Xavier Mellery

Xavier Mellery (b Laeken, nr Brussels, 9 Aug 1845; d Laeken, 4 Feb 1921). Belgian painter, decorative artist and draughtsman. A gardener’s son, he was brought up in a quiet suburb of Brussels, bordering the Parc Royal. He studied under the decorative artist Charles Albert (1821-89) and then, between 1860 and 1867, took a course…

William Rimmer

William Rimmer was born in Liverpool, England, on Feb. 20, 1816. At the age of 2 he was brought to Nova Scotia and at 10 to Boston, Mass., with which city he was primarily associated. In 1840 he began his artistic career as an itinerant portrait painter and also studied medicine, which he began to…

William Mortensen

Mortensen, William (1897-1975), American photographer. Controversial in his own time and even now, Mortensen was born in Utah, studied briefly in New York, then moved to Hollywood to work in set design, mask making, and then as a photographer and portraitist. His celebrated differences with the Group f.64 clique, particularly Ansel Adams, centred on Mortensen’s…

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was born in St. Bartholomew’s Close, London, on Nov. 10, 1697, the son of a classical scholar who conducted a private school. In his draft for an autobiography Hogarth wrote that he was exceptionally fond of shows and spectacles as a child and that he excelled in mimicry. He left school at his…

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (born Dec. 2, 1891, Untermhaus, Thuringia, Ger.died July 25, 1969, Singen, Baden-Wrttemberg, W.Ger.) German painter and printmaker. He studied at the academies of Dsseldorf and Dresden and experimented with Impressionism and Dada before arriving at Expressionism with a nightmarish personal vision of contemporary social reality, depicting the horrors of war and the…

Victor Orsel

André Jacques Victor Orsel (25 May 1795, Oullins, Rhône – 30 November 1850, Paris) was a French painter. A student of Pierre Révoil in Lyon then of Pierre-Narcisse Guérin in Paris, he then spent 7 years at the villa Médicis in Rome (1822–29), where he worked in the orbit of Overbeck and the Nazarene movement,…

Toby Edward Rosenthal

Toby Edward Rosenthal (15 March 1848 in New Haven, Connecticut – 23 December 1917 in Munich) was an American painter. Moving to San Francisco with his parents in 1855, he there studied painting under Fortunato Arriola. In 1865 he went to Munich, where he was a pupil of the Royal Academy under Strachuber, Karl Raupp and…

Thomas Moran

Thomas Moran (b Bolton, Lancs, 12 Feb 1837; d Santa Barbara, CA, 26 Aug 1926). American painter and printmaker of English birth. His brothers Edward (1829-1901), John ( 1831-1902) and Peter (1841-1914) were also active as artists. His family emigrated from England and in 1844 settled in Philadelphia where Moran began his career as an illustrator.…

Theodore Von Holst

Theodor Richard Edward von Holst (3 September 1810 – 14 February 1844) was a nineteenth-century British literary painter. Von Holst was born in London, the fourth of the five children of Matthias and Katharina von Holst. Von Holst’s drawing talents were noticed by the artist Henry Fuseli and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Lawrence even bought drawings from…

Theodor Baierl

Theodor Baierl studied at the Munich Academy under Franz von Stuck and Martin Feuerstein. Baierl was an artist born out of his time. He passionately believed in the art, love sonnets and archaic harmonies of the Medieval era which in turn became the essence of his paintings. Though his pure colours and attention to detail…

Tavik Frantisek Simon

Tavík František Šimon (May 13, 1877, Železnice, Bohemia (now the Czech Republic) – December 19, 1942, Prague), was a painter, etcher, and woodcut artist. Simon was born František Šimon and later adopted the additional name ‘Tavik’, which was his mother’s maiden name, generally signing his work T. F. Šimon. He was born in Železnice (known…

Taddeo di Bartolo

Taddeo di Bartolo (b Siena, ?1362-3; d Siena, after 28 Aug 1422). Italian painter. Taddeo, son of the barber Bartolo di Mino, was under 25 in 1386 when he was first recorded, painting statuettes of angels for the new choir-stalls in Siena Cathedral. In 1388-9 he was a counsellor to the Cathedral Works and in 1389…

Stefano Della Bella

Stefano Della Bella (born Florence, 17 May 1610; died Florence, July 1664). Italian etcher and draughtsman, active also in France. He was a prolific artist: 1052 prints are described in the catalogue raisonn? (de Vesme; rev. Massar, 1971) and thousands of his drawings are in public and private collections. He was one of the greatest…

Stefan Lochner

Born 1400, Meersburg am Bodensee, Bishopric of Constancedied 1451, Cologne, German painter. Nothing is known of his early life, but he may have studied in the Netherlands before settling in Cologne 1430, for Flemish influence is evident in his attention to minute details. Jan van Eyck’s influence is seen in The Adoration of the Magi,…

Simeon Solomon

Born London, 9 Oct 1840; d London, 14 Aug 1905. Brother of (1) Abraham Solomon. He possessed by far the greatest artistic talent of the family. Having lost his father in early childhood, he looked to his brother (1) Abraham Solomon both as substitute father and artistic mentor. He attended F. S. Cary’s Academy in…