French Impressionist Painter, 1841-1919 Pierre-Auguste Renoir (February 25, 1841?CDecember 3, 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau". Renoir's paintings are notable for their vibrant light and saturated color, most often focusing on people in intimate and candid compositions. The female nude was one of his primary subjects. In characteristic Impressionist style, Renoir suggested the details of a scene through freely brushed touches of color, so that his figures softly fuse with one another and their surroundings. His initial paintings show the influence of the colorism of Eugene Delacroix and the luminosity of Camille Corot. He also admired the realism of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, and his early work resembles theirs in his use of black as a color. As well, Renoir admired Edgar Degas' sense of movement. Another painter Renoir greatly admired was the 18th century master François Boucher. A fine example of Renoir's early work, and evidence of the influence of Courbet's realism, is Diana, 1867. Ostensibly a mythological subject, the painting is a naturalistic studio work, the figure carefully observed, solidly modeled, and superimposed upon a contrived landscape. If the work is still a 'student' piece, already Renoir's heightened personal response to female sensuality is present. The model was Lise Tr??hot, then the artist's mistress and inspiration for a number of paintings. In the late 1860s, through the practice of painting light and water en plein air (in the open air), he and his friend Claude Monet discovered that the color of shadows is not brown or black, but the reflected color of the objects surrounding them. Several pairs of paintings exist in which Renoir and Monet, working side-by-side, depicted the same scenes (La Grenouill??re, 1869). One of the best known Impressionist works is Renoir's 1876 Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette (Le Bal au Moulin de la Galette). The painting depicts an open-air scene, crowded with people, at a popular dance garden on the Butte Montmartre, close to where he lived. On the Terrace, oil on canvas, 1881, Art Institute of ChicagoThe works of his early maturity were typically Impressionist snapshots of real life, full of sparkling colour and light. By the mid 1880s, however, he had broken with the movement to apply a more disciplined, formal technique to portraits and figure paintings, particularly of women, such as The Bathers, which was created during 1884-87. It was a trip to Italy in 1881, when he saw works by Raphael and other Renaissance masters, that convinced him that he was on the wrong path, and for the next several years he painted in a more severe style, in an attempt to return to classicism. This is sometimes called his "Ingres period", as he concentrated on his drawing and emphasized the outlines of figures. After 1890, however, he changed direction again, returning to the use of thinly brushed color which dissolved outlines as in his earlier work. From this period onward he concentrated especially on monumental nudes and domestic scenes, fine examples of which are Girls at the Piano, 1892, and Grandes Baigneuses, 1918-19. The latter painting is the most typical and successful of Renoir's late, abundantly fleshed nudes. A prolific artist, he made several thousand paintings. The warm sensuality of Renoir's style made his paintings some of the most well-known and frequently-reproduced works in the history of art..  Related Paintings of Pierre Renoir :. | Mixed Flowers in an Earthenware Pot | Bathers | The Spring | Renoir's House at Essoyes | The Bridge at Argenteuil in Autunn |
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Carl Ludwig Brandt
(22 September 1831 Holstein, Germany - 1905) was a German-born artist who worked mostly in the United States. Brandt was born near Hamburg, in Holstein, Germany. His father and grandfather were physicians in Hamburg. His father taught him drawing at the age of seven, and he subsequently studied in the principal galleries of Europe. He served in the First War of Schleswig (1848-1850), between Germany and Denmark. He came to the United States in 1852. He painted several portraits previous to 1864, and in that year built his studio in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, but lived in Europe from 1865 until 1869. He was chosen a national academician in 1872, and in 1883 was elected first director of the Telfair Academy of Arts and Sciences, Savannah, Georgia, where he resided in winter. At Telfair he offered art instruction and oversaw art acquisitions, including plaster casts, thus transforming a family mansion into a cultural institution.
Mattheus Terwesten
Mattheus Terwesten (1670-1757) was a Dutch painter of portraits, architectural, and historical themes. He was court painter to Frederick William I of Prussia and professor of the art academy in Berlin. Mattheus Terwesten studied with his brother Augustinus Terwesten, Willem Doudyns, and Daniel Mijtens the Younger. In 1695 he traveled via Berlin to Rome, where he stayed until 1699. In Rome he became a member of the painters' circle known as the Bentvueghels, where he earned the nickname "Arend", or eagle. In 1710 he joined his older brother Augustinus and younger brother Ezaias, and when Augustinus died in 1711, he succeeded him as court painter in Berlin, while Ezaias went to Italy, where he married and settled permanently. His pupils were Herman Diederik Cuipers, Pieter van Cuyck (I), Jan van Gool, Johan Graham, Hendrik van Hulst, Jacob van Nachenius, Andries Storck, and his two sons Augustinus (II) and Pieter Terwesten.
antoine pesne
Antoine Pesne, född 23 maj 1683 i Paris, Frankrike, död 5 augusti 1757 i Berlin, Preussen, var en fransk målare under rokokon. Pesne gick i lära hos sin far, målaren Thomas Pesne, samt hos Charles de la Fosse i Paris. Under åren 1705?C1710 företog han en resa i Italien och vistades huvudsakligen i Venedig, där han anslöt sig till Andrea Celesti, vars måleri tydligt påverkade Pesnes tidiga verk. 1710 kallades han av kung Fredrik I av Preussen till Berlin som hovmålare. Därefter företog han under de följande åren kortare resor till hoven i Dessau (1715), Dresden (1718), London (1723) och Paris (1724). 1733 utnämndes Pesne till ledare för konstakademin i Berlin. Han anses vara en viktig förmedlare av den franska konsten till Brandenburg-Preussen. Pesne var i huvudsak verksam som porträttmålare, men han utförde även talrika vägg- och takmålningar för Fredrik den store i de kungliga slotten. Ett av Pesnes mest berömda konstverk är Dansösen Barbara Campanini (cirka 1745). Detta porträtt med sin lätta och schvungfulla formgivning, det spontana penseldraget och de ljusa, pastelliknande färgerna är karakteristiskt för Pesnes arbeten och för rokokon i allmänhet. På ett virtuost sätt framställer Pesne den med tygblommor dekorerade sidenklänningen. Fredrik den store uppskattade sin hovmålares berömda plein-air-porträtt och lät hänga det på en framträdande plats i sitt arbetsrum i slottet i Berlin.