Gainsborough, A Story of a Painter and an Era
To be able to appraise the originality of eighteenth century English art, one must recognize its importance in history. A great painter to research is Thomas Gainsborough. His artwork was an important aspect of the art community of the middle seventeen hundreds. His paintings seem to bring brightness and color to a period in art that needed his creative boost. His combination of portrait paintings along with beautiful landscapes was not recognized in his time, but would be recognized as remarkable later in history.
Thomas Gainsborough was born in 1727 in the town of Sudbury in Suffolk (Internet 1). He grew up as the son of a woodworking father and his mother was a teacher. He had 7 brothers and sisters, with whom he attended school until he was thirteen. He traveled to London and worked for a Silversmith. While there he saw many painters, he enjoyed it and began painting himself. It was impressive that he began painting without any formal academic lessons (Woodall 11). In spite of that his work was very astonishing and he published his first sketches in 1747. He was greatly influenced by the great painter Sir Anthony Van Dyck before he decided that it was time for him to leave the silversmith’s shop (Internet 2). He married and had two daughters, his love for painting continued on. His love for painting landscapes brought great paintings, but these were not popular enough to earn a living. He had to paint portraits to keep an income. Gainsborough’s combination of both portrait style painting and landscape painting was to give him a large contribution to his era of painters.
Up until this point in time, paintings were usually face shots or occasionally full body sho...
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... may seem confusing, but with just a little conversation with it should have all the details figured out. Art is History.
Bibliography:
Sources
Woodall, Mary. Gainsborough. London: Phoenix House Limited, 1949.
Internet sources
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2 http://www.encyclopedia.com/articles/04854.html 8 December, 1999.
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3 http://acker.cwrl.utexas.edu/~scoggins/britishprojects/eighteenth/economy.html
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4 http://metalab.unc.edu/wm/paint/auth/gainsborough/ 8 December, 1999.
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5 http://encarta.msn.com/index/conciseindex/4F/04F02000.htm?z=1&pg=2&br=1
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7 http://tetrad.stanford.edu/hm/HorseNMusket.html 8 December, 1999.
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Unknown (2014). Glossary of Art Terms. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/glossary#w. [Last Accessed 28 April 2014].
Claude Monet played an essential role in a development of Impressionism. He created many paintings by capturing powerful art from the world around him. He was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. Later, his family moved to Le Havre, Normandy, France because of his father’s business. Claude Monet did drawings of the nature of Normandy and time spent along the beaches and noticing the nature. As a child, his father had always wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but he was interested in becoming an artist. He was known by people for his charcoal caricatures, this way he made money by selling them by the age of 15. Moreover, Claude went to take drawing lessons with a local artist, but his career in painting had not begun yet. He met artist Eugène Boudin, who became his teacher and taught him to use oil paints. Claude Monet
Vincent Van Gogh is one of the world’s greatest and most well-known artists, but when he was alive he considered himself to be a complete failure. It was not until after he died that Van Gogh’s paintings received the recognition they deserved. Today he is thought to be the second best Dutch artist, after Rembrandt. Born in 1853, he was one of the biggest artistic influences of the 19th century. Vincent Van Gogh created a new era of art, he learned to use art to escape his mental illness, and he still continues to inspire artists over 100 years later.
The 18th century is well known for its complex artistic movements such as Romantism and Neo-classical. The leading style Rococo thrived from 1700-1775 and was originated from the French words rocaille and coquille which meant “rock” and “shell”; used to decorate the Baroque gardens1. Identified as the age of “Enlightenment”, philosophers would ignite their ideas into political movements1. Associated with this movement is England’s John Locke who advanced the concept of “empiricism”. This denotes that accepting knowledge of matters of fact descends from experience and personal involvement1. Locke’s concept assisted the improvements of microscopes and telescopes allowing art students in the French academy to observe real life1. Science and experience influenced painting more so in Neo-Classicalism. Locke fought for people’s rights and the power or “contract” between the ruler and the ruled. Reasoning that “the Light in Enlightenment referred to the primacy of reason and intellect…and a belief in progress and in the human ability to control nature”1. Hence, the commence of experimental paintings such as Joseph Wright’s (1734-1797) oil on canvas painting: Fig.1 An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. This image was developed through science by placing a bird in glass container and pumping air to see the effects it would have on the bird (White cockatoo)1. Throughout the late 18th and early 19th century in Western Europe, Neo-Classical art became the “true Style” and was accepted by the French Revolution under Louis XIV. Neo-Classical art was a reaction to Rococo’s light hearted, humour and emotion filled pieces.
Cothren, M. & Marilyn Stokstad. (2011). Art History, Volume 2, 4th Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Learning Solutions.
