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ART “4” “2”-DAY  13 April
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DEATHS: 1911 KEITH — 1966 CARRÀ — 1910 ORCHARDSON
BIRTHS: 1860 ENSOR — 1769 LAWRENCE
^ Died on 13 April 1911: William Castle Keith, Scottish US painter born on 21 November 1838, specialized in Landscapes. He arrived in New York as a boy in 1850 and was hired as a wood-engraver by the publishing firm of Harper & Brothers in 1857. In 1859 he established himself as a wood-engraver in San Francisco. Keith soon began to make watercolors of the state’s spectacular mountain scenery, and in 1868 he turned to oil painting. After spending two years (1870–1872) traveling first to Düsseldorf, where he admired the landscapes of Andreas Achenbach [29 Sep 1815 – Apr 1910], then to Paris, where he saw the work of the Barbizon painters, and to New York and Boston, he returned to the US West. There he traveled widely during the next decade with the photographer Carleton E. Watkins and the naturalist and conservationist John Muir [1838–1914]. From 1883 to 1885 Keith studied informally in Munich; he returned to Europe in 1893 and 1899. In the mid-1880s he was influenced by the philosophical teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg [1688–1772]; in response his art moved progressively from the light-filled panoramas of Californian mountains, as in Headwaters of the San Joaquin (1878), to atmospheric renderings of haze-filled meadows and oak groves, as in Glory of the Heavens (1891). Keith’s later paintings, constructed with complicated scumbles and glazes, became more suggestive of a mood than descriptive of a particular place. A prolific artist until only months before his death, Keith lost over 2000 paintings when his studio in San Francisco burnt down following the earthquake of 1906.

