French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | Ingenue | Madame Hagen | Young Girl with Flowers | Algerian Landscape:Wild Woman Ravine | Road by Saint-Simeon Farm |
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VOS, Paul de
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1591-1678 was a Flemish Baroque painter. De Vos was born in Hulst near Antwerp, now in the Dutch province of Zeeland. Like his older brother Cornelis and younger brother Jan, he studied under the little-known painter David Remeeus (1559?C1626). He specialized in monumental animal scenes, especially hunts for aristocratic patrons, that are heavily influenced by Frans Snyders (to whom his sister Margaretha was married). De Vos became a master and joined the guild of St. Luke in 1620. As was frequent amongst artists in Antwerp, De Vos frequently collaborated with other painters. He painted animals in hunting scenes and armor in mythologies by Peter Paul Rubens and his studio.
Benedito Calixto
(14 October 1853 -- 31 May 1927) was a Brazilian painter. His works usually depicted figures from Brazil and Brazilian culture, including a famous portrait of the bandeirante Domingos Jorge Velho in 1923, and scenes from the coastline of São Paulo. Unlike many artists of the time, Calixto's patron was an individual other than the state, who were "the most dependable source of patronage."
Hans Gude
March 13, 1825 ?C August 17, 1903,Norwegian painter. He was the most renowned Norwegian landscape painter of his time. At the age of 12 he was enrolled as a pupil of Johannes Flintoe (1787-1880). After attending evening classes at the Kongelige Tegneskole in Christiania, he went to D?sseldorf in 1841 to study privately with the landscape painter Andreas Achenbach (1815-1910). In 1842 Gude was admitted to the landscape class at the Akademie under Johann Wilhelm Schirmer. He was later appointed an assistant teacher at Schirmer private studio, and he succeeded his master as Professor of landscape painting both at the D?sseldorf Akademie (1854-62) and at the Karlsruhe Akademie (1864-80). In the 1840s Gude established his reputation in Norway and on the Continent with powerful images of the Norwegian mountains. These were shown in the Kunstforening galleries in D?sseldorf and Christiania and at the Berliner Akademische Kunstausstellung, where Gude exhibited throughout his life. Adolph Tidemand and Gude dominated the colony of Norwegian artists who studied in D?sseldorf in the mid-19th century. The two artists worked together on five paintings, all representing people in boats; Gude painted the landscape, Tidemand the figures. The Bridal Procession at Hardanger (1848; Oslo, N.G.) celebrates a ceremony of country life and is the most famous work of Norwegian National Romanticism. In a sunny western Norwegian landscape with snow on the high mountains, the bridal couple and wedding guests in national costume are shown rowing across the water from a medieval stave church on the headland in the background. Gude revealed greater maturity in High Mountain (1857; Oslo, N.G.). The disposition of mountains massed on the high plateau around a little lake produces an effect of monumentality. The predominant colours shade from grey to blue, concentrated in the cloud cover. The influence of Schirmer tranquil landscapes is apparent, while the rhythmic arrangement of light and shadow is reminiscent of Achenbach.