British, 20th century, female.
Born 5 May 1937, in London.
Painter.
Patricia Fleur Bagrit was brought up in artistic surroundings: her grandfather had been a sculptor and her father was a great art collector. She studied at Oxford, then went to the USA to work with the painters Felix Feininger and Ben Shahn. Her art tended towards the abstract. She had solo exhibitions, notably in London and Paris....
In the 20th century, discussion of the relationship between Byzantine art and the art of the Latin West evolved in tandem with scholarship on Byzantine art itself. Identified as the religious imagery and visual and material culture of the Greek Orthodox Empire based at Constantinople between
(b Paris, July 19, 1834; d Paris, Sept 27, 1917).
French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, pastellist, photographer and collector. He was a founder-member of the Impressionist group and the leader within it of the Realist tendency. He organized several of the group’s exhibitions, but after 1886 he showed his works very rarely and largely withdrew from the Parisian art world. As he was sufficiently wealthy, he was not constricted by the need to sell his work, and even his late pieces retain a vigour and a power to shock that is lacking in the contemporary productions of his Impressionist colleagues.
The eldest son of a Parisian banking family, he originally intended to study law, registering briefly at the Sorbonne’s Faculté de Droit in 1853. He began copying the 15th- and 16th-century Italian works in the Musée du Louvre and in 1854 he entered the studio of Louis Lamothe (1822–69). The training that Lamothe, who had been a pupil of Ingres, transmitted to Degas was very much in the classical tradition; reinforced by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, which he attended in ...
(b Chatou, nr Paris, June 17, 1880; d Garches, Sept 8, 1954).
French painter, sculptor, illustrator, stage designer and collector. He was a leading exponent of Fauvism. In early 1908 he destroyed most of his work to concentrate on tightly constructed landscape paintings, which were a subtle investigation of the work of Cézanne. After World War I his work became more classical, influenced by the work of such artists as Camille Corot. In his sculpture he drew upon his knowledge and collection of non-Western art.
Derain abandoned his engineering studies in 1898 to become a painter and attended the Académie Carrière. He also sketched in the Musée du Louvre and painted on the banks of the Seine. On a visit to the Louvre in 1899 he met the painter Georges Florentin Linaret (1878–1905), who had been his companion at school, and who was copying Uccello in an extraordinary manner; he was studying under Gustave Moreau and later introduced Derain to a fellow pupil, Henri Matisse. Derain’s painting was already influenced by the work of Cézanne, and in ...
American, 20th century, male.
Born 7 June 1931, in Eatonton (Georgia).
Painter, draughtsman (including ink), collage artist, print artist, sculptor, collector, art historian. Religious subjects, figures, portraits, figure compositions, scenes with figures, landscapes. Designs for stained glass.
David C. Driskell earned a BFA at Howard University in ...
French, 20th century, male.
Born 31 July 1901, in Le Havre; died 12 May 1985, in Paris.
Painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, lithographer, writer, collector.
At the age of 15, Jean Dubuffet attended evening classes at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre and then enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris, staying there for six months. He met Suzanne Valadon, Max Jacob, Raoul Dufy, André Masson, Fernand Léger, and Juan Gris between 1919 and 1922. In 1924, at barely 24 years old, he gave up painting for the first time and went to work for a central heating company in Buenos Aires for six months. When he returned to France, Dubuffet joined the family wine business in Le Havre. A few years later, he established his wholesale wine trading business in the Bercy district of Paris. He returned to painting full time in 1934 and appointed a manager for his business. Three years later, threatened with bankruptcy, he had to go back to his business and abandoned painting a second time. That year Dubuffet married Émilie Carlu (Lili), and in 1942, he abandoned his business for good and started painting again, this time until his death. He became acquainted with Jean Paulhan and, through him, met Paul Éluard, Pierre Seghers, André Frénaud, Jean Fautrier, Francis Ponge, and Eugène Guillevic. That year was pivotal in respect to the early development of his work; it was then that his style developed, and the breaking with the past can be seen in ...
(b Le Havre, July 31, 1901; d Paris, May 12, 1985).
French painter, sculptor, printmaker, collector and writer (see fig.). He was temperamentally opposed to authority and any suggestion of discipline and devised for himself a coherent, if rebellious, attitude towards the arts and culture. For all his maverick challenges to the values of the art world, Dubuffet’s career exemplified the way in which an avant-garde rebel could encounter notoriety, then fame and eventual reverence. His revolt against beauty and conformity has come to be seen as a symptomatic and appreciable influence in 20th-century culture.
The son of a prosperous and authoritarian wine-merchant in Le Havre, Dubuffet left home for Paris at 17 to pursue irregular studies in the arts. But, growing sceptical of the artist’s privileged status and savouring an affinity with ‘the common man’, he abandoned painting in ...
[Kao Feng-han; hao Nanfu Shanren]
(b Jiaozhou (modern Jiao xian), Shandong Province, 1683; d ?Shandong Province, 1748–9).