LINKS
Santa Barbara Hills (1882, 39x70cm) — Approaching Storm (91x153cm)
Breaking of the Storm (92x153cm) — A Broadside of Mount Tamalpais (1870, 79x120cm)
Distant View of Mount Tamalpais (92x152cm) — California Ranch (1908, 222x128 cm)
Hetch Hetchy Side Canyon, I (1908, 56x71cm) — Hetch Hetchy Side Canyon, II (1908, 56x71cm)
^ Born on 13 April 1860: James Sydney Ensor, Belgian Expressionist painter who died on 19 November 1949. — [Quand on compare les peintres de son époque, comment est-ce qu'Ensor en sort?]
— Ensor was born in Ostend, Belgium, where his parents had a souvenir shop. Ensor attended the Brussels Beaux-Arts from 1877 to 1880. A founder member of the group XX, from which he was nearly expelled because of the originality of his art, he began to be respected towards the end of the century. The theme of masks is central to work of Ensor. It produces strangely compelling works of peerless originality, charged with meanings psychological, intellectual and pictorial, passing indirect judgment on the nature of mankind and his deepest convictions. A precursor of Expressionism, he influenced Emil Nolde [07 Aug 1867 – 13 Apr 1956] (who adopted his theme of the mask) and Paul Klee [18 Dec 1879 – 29 Jun 1940]. His fantastical universe foreshadows Surrealism.
— Born to a Flemish mother from Ostend, Belgium, and an English engineer father. Ostend was a small seaside resort town. His mother supported the family by running a souvenir and gift shop. The shop sold Chinese goods, seashells, and Carnival masks, elements that play a strong part in Ensor's art. Ensor studied at Brussels Academy (1877-1879). In late 1880s, he began to paint using the fantastic and macabre with which he is chiefly associated. One of the founders of "Groupe des Vingt". The Surrealists considered him a forerunner.
— In 1876, Ensor moved to Brussels to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. Meets the Rousseau family, who will play a major stabilizing part in his life. This family is not related to the artistic Rouseaus, but they were prominent in Brussels and provided a way for Ensor to meet the intellectual and anarchist personalities of those early days of Belgian independence.
      When Ensor, age 20, returned to Ostend, he was already a master painter. In his period he preferred a style similar to Rembrandt or at times Rubens.
— Ensor was a master painter by the time he was twenty. In his youth he preferred a style similar to Rembrandt [15 Jul 1606 – 08 Oct 1669] or Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640]. In his late teens and early twenties he painted like the French Impressionists.
— The Oyster Eater was rejected by the Antwerp Salon in 1882 and the Brussels Salon in 1884. In 1882 he displays his art in the Paris Salon and with "L'Essor", a Brussels art society. A critic calls his work "trash".
      Unhappy with his rejections, in 1883, Ensor joined a group of forward looking artists called Les Vingt. The group in the following years held their own exhibitions and Ensor's work was frequently included.
     About 1885 he began to find his own style. His material changed to images of fantasy and death — using masks and skeletons. He went back and reworked pictures adding grotesque elements. In 1886 he began to do etchings.
      The new turn to Ensor's work was far too revolutionary, even for Les Vingt. The Great and Glorious Entry of Christ into Jerusalem (1885) caused contraversy within Les Vingt and at the Les Vingt's salon of 1887. These artistic disagreements led to Ensor's being increasingly isolated.
      His father and his maternal grandmother both died in 1887. And Ensor's dark drawing period came to an end. He moved into light-hued fantasy pictures. About this same time, Ensor developed a hatred of the crowd, the masses who accepted authority and had no taste, and it became a major theme expressed in his art.
      In 1888, he met an innkeeper's daughter, Augusta Bogaerts, who will remain his friend for the rest of his life.
      In 1889, Les Vingt rejected Ensor's masterpiece The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 (1888, detail 1 _ detail 2). They also considered expelling him from the group.
      In 1893 Les Vingt holds its final exhibition. Les Vingt is disbanded and a new group "La Libre Esthetique" is founded to replace it. Ensor feeling completely isolated attempts to sell his studio and all its contents for 8500 francs, but no one is willing to buy.
      In 1895, Ensor's luck begins to change. A Brussels museum buys The Lampboy and some drawings and etchings. His first one man exhibition is held in Brussels.
     In 1898, Ensor has his first one man show in Paris at "Salon des Cent" and in the following year there is a showing of his work in Ostend. A Vienna museum buys about a hundred of his etchings.
      In 1900 Ensor turns forty and in 1903 he is named a Knight of the Order of Leopold. His period of creativity and insolence, sparked by the rejections of critics and the public is mostly over.
      In 1911, Ensor writes the libretto, composes the music, and designs the sets for a marionette play: La Gamme d'Amour. During the first world war Ensor remains in Ostend and is arrested for insulting the Kaiser. His mother dies in 1915.
      In 1920, just after the first world war, Ensor has his first major retrospective in Galerie Girous in Brussels. In 1929, his “Entry of Christ into Brussels”, done 40 years earlier, is first exhibited publicly, King Albert of Belgium makes him a Baron.
1888 photo of Ensor
     
