1805-1881
British
Samuel Palmer Galleries
English painter, draughtsman and etcher. Palmer was a key figure of English Romantic painting who represented, at least in his early work, its pastoral, intuitive and nostalgic aspects at their most intense. He is widely described as a visionary and linked with his friend and mentor William Blake, though he stood at an almost opposite extreme in his commitment to landscape and his innocent approach to its imagery. He had none of Blake irony or complexity and was inspired by a passionate love of nature that found its philosophical dimension in unquestioning Neo-Platonism. Related Paintings of Samuel Palmer :. | A View of Modern Rome | Coming from Evening Church | A Cascade in Shadow,Drawn on the Spot,near the Function of the Machno and Conway,North Wales | A Barn with a Mossy Roof | The Lonely Tower | Related Artists:
Wassily Kandinsky1866-1944
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.
VIGNON, ClaudeFrench Baroque Era Painter, 1593-1670
French painter, printmaker and illustrator. Born into a prosperous family in Tours, he received his early training in Paris, probably in Jacob Bunel's studio. In 1609-10 he travelled to Rome; although his presence there is recorded only in 1618-20, he was probably based there throughout that decade, becoming a member of the community of young French artists that included Simon Vouet and Valentin de Boullogne. They were all predominantly influenced by the art of Caravaggio and of his most direct follower Bartolomeo Manfredi. Vignon's severe half-length figures (St Paul, Turin, Gal. Sabauda; Four Church Fathers, on loan to Cambridge, Fitzwilliam), executed possibly even earlier than 1615, are in a Caravaggesque style, as are his paintings of singers, musicians and drinkers (e.g. the Young Singer, Paris, Louvre), although the latter group owes more to the style of contemporary genre painting. However, Vignon was already showing an interest in new artistic experiments, the origins of which were northern, Venetian and Mannerist. His sensitivity to the splendid colouring of Venice and to the art of Jacques Bellange, Georges Lallemand and Jacques Callot is manifest in his Martyrdom of St Matthew (1617; Arras, Mus. B.-A.), a work with striking references to Caravaggio's painting of the same subject (Rome, S Luigi dei Francesi), and still more so in his Adoration of the Magi (1619; Dayton, OH, A. Inst.), which also shows clear links with the art of several precursors of Rembrandt, including Adam Elsheimer, Pieter Lastman, Jakob Pynas and particularly Leonard Bramer.
Andrea VaccaroItalian Baroque Era Painter, 1604-1670
He first studied literature but at an early age turned to painting. He was probably a pupil of the late-Mannerist painter Gerolamo Imparato, though there are no known works from this period. About 1620 he became a follower of Caravaggio; he copied Caravaggio's Flagellation (Naples, Capodimonte), and his copy and the original hung in S Domenico Maggiore, Naples (copy in situ). David with the Head of Goliath (Florence, Fond. Longhi) and Sebastian (Naples, Capodimonte) are early works indebted to Caravaggio's naturalism and chiaroscuro. After 1630 Vaccaro drew inspiration from Guido Reni, Anthony van Dyck and Pietro Novelli and made copies of their works for Neapolitan collectors and dealers such as Gaspar Roomer and Jan Vandeneyden.