French Baroque Era Painter, 1594-1665 French painter and draughtsman, active in Italy. His supreme achievement as a painter lies in his unrivalled but hard-won capacity to subordinate dramatic narrative and the expression of extreme states of human passions to the formal harmony of designs based on the beauty and precision of abstract forms. The development of his art towards this end was focused on the search for a point of equilibrium and synthesis between the forces of the Classical and the Baroque around which most critical debate in Rome was concentrated during the 1630s. Poussin did not aspire to the classicism of Raphael's idealized human forms or Michelangelo's re-embodiment of the physical splendours of the antique world, nor did he attempt to vie with the bravura and energy of Annibale Carracci's treatment of Classical mythology in the Galleria of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Equally he was not concerned with the illusionistic effects and heightened emotionalism of Baroque artists such as Pietro da Cortona and Lanfranco. He was concerned above all with interpreting his subject-matter, whether Classical or religious, and telling a story with the greatest possible concentration of emotional response,  Related Paintings of POUSSIN, Nicolas :. | St Cecilia af | A Roman Road af | Theseus Finding His Father's Arms | Landscape with the Gathering of the Ashes of Phocion by his Widow af | Midas and Bacchus (detail) ag |
Related Artists:
Thomas Cooper Gotch
1854-1931 English Thomas Cooper Gotch Gallery In Newlyn he worked first at painting local scenes in the then-fashionable realist manner. But even these often had a romantic edge, such as The Wizard or an obvious love of surface colour. In 1891 a visit to Florence, Italy, opened his eyes to the work of the romantic European symbolists. He took the brave step of changing his style, to make romantic decorative paintings, when the prevailing fashion was against him. His first work in this new style was My Crown and Sceptre (1892), which was the progenitor to his most well-known work The Child Enthroned (1894). The latter, on original exhibition, was hailed by The Times newspaper as the star of that year's Royal Academy show. Until that time, his new style of work had drawn much critical scorn. He painted religious Christian scenes, history painting, portraits, and a few landscapes. His best-known paintings, which form the bulk of his work, usually portray girl-children in ornate classical or medievalist dress. The appearance of the girls in his paintings is often noted as being very modern. Gotch was a close and lifelong friend of Henry Scott Tuke, whose work featured a parallel focus on the boy-child. Gotch's lifelong adoration of the beautiful girl-child was shared by other Victorian giants such as John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll. His emotionally-charged work was immensely popular and critically acclaimed for most of his life, although interest in neo-romanticism waned after the First World War and he turned to watercolours of flowers. He also illustrated books, such as Round About Wiltshire, The Land of Pardons (an early study of Breton folklore & Celtic Christianity), and contributed illustrations to school readers such as Highroads of Literature. A retrospective show was held in Newcastle in 1910, and a memorial exhibition in Kettering in 1931.
Helen Galloway McNicoll (
Canadian, 1879-1915
Marx Reichlich
1460-1520 German Marx Reichlich Gallery Austrian painter. His name, which first appeared in records of Salzburg citizens in 1494, has been linked (Semper) to an artist who signed some of his paintings with the initials M R. The earliest of the initialled panels, the Adoration of the Magi with the Donor Heinrich Mentlberger (1489; Innsbruck, ex-Wilten Abbey Church; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.), suggests that Reichlich had trained with the Tyrolean artists Friedrich Pacher and Michael Pacher. The latter lived in Salzburg from 1495 to 1498, and the stylistic association with him visible in the Perckhamer Altarpiece (c. 1495-8; Austria, priv. col., see Oberhammer, nos 1-12) may account for Reichlich's having become a citizen in Salzburg. The connections with both Pachers and the fact that Reichlich received several commissions in Neustift (Novacella, nr Bressanone) suggest that his origins were in that region. According to a receipt dated 1499, he painted a panel (untraced) for the Benediktinerstift of St Lambrecht in Styria. In 1508 Emperor Maximilian I commissioned him to restore the frescoes (in situ) in Schloss Runkelstein near Bozen (Bolzano). The latest panels signed with the initials M R make up part of a double-winged altarpiece (Heiligenblut, St Vincent) that was completed by one 'Wolffgang Maller' in 1520, perhaps because Reichlich was no longer living. Also attributed to Reichlich on stylistic, technical and circumstantial grounds are eight portraits (c. 1519-20) formerly assigned to a 'Master of the Angrer Portrait' whose name was derived from the riveting bust-length portrait of Canon Gregor Angrer of Brixen (1519; Innsbruck, Tirol. Landesmus.).