LINKS
Autoportrait avec chapeau à fleurs (self 1883, hat 1888; 1000x813pix, 151 kb _ ZOOM to 1400x1120pix)
Autoportrait avec chevalet (1883; 600x404pix _ ZOOM to 1400x943pix)
Ensor et le général Leman discutent de peinture (1890; 600x880pix _ ZOOM to 1400x2053pix)
L'Intrigue (1911, 95x112cm; 931x1106pix; 809kb _ ZOOM to 1857x2204pix, 3503kb) _ James Ensor, along with Vincent van Gogh and Edvard Munch, is considered a pioneer of Expressionism. But as a creator of fantastic and bizarre images such as Intrigue, Ensor reveals his kinship to old masters of the bizarre such as Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Here, the artist depicted his sister, Mariette in blue hair and green cape, with her top-hatted fiancé, Tan Hée Tseu, a Chinese art dealer from Berlin. The couple's engagement had caused a scandal in the home town of the Ensor family, and the artist, in retaliation, depicts the town gossips who, disguised in their masks, have come out to point, stare, and laugh at the couple.
Les cuirassiers de Waterloo (1891; 600x1824pix _ ZOOM to 1400x4256pix)
Fleurs des Champs (1883, 113x97cm; 959x1112pix, 512kb _ ZOOM to 1879x2179pix, 1984kb) _ a rather traditional still life, in muted colors (to make it look as if the colors had darkened over three centuries?).
Les Patineurs (1883, 18x23cm; 700x912pix) _ most of the skaters are falling.
Flemish Flats Seen from the Dunes (1876) — Bathing House (1876) _ These two pictures are made with oil paint on cardboard packing from his mother's gift shop, in Ostend.
The Lampboy (1880) — The Bourgeois Salon (1881)
Still Life with a Duck (1880) — The Artist's Father (1881) — The Somber Lady 1881
Petites figures bizarres (1888, 14x10cm) — Le Mangeur d'Huitres (1882)
ChinoiseriesEffet de LumièreLady in Distress (1882) — Drunkards (1883)
Le Rameur (1883 _ ZOOM to 1400x1736pix) — Scandalized Masks (1883)
— Strange Masks (1892) _ detailThe Masks and Death (1897, 79x100cm)
Skeletons warming themselves at a stove (1889; 75x60cm)
^ Died on 13 April 1966: Carlo Dalmazzo Carrà, Italian Futurist painter, critic and writer, born on 11 February 1881.
— He was apprenticed to a team of decorators at the age of 12, after the death of his mother. His work took him to Milan, London and Switzerland, as well as to the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. He visited museums, and in Milan in 1906 he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, studying under Cesare Tallone. By 1908 he was arranging shows for the Famiglia Artistica, an exhibiting group. He met Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo, and together they came to know Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and to write the Manifesto dei pittori futuristi (1910). Carrà continued, however, to use the technique of Divisionism despite the radical rhetoric of Futurism. In an attempt to find new inspiration Marinetti sent them to visit Paris in autumn 1911, in preparation for the Futurist exhibition of 1912. Cubism was a revelation, and in 1911 Carrà reworked a large canvas that he had begun in 1910, The Funeral of the Anarchist Galli. He had witnessed the riot at the event in 1904. The crowd and the mounted police converge in violently hatched red and black, as Carrà attempted the Futurist aim to place the spectator at the centre of the canvas. In the reworking he attempted to make the space more complex and the lighting appear to emerge from within.
— Nel 1895 Carrà si trasferisce a Milano. Nel 1905 segue i corsi della Scuola serale d’arte applicata al Castello Sforzesco; l’anno seguente può iscriversi all’Accademia di Brera. Con Boccioni [1882-1916] e Russolo, nel 1910 Carrà incontra Marinetti, aderisce alle istanze del futurismo e firma il Manifesto dei pittori futuristi [English translation], seguito poco più tardi dal Manifesto tecnico [English translation]. Dipinge allora I Funerali dell’Anarchico Galli, uno dei simboli del neonato movimento: nel febbraio del ‘12 espone quest’opera, accanto ad altre notissime, alla Galleria Bernheim Jeune a Parigi, in una mostra itinerante futurista che approda poi a Londra, Berlino, Bruxelles, Amsterdam. Chiamato alle armi, nel 1917 approda a Ferrara, dove conosce Savinio [Andrea de Chirico], il suo fratello Giorgio De Chirico e Filippo De Pisis [11 May 1896–1956].
      Nel 1919 Carrà torna nel capoluogo lombardo; avvia la collaborazione con Valori Plastici. Nel ‘21 scrive come critico d’arte su L’Ambrosiano. Nello stesso anno dipinge Il pino sul mare.
      Nel 1922 partecipa per la prima volta alla Biennale di Venezia. Nel 1926 Carrà partecipa di nuovo alla Biennale, alla I Mostra del Novecento Italiano e ad una mostra alla Galleria Pesaro. Due anni dopo, alla XVI Biennale veneziana, ottiene una sala personale con 14 opere.
      L’attività espositiva è molto intensa anche nel periodo successivo: nel ‘30 espone con Soffici alla Galleria Bardi di Milano; nel ‘31 allestisce una sala alla I Quadriennale Nazionale d’Arte romana, dove vince il 2° premio per la pittura.
      Fra il 1933 e il ‘38 Carrà è chiamato a realizzare pitture murali per grandi edifici pubblici, dal Palazzo dell’Arte - in occasione appunto della V Triennale d’arte - al Palazzo di Giustizia di Milano. Nel 1935 espone 46 opere in una importante personale alla Galleria del Milione. Nel 1941 assume la cattedra di pittura all’Accademia di Brera.
      Gli anni del dopoguerra sono dedicati anche alla pubblicazione di nuovi volumi critici. Nel 1948 Francesco Arcangeli cura una mostra antologica a Bologna. E’ vincitore del Gran Premio per un artista italiano alla Biennale di Venezia del 1950. Nel 1962 apre una grande mostra celebrativa della sua opera al Palazzo Reale di Milano.
— Roberto Crippa and Gianni Dova were students of Carrà.

