1728-1779 Dutch Anton Raphael Mengs Gallery Mengs was born in 1728 at Usti nad Labem (German: Aussig) in Bohemia on 12 March 1728; he died in Rome 29 June 1779. His father, Ismael Mengs, a Danish painter, established himself finally at Dresden, whence in 1741 he took his son to Rome. In Rome, his fresco painting of Parnassus at Villa Albani gained him a reputation as a master painter. The appointment of Mengs in 1749 as first painter to Frederick Augustus, elector of Saxony did not prevent his spending much time in Rome, where he had married Margarita Quazzi who had sat for him as a model in 1748, and abjured the Protestant faith, and where he became in 1754 director of the Vatican school of painting, nor did this hinder him on two occasions from obeying the call of Charles III of Spain to Madrid. There Mengs produced some of his best work, and specially the ceiling of the banqueting-hall of the Royal Palace of Madrid, the subject of which was the Triumph of Trajan and the Temple of Glory. Among his pupils there was Agust??n Esteve. After the completion of this work in 1777, Mengs returned to Rome, and there he died, two years later, in poor circumstances, leaving twenty children, seven of whom were pensioned by the king of Spain. His portraits and autoportraits recall an attention to detail and insight, often lost from the grand manner paintings. Besides numerous paintings in the Madrid gallery, the Ascension and St Joseph at Dresden, Perseus and Andromeda at Saint Petersburg, and the ceiling of the Villa Albani must be mentioned among his chief works. In 1911, Henry George Percy, 7th Duke of Northumberland, possessed a Holy Family, and the colleges of All Souls and Magdalen, at Oxford, possessed altar-pieces by Mengs's hand. In his writings, in Spanish, Italian and German, Mengs has put forth his eclectic theory of art, which treats of perfection as attainable by a well-schemed combination of diverse excellences Greek design, with the expression of Raphael, the chiaroscuro of Correggio, and the colour of Titian. He would have fancied himself the first neoclassicist, while in fact he may be the last flicker of Baroque art. Or in the words of Wittkower, In the last analysis, he is as much an end as a beginning. His intimacy with Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who constantly wrote at his dictation, has enhanced his historical importance, for he formed no scholars, and the critic must now concur in Goethe's judgment of Mengs in Winckelmann und sein Jahrhundert; he must deplore that so much learning should have been allied to a total want of initiative and poverty of invention, and embodied with a strained and artificial mannerism. Mengs was famous for his rivalry with the contemporary Italian painter Pompeo Batoni.  Related Paintings of Anton Raphael Mengs :. | portrait | Portrait of Domenico Annibali | Portrait of Infanta Maria Josefa | Portrait of the Duchess of Huescar | Self-portrait |
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Pekka Halonen
Pekka Halonen (23 September 1865 - 1 December 1933) was a painter of Finnish landscapes and people. He was born in Lapinlahti. He lived with his family in a home and studio on Lake Tuusula in Järvenpää, Finland that he, himself, designed and named Halosenniemi. The beautiful and serene building is now a museum that includes original furnishings and Halonenes own art on the walls. There, on the shores of Lake Tuusula where Pekka Halonen resided, an artistse community developed and flourished, helping to develop a sense of Finnish national identity. Halosenniemi was designed with the two story studios of Paris in mind with high ceilings and tall windows in the studio and second floor living quarters accessible by a set of stairs and a balcony that overlooked the studio. Adjacent to the house, Halonen built a sauna and, in typical Finnish tradition, the sauna also served as a laundry. Halonen stated that he never painted for anyone but himself. He felt that eArt should not jar the nerves like sandpaper - it should produce a feeling of peace.e His father was a peasant from Lapinlahti. Halonen studied at the Art Society's drawing school in Helsinki. In 1890 he moved to Paris where he studied at the Academie Julian and later under Paul Gauguin. He died in Tuusula. There is a painting by Pekka Halonen in the post-impressionist section of the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest, Hungary. Until May 2013 in the Groninger Museum, the Netherlands: Pekka Halonen, Eero Järnefeldt, Helene Schjerfbeck and Akseli Gallen Kallela in the exhibition 'Nordic Art: The Modern Breakthrough'.
Fernando Yanez
Spanish 1489-1536 Fernando Yanez Gallery
Benjamin Vautier
painted Kinder beim Mittagessen in 1857