William Bouguereau

William Bouguereaub La Rochelle, 30 Nov 1825; d La Rochelle, 19 Aug 1905). French painter. From 1838 to 1841 he took drawing lessons from Louis Sage, a pupil of Ingres, while attending the coll?ge at Pons. In 1841 the family moved to Bordeaux where in 1842 his father allowed him to attend the Ecole Municipale…

William Blake

William Blake (born Nov. 28, 1757, London, Eng.died Aug. 12, 1827, London) English poet, painter, engraver, and visionary. He was trained as an engraver by James Basire and afterward attended classes at the Royal Academy. Blake married in 1782, and in 1784 he opened a print shop in London. He developed an innovative technique for producing…

Theodore Gericault

A number of painters in the Romantic period, and some before it, believed imagery should present situations, states of suffering, and outrage in forms that were extreme and compelling in themselves. These images, they thought, would stimulate the sympathy and satisfaction that were regarded as salutary and sublime – indeed they envisaged a situation in…

William Degouve de Nuncques

William Degouve de Nuncques [sometimes Nunques] (28 February 1867 – 1 March 1935) was a Belgian painter. He was born at Monthermé, the Ardennes, France, of an old aristocratic family, After the Franco-Prussian war (1870–71), his parents settled in Belgium, and he taught himself to paint. In 1894 he married fellow artist Juliette Massin, who…

Antoine Joseph Wiertz

Born in Dinant from a relatively poor family, he entered the Antwerp art academy in 1820. Thanks to his protector Pierre-Joseph de Paul de Maibe, a member of the Second Chamber of the States-General, king William I of the Netherlands awarded an annual stipend to Wiertz from 1821 onwards. Between November 1829 and May 1832, he stayed in Paris, where he studied…

Anne-Francois Janmot

French painter and poet. He belonged to the Lyon school of painting, characterized by idealistic and mystical tendencies similar to those of the Nazarenes and the Pre-Raphaelites. His Christian beliefs, which are very apparent in his art, were strongly influenced by neo-Catholic apologists. From 1831 Janmot studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. In…

Angelo Caroselli

Angelo Caroselli (1585–1653) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active mainly in his native Rome. He painted in an eclectic style, including influences from Caravaggio and the Bamboccianti. Passeri describes him as never affiliated with neither master nor patron, which made his career difficult and poorly remunerated. He is also described as having a…

Andrea Mantegna

VASARI tells us that Andrea Mantegna ”was so kind and lovable that he will always be remembered”, but not everyone found him memorable for those reasons. Certainly not Simone Ardizzone da Reggio, a printmaker briefly under Mantegna’s direction who made the mistake of taking on some additional work without his consent. First, Mantegna had him…

Amos Nattini

A great artist perhaps not so well known to the general public, who lived in Oppiano, right on the banks of the Taro, at Gaiano, and he has had in his land a great source of inspiration. Famous for the illustration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, consisting of a set of tables of great beauty, but…

Alphonse Osbert

Alphonse Osbert (23 March 1857 – 11 August 1939) was a French Symbolist painter. Educated at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, his earliest passion was for the great Spanish masters, particularly Jusepe de Ribera. A shift away from his academic style took place in the late 1880s under the influence of several acquaintances associated with…

Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Marie Mucha, a Czech-born artist, was raised in a strict Roman Catholic environment, and the religious tradition of rich decoration was later to play an important part in his art. Mucha’s style is marked by a wealth of luxurious details; he used muted colors, gold leaf, complicated and delicate patterns, and intricately intertwined lines-the…

Alphonse Legros

Alphonse Legros (8 May 1837 – 8 December 1911), painter, etcher and sculptor was born in Dijon. His father was an accountant, and came from the neighbouring village of Véronnes. Young Legros frequently visited the farms of his relatives, and the peasants and landscapes of that part of France are the subjects of many of…

Alphonse de Neuville

Alphonse-Marie-Adolphe de Neuville (31 May 1835 – 18 May 1885) was a French Academic painter who studied under Eugène Delacroix. His dramatic and intensely patriotic subjects illustrated episodes from the Franco-Prussian War, the Crimean War, the Zulu War and portraits of soldiers. Some of his works have been collected by the Hermitage Museum in St.…

Allaert Claesz

Aertgen Claesz. van Leyden (Leiden, c. 1498 – Leiden, c. 1564), also known as Allaert or Aert van Leyden, was a 16th-Century Dutch painter, draughtsman and designer of stained glass. Works by this artist can be found at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal in Leiden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New…

Alfred Rethel

Alfred Rethel (1816 – December 1, 1859) was a German history painter. Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen, he executed a drawing which procured his admission to the Academy of Düsseldorf. Here he studied for several years, and…