LINKS
The Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1908) — Leaving the Theatre (1909)
I Funerali dell’Anarchico Galli (1911, 198x266cm) — Inverno sul lago
^ Born on 13 April 1769: Thomas Lawrence, British artist who died on 07 January 1830.
— Sir Thomas Lawrence was one of the foremost English portrait painters of his day. He was born in Bristol. A child prodigy, he was largely self-taught, although he spent some time at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 1789 Lawrence won recognition for his portrait of an actress, Miss Farren (1789). He became much in demand, and in 1792 he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds [16 Jul 1723 – 23 Feb 1792], as principal painter to King George III, who knighted Lawrence in 1815. Lawrence was made a member of the Royal Academy in 1794 and served as president of the academy from 1820 to 1830. Lawrence was a brilliant stylist and technician, whose vitality, rich color, and dramatic silhouettes anticipated romantic painting. Although uneven in quality, his work at its best is marked by a taste and elegance that lends distinction to the portraits of his sitters. These portraits include Lady Peel (1827); Pope Pius VII and Archduke Charles of Austria; and The Calmady Children (1825). Lawrence was the first English painter to achieve success in Europe. With Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough [1727 – 02 Aug 1788] he stands at the apex of English portrait art.
— Painter and draftsman who was the most fashionable English portrait painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was the son of an innkeeper who owned the Black Bear at Devizes, where the young Lawrence won a reputation as a prodigy for his profile portraits in pencil of guests. Later he began to work in pastel, and in 1780, when his family moved to Bath, he set up professionally. He had little regular education or artistic training, but was working in oils by the time he moved to London in 1787. There he studied at the Royal Academy schools for a short time and was given encouragement by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He was handsome, charming, and exceptionally gifted. His early success was phenomenal, and when he was 20 years of age he was summoned to Windsor to paint the portrait, later widely acclaimed, of Queen Charlotte. He was elected associate of the Royal Academy in 1791 and academician in 1794.
      Lawrence was a highly skilled draftsman. He soon abandoned pastels but continued to make portraits in pencil and chalks. These were separate commissions and were rarely studies for paintings, as it was his usual practice to make a careful drawing of the head and sometimes the whole composition on the canvas itself and to paint over it. There are highly interesting references to his working methods in the Diary of Joseph Farington [1747-1821].
      After the death of Reynolds, Lawrence was the leading English portrait painter. His works exhibit a fluid touch, rich color, and an ability to realize textures. He presented his sitters in a dramatic, sometimes theatrical, manner that produced Romantic portraiture of a high order. After the death of John Hoppner [04 Apr 1758 – 23 Jan 1810] he had as patron the Prince Regent, who knighted him in 1815 and sent him in 1818 to the political congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle and Vienna, where he painted 24 large full-length portraits of the military leaders and heads of state of the Holy Alliance. Painted with sovereign verve and elegance, these works are a unique historical document of the period. By these works Lawrence was recognized as the foremost portrait painter of Europe. On his return to England in 1820 he was elected president of the Royal Academy.
      Lawrence was also a distinguished connoisseur. His collection of old-master drawings was one of the finest ever assembled, and he was instrumental in securing the collection of Greek sculptures known as the Elgin Marbles for the nation and in the founding of the National Gallery.

