1866-1944 Wassily Kandinsky Galleries was a Russian painter, printmaker and art theorist. One of the most famous 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works. Born in Moscow, Kandinsky spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose to study law and economics. Quite successful in his profession??he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law) at the University of Dorpat??he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30. In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied first in the private school of Anton Azbe and then at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1914 after World War I started. He was unsympathetic to the official theories on art in Moscow and returned to Germany in 1921. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France where he lived the rest of his life, and became a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.   Related Paintings of Wassily Kandinsky :. | Composition VI | Improvisation Gorge | Kek kor | impression 5 | Feher ovalis |
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PANTOJA DE LA CRUZ, Juan
Spanish Painter, 1553-1608 Spanish painter. He must have moved to Madrid when he was very young, receiving his training in the workshop of Alonso S?nchez Coello, painter to Philip II. On numerous occasions he declared himself to be a follower of S?nchez Coello, in whose workshop he was an oficial, and he probably collaborated to a considerable degree on many of his master's mature works. There are very few signed works by Pantoja from before the death of S?nchez Coello, although some anonymous paintings from the workshop are probably by him. In Madrid in 1587 Pantoja married a woman of some means, and by the following year, when S?nchez Coello died, he was an independent painter, aspiring to his master's position. Documentation exists from 1590 concerning portraits by Pantoja of members of the royal family including one of Don Felipe, the future Philip III (1593; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). On Philip's accession to the throne in 1598 Pantoja painted another portrait of him (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.) and became the official portrait painter for the court and for the nobility of Madrid; there is detailed documentation for his work from this time. He painted clothing and jewels with precision, in minute detail and with a dry objectivity in the Flemish tradition. His treatment of faces, however, clearly reveals his study of Venetian portraiture, and in particular that of Titian, as well as sharp psychological penetration. In his portraits of royal children he maintained, albeit with a certain rigidity, the charm that S?nchez Coello in his paintings had given these infant figures tightly swathed in official robes
George Henry Durrie
American Painter, 1820-1863,American painter. Durrie and his older brother John (1818-98) studied sporadically from 1839 to 1841 with the portrait painter Nathaniel Jocelyn. From 1840 to 1842 he was an itinerant painter in Connecticut and New Jersey, finally settling permanently in New Haven. He produced c. 300 paintings, of which the earliest were portraits (e.g. Self-portrait, 1839; Shelburne, VT, Mus.); by the early 1850s he had begun to paint the rural genre scenes and winter landscapes of New England that are considered his finest achievement. His landscapes, for example A Christmas Party (1852; Tulsa, OK, Gilcrease Inst. Amer. Hist. & A.), are characterized by the use of pale though cheerful colours and by the repeated use of certain motifs: an isolated farmhouse, a road placed diagonally leading the eye into the composition, and a hill (usually the West or East Rocks, New Haven) in the distance. By the late 1850s Durrie's reputation had started to grow, and he was exhibiting at prestigious institutions, such as the National Academy of Design. In 1861 the firm of Currier & Ives helped popularize his work by publishing prints of two of his winter landscapes,
Jan Vermeer van Utrecht
(bapt. 16 February 1630, Schipluiden - c. 1696, Vreeswijk), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Though he was born near Delft, there is no known relation between this painter and Johannes Vermeer. His father died when he was 10 and he was raised by his step-grandfather in Rotterdam. According to Houbraken he travelled to Italy with Lieve Verschuier and became friends with Willem Drost and Johann Carl Loth. He returned North in 1662, where he became member of the Utrecht Guild of St. Luke in 1663 and became deacon of the guild 1664-1666.Houbraken tells a curious story about Vermeer van Utrecht in his biography of Jan Davidsz de Heem. In this story, on his return from Italy, Vermeer marries a widow who owns a white lead factory. He is wealthy and has a carefree life until his wife dies and then his factory is burned by French soldiers. He manages to save a garland painting by De Heem that he once paid 2000 guilders for. This was an enormous sum of money, but Houbraken mentions that his grandfather had been a wealthy man, and until his factory was destroyed, Vermeer van Utrecht had been painting for pleasure, rather than professionally. The amount is meant as an indication of the fame and esteem of De Heem, rather than the wealth of Vermeer van Utrecht. Vermeer van Utrecht then applies to his benefactor, Frederick Nassau de Zuylestein, to give him a government post in return for this painting, which he offers to paint with the likeness of the young prince Willem III in the middle of the garland. The lord of Zuylestein was the governor of the young prince from 1659 to 1666, so this deal must have been done sometime between 1662 (Vermeer van Utrecht's return from Italy), and 1672 (the death of the lord of Zuylestein). Apparently, the deal is done, and several years pass, in which Vermeer van Utrecht did become an appointed member of the Utrecht regency (Vroedschap), but where he felt like a fifth wheel. In 1672 the Utrecht council takes pity on him, and gave him the post of Toll-collector and controller of the river lock at Vreeswijk, where he later remarried.