| Martin Johnson Heade
(4 images) |
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Martin Johnson Heade (1818-1904)
Among nineteenth-century American painters, Martin Johnson Heade was one of the most inventive, versatile, and prolific -- his active career spanned almost seventy years. Between 1871 and 1902, he painted a series of complex compositions that combine hummingbirds and lush tropical flowers, particularly orchids, in landscape settings he had studied on his travels. There are quite simply no other paintings like those known in America or elsewhere.
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| Adolphe-William Bouguereau
(8 images) |
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Adolphe-William Bouguereau (1825-1905)
As a young man, Bouguereau put himself through the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and
created drawings from memory. He made a careful study of form and technique, steeped himself in classical sculpture and painting and worked deliberately and industriously.
Before beginning a painting he would master the history of his subject and complete numerous sketches. He portrays children and domestic scenes with tenderness, technical skill and rich color.
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| Albert Bierstadt
(7 images) |
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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)
Bierstadt was born and later educated in Germany, and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts. As one of America’s foremost landscape painters he was responsible for shaping a vision of America as the new Eden. His monumental canvases were based upon sketches and photographs he made in 1859, when he accompanied the federally sponsored Lander Survey to the Rocky Mountains.
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| Edgar Degas
(7 images) |
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Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Degas was born and died in Paris. He is buried at the cemetery of Montmartre. He entered the École des Beaux-Arts and visited Rome and Florence. From 1865 to 1870 he exhibited each year at the Paris Salon. He also exhibited with the Impressionists. Degas assimilated into his mature style English art and Japanese prints. He acquired his enduring reputation as a "painter of dancers" and also painted the café-concert, laundry women, bathers, jockeys and milliners. From the mid-1870's he worked with pastels. He was also a gifted sculptur. He struggled with failing vision and blindness at the end of his life.
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| Lawrence Alma-Tadema
(4 images) |
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Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912)
Born in Dronryp, Holland, Lawrence worked in England until the tragic death of his mistress and muse in 1882. He is interred in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral (London).
He painted semi-nudes set against a background of daily life in ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt. His work became enormously popular in the United States, where it did much to forge Hollywood's conception of life in ancient times. His pictures were all numbered with Roman numerals, starting with No I when he was 15, and ending with CCCCVIII.
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| Thomas Moran
(7 images) |
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Thomas Moran (1837-1926)
In 1871 Moran went west with the Hayden Expedition to record the wonders of the Yellowstone area, making annotated drawings and watercolors later used to illustrate articles in the popular press as well as the official report. Moran's watercolors convinced the U. S. Congress to set this area aside as America's first national park.
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| Paul Cezanne
(7 images) |
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Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Cézanne, a Postimpressionist, so influenced the aesthetic development of 20th centrury art movements he has been called father of modern painting. He challenged the conventional values of painting in the 19th century through insistence on personal expression and on the integrity of the painting itself.
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