LINKS
Miss Martha Carry (1789, 76x64cm) — Diana Sturt, Lady Milner
Calmady Children (1824) — Mrs. Henry Baring and her ChildrenThe Fluyder Children, (1805)
Queen Charlotte (1790, 239x147cm) _ The youngest of five children of somewhat improvident parents, Lawrence was an infant prodigy. At ten he was drawing profile likenesses of the clients of his father's inn at Devizes, and it was assumed early on that his talent for portraiture would support his family. Around 1787 he was brought to London by his father, began to paint in oils and to show at the Royal Academy. His fame as a painter of full-length portraits in oil was sealed at the Academy exhibition of 1790, which included, among a varied group of a dozen pictures by him, this masterly likeness of Queen Charlotte. Praised outside the royal family, the picture was never acquired by them, perhaps because the king was upset by the queen having posed bareheaded after Lawrence disliked the bonnet and hat she had chosen to wear. The queen herself found the 20-year old artist 'rather presuming' when he asked her to talk during the sitting, in an effort to animate her features. Eventually it was the Assistant Keeper of her Wardrobe who completed the sittings for such details as the bracelets bearing a portrait miniature of the king and his cipher. Lawrence, a draftsman of extreme precision, worked very hard at the 'appearance of facility'. His dazzling brushwork, inspired by Rubens [28 Jun 1577 – 30 May 1640], Van Dyck [22 Mar 1599 – 09 Dec 1641], Rembrandt [15 Jul 1606 – 08 Oct 1669] and Titian [1488 – 27 Aug 1576], enabled him to enjoy painting draperies, unlike his ageing 'rival' Reynolds, who often left them to assistants. But there is more to admire here beside the rustling shimmer of the queen's silks, gauzes and laces. Queen Charlotte had been shocked and saddened by the onset of George III's illness shortly before the portrait was painted. X-rays show that Lawrence modified the careworn expression which he had first observed. Yet even in the final portrait, so formal in conception, so grand in execution, something of the queen's malaise remains touchingly evident. The landscape background shows a view of Eton College as seen from Windsor Castle. The trees are turning red — as they might well have been in late September when the queen posed for Lawrence, but also so that the color contrasts of carpet and dress may be echoed in the russet foliage against a blue sky. Although she cannot see the view behind her, the direction of the queen's glance draws our own eyes to these vivid yet melancholy harbingers of winter.
^ Died on 13 April 1910: William Quiller Orchardson, Scottish painter born on 27 March 1832.
— Orchardson entered the Trustees’ Academy in Edinburgh in 1845, where his student contemporaries included Thomas Faed [08 Jun 1826 – 17 Aug 1900], James Archer [1823–1904] and Robert Herdman [17 Sep 1829 – 10 Jan 1888]. His earliest exhibited painting, Sketching from Nature, was shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1848. After his early training Orchardson returned as a senior student to the Trustees’ Academy between 1850 and 1855 to benefit from the teaching of Robert Scott Lauder [25 Jun 1803 – 21 Apr 1869]. During this period he established friendships with a group of slightly younger artists, including John Pettie [1839-1893], Thomas Graham [1840–1906], John MacWhirter [27 March 1839 – 28 Jan 1911], and Peter Graham [1836–1921], who together were later to form an artistic and social circle in London.
     While Orchardson was still in Edinburgh, his early work included literary subjects from Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens, such as Little Nell and her Grandfather (1863), and themes from Scottish history such as Wishart's Last Exhortation (1853), which shows a well-researched historicism reminiscent of the work of Sir William Allan and James Drummond [1816–1877]. More significantly, in terms of style and composition, Orchardson's early historical works reveal the influence of Sir David Wilkie. This influence remains apparent in the composition of Orchardson's later works, such as Queen of the Swords (1877), which is based on Wilkie's Penny Wedding.
      In 1862 Orchardson moved to London, where he shared a studio in Fitzroy Square with john Pettie, and together these two artists were quickly recognized by critics as members of the new ‘Scottish school', sharing characteristics of subject-matter, style, technique and composition. Orchardson first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1863 with An Old English Song (sold at Sotheby's, 10 Nov 1981). He visited Venice in 1870, and again in 1873 on his honeymoon, when he completed some Venetian genre subjects. Throughout his career Orchardson shared technical and compositional devices and exchanged ideas about subject-matter with Pettie. Both artists chose scenes of Regency lovers and gamblers, Orchardson's Hard Hit (1879) and Pettie's The Gambler's Victim (1869). They also had a similar compositional approach, using the drama of empty spaces and light-colored backgrounds, evident in Orchardson's Casus Belli: A Scene from ‘Peveril of the Peak' (1872) and Pettie's Clash of Steel (1888). Orchardson produced cavalier and Regency costume pieces, such as The Challenge (1864), A Social Eddy—Left by the Tide (1878) and Her First Dance (1884). He became famous for subjects from the Napoleonic era, in particular Napoleon on Board HMS Bellerophon, 23 July 1815 (1880), and for contemporary upper-class psychological drama, such as the paired moral narrative of Mariage de convenance (1883) and Mariage de convenance—After! (1886). He also painted portraits in a similar technique. His thinly applied paint was often considered sketchy or unfinished by contemporary critics more attuned to the solid finish of the English Pre-Raphaelite manner, but Whistler admired Orchardson's tonally subdued palette. His preparatory method involved delicate, full-scale charcoal studies.

