Hans Baldung was born in Swabia, Germany in the year 1484 to a family of intellectuals, academics and professionals. His father was a lawyer and his uncle was a doctor, and many other of his family members maintained professional degrees. In fact, Baldung was the first male in his family not to attend university. This…
Gustav-Adolf Mossa was born in Nice on 28th January 1883. His father Alexis Mossa (1844-1926), was himself a painter from Nice who produced many posters for the Carnival of Nice at the end of the 19th century and would strongly influence the career of his son. Up to 1900, Gustav-Adolf studied at l’École des Arts…
The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo Today is the anniversary of the birth of the Mannerist painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), so this week’s picture is one of his ingenious “composite heads”, the so-called Librarian. The picture of a man composed entirely from books and the paraphernalia of reading, the work is traditionally said to represent Wolfgang…
Gislebertus, Giselbertus or Ghiselbertus, sometimes “of Autun” (flourished in the 12th century), was a French Romanesque sculptor, whose decoration (about 1120-1135) of the Cathedral of Saint Lazare at Autun, France – consisting of numerous doorways, tympanums, and capitals – represents some of the most original work of the period. His sculpture is expressive and imaginative:…
Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (baptized 23 March 1609 – 1664) was an Italian Baroque artist, painter, printmaker and draftsman, of the Genoese school. He is best known now for his elaborate engravings, and as the inventor of the printmaking technique of monotyping. He was known as Il Grechetto in Italy and in France as Le Benédette. Castiglione…
Piranesi was born in Mogliano Veneto, near Treviso, then part of the Republic of Venice. His brother Andrea introduced him to Latin and the ancient civilization, and later he studied as an architect under his uncle, Matteo Lucchesi, who was Magistrato delle Acque, a Venetian engineer who specialized in excavation. From 1740 he was in…
George Frederic Watts, OM (23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope (see image) and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle…
George Arnald ARA (1763 – 21 November 1841) was a British painter who specialised in landscapes, including topographical views to illustrated county histories. He is best known for his celebrated painting depicting the Battle of the Nile. George Arnald was born in 1763. One account places his birth in the village of Farndip (now Farndish) in…
Gabriel Ferrier is an academic painter, portraitist French ( 29 September 1847 in Nîmes – 6 June 1914 in Paris). Prix de Rome in 1872, he was a professor at the National School of Fine Arts and a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. He was born in in Nîmes father a pharmacist. Entered the…
Friedrich Wilhelm Heine is a German painter from Leipzig who lived from 1845 to 1921. He is known for his genre works, as well as for paintings depicting Norse mythology. Friedrich Wilhelm Heine spent the first forty years of his life in Germany. At the age of fourteen he was a copper and steel engraver’s apprentice…
Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys (born Antonio Frederic Augustus Sands) (1 May 1829 – 25 June 1904), but usually known as Frederick Sandys, was an English “Pre-Raphaelite” painter, illustrator and draughtsman, of the Victorian era. He was born in Norwich, England, and received his earliest lessons in art from his father, who was himself a painter. His…
Frederic Leighton, Baron Leighton, also called (1886–96) Sir Frederic Leighton, Baronet (born Dec. 3, 1830, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Eng.—died Jan. 25, 1896, London), academic painter of immense prestige in his own time. After an education in many European cities, he went to Rome in 1852, where his social talents won him the friendship of (among others)…
Franz Stuck (February 24, 1863 – August 30, 1928), ennobled as Franz Ritter von Stuck in 1906, was a German symbolist/Art Nouveau painter, sculptor, engraver, and architect. Stuck was born at Tettenweis, in Bavaria. From an early age he displayed an affinity for drawing and caricature. To begin his artistic education he relocated in 1878 to…
Franz Sedlacek (1891–1945) was an Austrian painter who belonged to the tradition known as “New Objectivity” (“neue Sachlichkeit”), an artistic movement similar to Magical Realism. At the end of the Second World War he “disappeared” as a soldier of the Wehrmacht somewhere in Poland. Franz Sedlacek was born in Breslau on 21 January 1891, and…
František Kupka (September 23, 1871 – June 24, 1957), (also known as Frank Kupka or François Kupka), was a Czech painter and graphic artist. He was a pioneer and co-founder of the early phases of the abstract art movement and Orphic cubism (Orphism). Kupka’s abstract works arose from a base of realism, but later evolved…
Francis Doughnut (17 November 1877 Prague – 12 December 1962) was a Czech painter, graphic artist and uměnovědec, representative of the second generation of Czech symbolism. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts 1901 – 1,905 at Francis Ženíšek , but as a graphic designer is referred to as…
Frans Floris, or more correctly Frans de Vriendt, called Floris (1517 – 1 October 1570) was a Flemish painter. He was a member of a large family trained to the study of art in Flanders. Most of what we know of his youth is handed down from Karel van Mander’s biography of him, which was at…
Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee KCVO (27 November 1853 – 17 October 1928) was an English Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic historical and legendary scenes. He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time. Dicksee was born in London,…
François Gérard was born in Rome, on 12 March 1770, to J. S. Gérard and Cleria Matteï. At the age of twelve Gérard obtained admission into the Pension du Roi in Paris. From the Pension he passed to the studio of the sculptor Augustin Pajou which he left at the end of two years for…
François de Nomé (1593 – after 1620) was a French painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in Naples. Born in Metz in the Lorraine region in 1593, de Nomé had moved to Rome by 1602 where he worked in the workshop of Balthasar Lawars until around 1610[2] after which he moved to Naples. Until the mid-twentieth…