Son of a much ridiculed poet, William Thomas Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald appears to have had little or no formal training, but from 1845 he was exhibiting at the British Institution and the Royal Academy. Although he is chiefly known for his fairy pieces, Fitzgerald seems to have made a living as a portrait painter and illustrator,…
Praetorius was born in Jáchymov, Bohemia. From 1557 he studied at the University of Wittenberg, and from 1562 to 1569 he lived in Nuremberg. His astronomical and mathematical instruments are kept at Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg. In 1571 be became Professor of mathematics (astronomy) at Wittenberg where he met Valentinus Otho and Joachim Rheticus. He died…
Johannes Gehrts (26 February 1855 St. Pauli – 1921 Dusseldorf), brother of Carl Gehrts (1853-1898), was a leading German illustrator whose work appeared in popular magazines such as Die Gartenlaube, in the design of children’s books and in works of his friend Felix Dahn. He depicted scenes from Germanic and Norse mythology, legends and sagas,…
Johann Frank Kirchbach (British, 1859-1912)
Jean-Léon Gérôme was born at Vesoul, Haute-Saône. He went to Paris in 1840 where he studied under Paul Delaroche, whom he accompanied to Italy (1843–1844). He visited Florence, Rome, the Vatican and Pompeii, but he was more attracted to the world of nature. Taken by a fever, he was forced to return to Paris in…
He was born at Nancy, in northeastern France, to an artistic and theatrical family. The name “Grandville” was his grandparents’ professional stage name. Grandville received his first instruction in drawing from his father, a painter of miniatures. At the age of twenty-one he moved to Paris, and soon afterwards published a collection of lithographs entitled…
Benjamin-Constant was born in Paris. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a pupil of Alexandre Cabanel. A journey to Morocco in 1872 strongly influenced his early artistic development and lead him to produce Romantic scenes under the spell of Orientalism. Among his noted works in this vein are Last…
Jean-Jacques Lequeu (September 14, 1757 – March 28, 1826) was a French draughtsman and architect. Born in Rouen, he won a scholarship to go to Paris, but following the French revolution his architectural career never took off. He spent time preparing the Architecture Civile, a book intended for publication, but which was never published. Most of his…
“If I had to select just one artist whose work is the most fruitful and instructive to the historian of dress for the period covering the first half of the Nineteenth Century, it would be Ingres. From that time, when the fashion spotlight was on the dress and appearance of women rather than on men…
Jaroslav Panuska (Czechoslovakian, 1872)
Dutch painter, born in Java. Studied art in Delft and Amsterdam. A grant allowed him to study in Brussels, where he came into contact with the XX group, and became a member in 1885. He befriended Khnopff, Ensor and de Groux. In 1886, he met Whistler in London. He discovered the Pre-Raphaelites and William Morris’…
Johannes or Jan Luyken (April 16, 1649, Amsterdam – April 5, 1712, Amsterdam) was a Dutch poet, illustrator and engraver. He was born in Amsterdam and learned engraving from his father Kaspar Luyken. He married at 19 and had several children, of who Kasparus Luiken also became a renowned engraver. In his twenty-sixth year, he had a religious…
Jan Frans De Boever (Ghent, Belgium, 8 June 1872 – 23 May 1949) was a Flemish Symbolist painter. He was very successful during most of his lifetime, and he considered himself as one of the best painters ever in his country. His megalomaniac character made him a solitary and isolated artist, whose work moved the…
Barry was one of the most colourful and turbulent characters of his time. He was born in Cork in 1741, the son of a builder and coastal trader. Having conceived the ambition to become a painter, he moved to Dublin in about 1760, where he met and impressed the statesman and author Edmund Burke. Burke…
Jacques-Louis David (30 August 1748 – 29 December 1825) was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era. In the 1780s his cerebral brand of history painting marked a change in taste away from Rococo frivolity toward a classical austerity and severity, heightened feeling[1] chiming with…
Born in Verona, he was the son of the artist Giovanni Ermano Ligozzi, and part of a large family of painters and artisans. After a time in the Habsburg court in Vienna where he displayed drawings of animal and botanical specimens, he was invited to come to Florence, receiving the patronage of the Medici as…
Jacob van Ruisdael is considered one of the great masters of landscape painting. Drawing inspiration from his surroundings and from the stories of incoming travelers, he created paintings that evoked emotion and thought. Van Ruisdael also used his imagination to create dramatic scenes and some of the most astounding landscape art works ever produced. The artist…
Jakob Binck (or Bink), an old German engraver and painter, was born at Cologne between 1490 and 1504. From the earliest accounts of Binck, we must consider it probable that he was a pupil of Dürer, but this is by no means certain, while his early residence in Italy throws a doubt upon the supposition.…
Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin (Russian: Ива́н Я́ковлевич Били́бин; 16 August [O.S. 4 August] 1876 – 7 February 1942) was a 20th-century illustrator and stage designer who took part in the Mir iskusstva and contributed to the Ballets Russes. Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in a suburb of St. Petersburg.…
Among Albright’s typically dark, mysterious works are some of the most meticulously executed paintings ever made, often requiring years to complete. Lace curtains or splintered wood would be recreated using brushes of a single hair. The amount of effort that went into his paintings made him quite possessive of them. Even during the Great Depression…