of the most noteworthy being The Pearl and the Wave (1862). Once only did he attempt an historical picture, Charlotte Corday after the murder of Marat (1861); and returned by preference to the former class of subjects or to painting portraits of illustrious men of his day: Guizot, Charles Garnier, Edmond About. The works that crowned Baudrys reputation were his mural decorations, which show much imagination and a high artistic gift for color, as may be seen. in the frescoes in the Paris Court of Cassation. at the château of Chantilly, and some private residences the Hôtel Fould and Hôtel Paivabut, above all, in the decorations of the foyer of the Opera Garnier. These, more than thirty paintings in all, and among them compositions figurative of dancing and music, occupied the painter for ten years. Baudry was a member of the Institut de France, succeeding Jean-Victor Schnetz. Two of his colleagues,
James H. Cafferty
American, 1819-1869