LINKS
On Board HMS Bellerophon (1880, 165x249cm) _ This painting shows Napoleon on board HMS Bellerophon bound for Saint-Helena, where he remained in exile until his death in 1821. The deposed Emperor stands on the deck, isolated from the group of naval officers on the left, who watch him with curiosity as he looks out to sea, contemplating his fate.
Escaped! (1874, 91x203cm) [two bloodhounds look at a discarded cap] — Jessica (117x91cm)
Her First Dance (1884, 101x138cm) _ By the 1880s, Orchardson was regarded as one of the greatest modern painters. He specialized in depicting failures of communication between people on social occasions. Here, this failure is between an experienced young man and a novice who are asked to open the dancing at a ball. The setting recreates a scene of about 1820, so Orchardson imagined actors of about the generation of his parents, a time which the people who first saw this painting could just remember. The wide format and empty space of his pictures emphasises the distances between people. He was much praised for his delicate colouring, often near monochrome.
The First Cloud (1887, 83x121cm) _ Orchardson is best known for his inventive modern-dress subjects which exploit a moment of dramatic and psychological tension. This painting shows a couple experiencing their first quarrel. When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1887, it was accompanied in the catalogue by lines from Tennyson: “It is the little rift within the lute / That by and by will make the music mute.” This quote suggests that the first dispute represented by Orchardson would lead to more serious marital problems.
Her Mother's Voice (1888, 102x149cm) _ The widower in the foreground looks up as he thinks for a moment that he hears his late wife’s voice as his daughter, whom he cannot see, begins to sing. The picture was exhibited with lines from Tennyson’s poem Break, break, break: “But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand / And the sound of a voice that is still.” The poetic quote underscores the deeply sentimental nature of this painting.

Died on a 13 April:


^ 1908 Martín Rico y Ortega, Spanish painter and engraver born on 12 November 1833. He first studied under his brother, the engraver Bernardino Rico (1825–94), and later at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid under the first professor of landscape painting, Jenaro Pérez Villaamil. He was given a scholarship to study in Paris in 1862 and also traveled to Switzerland and England, where he filled numerous sketchbooks that include landscapes demonstrating the influence of J. M. W. Turner [1775-1851]. In Paris, Rico y Ortega acquainted himself with the paintings of the Barbizon school and was especially influenced by those of Charles-François Daubigny [15 Jan 1817 – 19 Feb 1878]. He exhibited at the Expositions Universelles in Paris in 1878 and 1889 and also at the Salon in Paris and the Exposición Nacional in Madrid, winning numerous medals at each. Rico y Ortega’s career has been divided into three stylistic periods: an early period influenced by the Romantic landscapes of Pérez Villaamil and David Roberts [24 Oct 1796 – 25 Nov 1864] (e.g. Banks of the Azañon, 1858); a second phase during which he absorbed the techniques and coloring of the Barbizon school (e.g. Laundresses of Varenne, 1865) ; and a final period, from when he traveled in southern Spain (1870) and settled in Venice (1871), until his death. His works of this final period are infused with rich coloring and heavy impasto and depict the sunlit landscapes and gardens of southern Spain and Venice (e.g. View of Venice, 1872), showing the influence of Mariano José Bernardo Fortuny y Marsal [1838-1874]. Rico y Ortega was also the Artistic Director of the journal Ilustración Española y Americana.

