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.…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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Antonello Da Messina

Antonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio (c. 1430 – February 1479) was an Italian painter from Messina, Sicily, active during the Italian Renaissance. His work shows strong influences from Early Netherlandish painting and, unusually for a painter from Southern Italy, he was influential on the art of Northern Italy, especially Venice. The following…

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Arno Breker

Arno Breker was born in Elberfeld, Northern German, on July 19th, 1900. In his late teens be began the study of stone-carving and anatomy and at age 20 began attending the Duesseldolf Academy of Arts where he began his study of sculpture and an immensely successful art career. His work between 1933 and 1942 was most…

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Arthur Hacker

Arthur Hacker was born in London, the son of Edward Hacker, the line engraver. He went to the RA Schools before studying in Paris under Leon Bonnat, who was internationally famous as a portrait painter and a lifelong friend of Degas. Bonnat was the ideal teacher for Hacker who became a fashionable portrait painter himself. His…

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Arthur Hughes

Arthur Hughes was born in London on 27 January 1832, to Edward and Amy Hughes. He entered Archbishop Tenison’s Grammar School in about 1838, and while there displayed an early talent for drawing; in 1846 he entered the School of Design, Somerset House where he studied under Alfred Stevens. In 1847 he enrolled in the…

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Asher Brown Durand

Asher Brown Durand was born in Jefferson Village (now Maplewood), New Jersey, the eighth of eleven children. His frail health exempted him from working on the family farm; instead, he helped his father, a watchmaker and silversmith. Following an apprenticeship to engraver Peter Maverick from 1812 to 1817, Durand entered into full partnership with Maverick…

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