“Turner’s earliest works were watercolours in the eighteenth-century tradition of the topographical ‘tinted drawing’, in which a preliminary pencil outline determined the subsequent placing of the washes of colour. However, after a group of watercolours in which he surpassed all previous works in this style, he evolved, together with Thomas Girtin and under the influence…
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Joseph Wright (3 September 1734 – 29 August 1797), styled Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as “the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution.” Wright is notable for his use of Chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for…
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Juan de Valdés Leal (4 May 1622 – 15 October 1690) was a Spanish painter of the Baroque era. Leal was born in Seville in 1622. He became a painter, sculptor, and architect. By his twenties, he was studying under Antonio del Castillo in Córdoba. Among his works are History of the Prophet Elias for the…
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Jules Michelet’s La Sorcière, originally published in Paris in 1862. I have titled this text The Sorceress because that is a literal translation of the original French title. The original title of this translation was Satanism and Witchcraft, and it was later retitled Witchcraft, Sorcery and Superstition. However there is no need to sensationalize this…
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He was born and died in Córdoba, Spain, where he lived most of his life. His father was the famous painter Rafael Romero Barros and his mother was Rosario de Torres Delgado. Julio learned about art from his father who was the director, curator and founder of Córdoba’s Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes and an…
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Julio Ruelas (June 21, 1870 – September 16, 1907) was a Mexican graphic artist, painter, draughtsman and printmaker. Ruelas was the principal illustrator of the Revista Moderna magazine and is most associated with Mexican symbolism. A number of his works are on display at the Museum of the City of Mexico and in the Zacatecas…
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Justus Sustermans (28 September 1597 – 23 April 1681), also known as Giusto Sustermans, was a Flemish painter in the Baroque style. He was born in Antwerp and died in Florence. Sustermans is chiefly notable for his portraits of members of the Medici family as he was their court painter. His work can be found in…
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Karel Hlaváček (August 24, 1874, Prague – June 15, 1898, Prague) was a Czech Symbolist and Decadent poet and artist. He published his poetic works and art criticisms in the journal Moderní revue (Modern review). He was also active as an artist, creating works that suggest his anxieties about sex, such as Exile. He was…
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Vítězslav Karel Mašek (1865–1927) was a Czechoslovakian artist active during the Art Nouveau movement in Europe. He studied pointillism after the manner of Seurat, and had a large influence on later artists, such as Gustav Klimt.
Karl Bryullov was born on December, 12th (23), 1799 in St. Petersburg, in a family of the academician, the woodcarver and engraver Pavel Ivanovich Briullo (Brulleau, 1760—1833). He felt drawn to Italy from his early years. Despite his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts (1809–1821), Bryullov never fully embraced the classical style taught by…
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Katsushika Hokusai (October or November 1760 – May 10, 1849) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. He was influenced by such painters as Sesshu, and other styles of Chinese painting. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1831) which includes the internationally recognized print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa, created…
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Kawanabe Kyōsai, May 18, 1831–April 26, 1889) was a Japanese artist, in the words of a critic, “an individualist and an independent, perhaps the last virtuoso in traditional Japanese painting”. Living through the Edo period to the Meiji period, Kyōsai witnessed Japan transform itself from a feudal country into a modern state. Born at Koga, he…
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Konrad Dielitz is a German portrait and fantasy painter. Born in 1845 in Berlin, was the son of a well-known literary man. He made his first stroke of fortune as a portrait painter, and the reputation he thus gained brought him an appreciative public for his genre, historical, and legendary compositions. In “The Daughters of…
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Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès, better known by the pen name Léo Taxil (French pronunciation: [leo taksil]; March 21, 1854–March 31, 1907), was a French writer and journalist who became known for his strong anti-Catholic and anti-clerical views. He is also known for the Taxil hoax, a spurious expose of Freemasonry and the Roman Catholic…
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Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Old Style) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man, a man of “unquenchable curiosity” and “feverishly inventive imagination”.…
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Louis Boulanger (11 March 1806, Vercelli, Piedmont – 5 March 1867, Dijon) was a French Romantic painter, lithographer and illustrator. He enrolled in 1821 at the École des beaux-arts where he attended the workshop of Guillaume Guillon Lethière and received a solid classical training. Next he made a présentation for the prix de Rome, in 1824,…
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Louis Welden Hawkins (1849–1910) was born in Germany of English parents, later taking French nationality. He was a detailed Symbolist painter. Louis Welden Hawkins was born in Stuttgart, Germany on 1 July 1849. His mother was an Austrian Baroness, his father an Englishman. Hawkins moved soon to France and later took French nationality. Hawkins attended the…
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Lovis Corinth (born July 21, 1858, Tapiau, East Prussiadied July 12, 1925, Zandvoort, Neth.) German painter and graphic artist. He trained in Paris with the painter William Bouguereau. In 1902 he settled in Berlin and, with Max Liebermann, became a leading exponent of Impressionism in Germany. After recovering from a stroke in 1911, his style became…
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Luca Giordano (born Oct. 18, 1634, Naplesdied Jan. 3, 1705, Naples) Italian painter active in Naples. He was inspired by the work of Jos de Ribera and (after extensive travel in Florence, Rome, and Venice) that of Paolo Veronese and Pietro da Cortona, whose influence is most evident in his huge ceiling fresco in the gallery…
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Luca Signorelli was born in Cortona. According to Giorgio Vasari, who claimed a kinship with him that has since been disproved, Signorelli was born in 1441, but scholars now doubt Vasari, and a birth date in the late 1440s is most commonly accepted. The earliest mention of Signorelli is in 1470, and after that his…
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