Vincent Van Gogh is celebrated today as the greatest Dutch painter, besides Rembrandt (“Vincent Willem”). Born in Holland on March 30, 1853, Van Gogh had five other siblings and two parents, and although his mother was an artist, he never bothered with art until much later in his life (“Vincent Willem”). Van Gogh had many shortcomings in his little and dismal time on earth and it was not until his late twenties, after all else had failed, that he gave art a chance. Thanks to the help of his older brother Theo, Van Gogh was able to put all of his emotions and mental worries into productive use, creating masterpieces that are sold today for millions of dollars (“Vincent Willem”). Although he is hugely successful today, Van Gogh had little to no fame in his lifetime and he struggled immensely with his mental state of mind for many years. Ultimately his mental illness (some believe there were more than one) lead to his untimely death, but his turbulent state of mind also helped him to create magnificent images that are revered as some of the greatest pieces of art of today.
Eventually, he found his passion and began to teach himself art. He would mostly paint calming landscapes. In fact, he was the first American Artist to specialize exclusively in painting landscapes. These landscapes were based off of rivers and hills throughout what america was at the time. Thomas became very successful due to his talents.
where people decided to reproduce art as a picture of what was going on. Instead, this artistic
This essay will be about Flemish Baroque painter, Peter Paul Rubens. I will explain why Paul Rubens was highly influenced and impacted by the arts in the high renaissance time. Such as the works of Raphael, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Titian, and how some of these artists ' works had an immediate effect on him during his time. I will answer this question by giving vast evidence of how Paul Rubens works are different based on contextual factors, but at the same time the same and under the influence of the high Renaissance artists mentioned above.
Davies, Penelope J.E, et al. Janson’s History of Art Eighth Edition Volume 1. Upper Saddle River: Laurence King Publishing ltd, London. 2011. Print.
Peter Paul Rubens, the epitome of influential educated artist of the 17th century, studied the “works of Veronese, Tintoretto, Titian and Caravaggio.” (Baroque Art n.d.) and even went through the hassle of reproducing one of Leonardo’s drawings to show that he had understood the composition and style of Italian Renaissance art. Having been raised in Belgium, Peter Paul Rubens was familiar with Flemish Traditional art which was primarily landscape and portraiture, consisted of vivid detail with reserved composition.
The Victorian era was a beautiful time. It was full of highly sophisticated people, not including the artists. The artists of the Victorian era were more to the common people that stood out. Most of the artists back then weren’t as big as they are now. They differed in so many ways trying to be individuals. In this, the works would all be outlining subjects but they differed a great deal. Artists in the Victorian era were expressing themselves with extravagant portraits of daily life in ways of romanticism, realism, impressionism, and post-impressionism.
During this time period artists became famous and inspired many people with their works. Caspar David Friedrich was a famous artist who lived from 1774-1840 in Greifswald, Germany. He was known for painting mediums with watercolors and oils, which is landscape art. Friedrich changed the face of landscape paintings with his intense and emotional focus on nature and became a key member of the Romantic Movement. "Friedrich demonstrated piety to God through nature, the diminished strength of man in the larger scale of life, and great emotion."( Artble ) Some of Friedrich's best known works and most easily recognizable paintings include Cross in the Mountains, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and Two Men Contemplating the Moon. Another famous artist is Ferdinand Eugene Victor Delacroix, more commonly known as Eugene Delacroix, was a French painter who had a profound influence on the Romantic Movement. He was known as a master of color. He lived from 1798-1863 in Charenton, France. He focused on oil, pastel, wood, and other verities of paintings and drawings. Delacroix became a pupil of the English Romantic landscapists and extracted from their techniques, to develop a unique and memorable approach to color. Delacroix's paintings changed the art world forever and his technique had a lasting impact on the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements. Today, Eugene Delacroix is remembered as one...
Vincent Van Gogh’s well known artwork had a profound impact on the world. After being rejected countless times by other jobs, Van Gogh realized that art was his calling and he begun to research other artists and various artwork. He visited several museums in London and got inspiration from many of the impressionists living in Europe at the time.
During the 19th century, a great number of revolutionary changes altered forever the face of art and those that produced it. Compared to earlier artistic periods, the art produced in the 19th century was a mixture of restlessness, obsession with progress and novelty, and a ceaseless questioning, testing and challenging of all authority. Old certainties about art gave way to new ones and all traditional values, systems and institutions were subjected to relentless critical analysis. At the same time, discovery and invention proceeded at an astonishing rate and made the once-impossible both possible and actual. But most importantly, old ideas rapidly became obsolete which created an entirely new artistic world highlighted by such extraordinary talents as Vincent Van Gogh, Eugene Delacroix, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Claude Monet. American painting and sculpture came around the age of 19th century. Art originated in Paris and other different European cities. However, it became more popular in United States around 19th century.