^ 1904 Vasily Vasil'yevich Vereshchagin, Russian painter born on 26 October 1842. The most accomplished Russian 19th-century battle painter, he was the son of a landowner and was educated from 1850 to 1860 in the Cadet Corps in St Petersburg, finishing with the rank of naval cadet. He sailed in 1858 and 1859 on the frigate Kamchatka, and other vessels, to Denmark, France and England, and developed a love of travel. Abandoning the career of a naval officer, he entered the St Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1860. However, dissatisfied with the conservatism and idealistic conventions of the academic system of teaching and craving to create ‘an art of great ideas’, he left the academy early, in 1863. The ‘Revolt of the 14 Artists’, who were opposed to academic teaching and later formed the Wanderers, took place at this time. The Critical Realism of the Wanderers always elicited Vereshchagin’s passionate sympathy, and he later took part in some of their exhibitions. In 1864, having traveled to Paris, Vereshchagin came under the influence of Jean-Léon Gérôme [11 May 1824 — 10 Jan 1904], visiting his studio at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Gérôme's compositional skill in his history paintings and his effective handling of detail made a great impression on Vereshchagin. He was also impressed by the Orientalist paintings of Gérôme and of the French painter Alexandre Bida [01 Oct 1813 – 03 Jan 1895].

1886 Sidney Richard Williams Percy, British artist born in 1821. —Related? to Lady Susan Elizabeth Percy [1782-1847]?

1870 Augustin Alexandre Thierrat, French artist born on 10 March 1789.

1858 Carl Georg Adolph Hasenpflug, German artist born on 03 September 1802.

^ 1812 reverend Abraham Pether, British landscape painter born in 1756. — Cousin of William Pether [1738 – 19 Jul 1821] — LINKSLandscape (1806, 120x151cm)

1806 Jean-Jacques Bachelier, French painter, writer and administrator, born in 1724. A student of Jean-Baptiste Pierre, he was approved (agréé) by the Académie Royale in Paris in 1750 and received (reçu) as a painter of flowers in 1752 on presentation of a Portrait of the King in a Medallion Surrounded by a Garland of Flowers and Attributes of the Arts He was essentially a flower and animal painter; as a successor to Jean-Baptiste Oudry [17 Mar 1686 – 30 Apr 1755] he played a key part in the continuation of a precise and polished type of still-life painting. Yet Bachelier also had pretensions towards becoming a history painter, a status he achieved officially in 1763 when he was admitted to the category of history painters at the Académie on the strength of his Death of Abel, for which he substituted A Roman Charity in 1764.

1800 Ludwig Hess, Swiss artist born on 16 October 1760.


Born on a 13 April:


^ 1878 Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt, Swedish US artist who died in 1955. — 56 prints at FAMSF

^ 1823 William Holbrook Beard, US painter specialized in Animals, who died on 20 February 1900. — [When he was born, his mother had a Beard.] — LINKSSelf-Portrait in the Studio (1866) — Phantom Crane (1891) — The Runaway Match (1877) — The Lost Ballon (1882, 121x86cm) — Owls (1851, 39x55cm) — The Bear Dance (104x157cm) _ This romantic fantasy depicts bears — symbolic of speculators who expect a drop in share prices — celebrating a market crash (in a fight, bears hit downward with their claws, while bulls thrust their horns upward). It was most probably painted earlier than The Bulls and Bears in the MarketThe Bulls and Bears in the Market _ The setting for this picture is Broad Street, New York City, looking north, in front of the New York Stock Exchange which appears at the left; the columned Sub Treasury Building at the corner of Wall and Nassau Streets appears in the distance.

1764 Giacomo Guardi, Italian artist who died on 03 November 1835. — Son of Francesco Guardi [05 Oct 1712 – 01 Jan 1793], nephew of Gianantonio Guardi [1699 – 22 Jan 1760] and of Nicolò Guardi [1715-1786], grandson of Domenico Guardi [1678-1716]

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