Chinese painter, calligrapher, seal-carver, collector and poet. The son of a minor official in charge of local education, Gao developed an interest in poetry, painting and seal-carving in his early youth, when he also began to collect old seals and inkstones. The great poet Wang Shizhen took a liking to him and left instructions before his death that Gao be admitted into the ranks of his disciples. A relative of the poet, Wang Qilei, also provided Gao with some formal instruction in the art of painting, beyond what he could learn from his father, an amateur painter of orchids and bamboo. Gao’s official career did not begin until 1729, when he took up an appointment as assistant magistrate of She xian, Anhui Province. In 1734 a new assignment took him to Taizhou, east of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province. In 1736, having become entangled in a legal dispute involving a chief commissioner of the salt gabelle, he was briefly imprisoned; this and his deteriorating health, which resulted in the paralysis of his right hand, inevitably led to his resignation from officialdom....
(b Paris, Aug 26, 1807; d Paris, July 25, 1852).
French sculptor, painter, decorative artist and collector. Son of the chaser Jacques-François Feuchère (d 1828) and a pupil of Jean-Pierre Cortot and Claude Ramey, he first exhibited at the Salon of 1831. Over the ensuing decade he won the reputation, later shared with his pupil Jean-Baptiste Klagmann (1810–67), of leader in the small-scale, domestic sculpture industry. He modelled statuettes in a variety of historical styles, though he preferred a Renaissance idiom, working for bronze-casters such as M. Vittoz (fl c. 1840) and Victor Paillard (fl 1840–51), and producing models for the goldsmith François-Désiré Froment-Meurice. One of his early Romantic subjects, a seated figure of Satan brooding after his expulsion from paradise, went through numerous editions from c. 1833 (bronze cast, 1850; Los Angeles, CA, Co. Mus. A.), its Michelangelo-inspired posture prefiguring Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux’s Ugolino (bronze version; Paris, Mus. d’Orsay) and Auguste Rodin’s ...
(b Chropyně, Moravia [now Czech Republic], April 4, 1882; d Prague, Oct 6, 1953).
Czech painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer and collector. After a short period at a business school and in an insurance office in Brno, he became a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (1903). In 1904 he won the Academy’s first prize. At the end of the year he set out on a lengthy journey to Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy. He became absorbed in the Old Masters, especially Rembrandt. His own style passed from Post-Impressionism to a more expressive dominance of colour. In 1907 he took part in the first exhibition of The Eight (see Eight, the) with a programme painting, the Reader of Dostoyevsky (Prague, N.G., Trade Fair Pal.), partly influenced by the Munch exhibition in Prague in 1905. At the same time the picture is a very personal manifesto reflecting the Angst and scepticism of his generation. At the second exhibition of The Eight in ...
(b Eisentratten, Oct 2, 1817; d Pest, April 24, 1868).
Austrian sculptor, painter and collector. He was introduced to carving and painting in the workshop of his father, a rural Carinthian cabinetmaker and wood-carver. In 1838 he was allowed to go to Vienna to join his elder brother Franz Gasser, who lived there as a portrait painter; Franz’s death that year obliged Hans to earn a living by painting portraits and doing small-scale decorative work while studying at the Akademie and preparing for a career as a sculptor. Some prizes and the support of benevolent patrons enabled him to move to Munich where he hoped to find greater stimulation and better teachers. There he met Ludwig von Schwanthaler and the painters working for Ludwig I. Gasser had some success with statuettes (e.g. Wilhelm von Kaulbach, 1846; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and small, delicate groups (e.g. The Schnorr Daughters, 1843; Vienna, Belvedere). In 1847 he returned to Vienna on receiving his first commission for architectural sculpture: the façade statues of the Carl Theater (...
German, 19th century, male.
Born 1802, in Amorbach; died 7 September 1846, in Aschaffenburg.
Painter, sculptor, engraver, collector. Church decoration.
He studied a wide range of subjects in Munich. Among other things, he decorated the Catholic church in Nördlingen (Bavaria).
French, 19th century, male.
Born 1817, in Thionville (Moselle); died 1887, in Nancy.
Painter, engraver, lithographer, sculptor. Statues.
The son of a tax collector, François de Lemud initially considered an education at the École Polytechnique (founded in 1794 and the summit of the Grandes Écoles, the higher education establishments). He entered the École des Arts in Metz and at an extremely young age went to Paris, where he studied under P. Delaroche. His connections, his amicable nature and his amiable, effortless talent gave him a reputation. He ranked among the Romantics but its notions offended noone. In ...
[MoMA] (New York)
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was founded in 1929 by patrons Lillie P(lummer) Bliss, Cornelius J. Sullivan and Rockefeller family §(1) to establish an institution devoted to modern art. Over the next ten years the Museum moved three times and in 1939 settled in the Early Modern style building (1938–9) designed by Philip S. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone that it still occupies at 11 West 53 Street. Subsequent renovations and expansions occurred in the 1950s and 1960s by Philip Johnson, in 1984 by Cesar Pelli and in 2002–4 by Yoshirō Taniguchi (b 1937). MoMA QNS, the temporary headquarters during this project, was subsequently used to provide art storage. In 2000, MoMA and the contemporary art space, P.S.1, Long Island City, Queens, announced their affiliation. Recent projects are shown at P.S.1 in Queens in a renovated public school building.
According to founding director, Alfred H(amilton) Barr...
German, 19th – 20th century, male.
Born 25 March 1870, in Munich; died 1942.
Painter, sculptor, engraver, designer.
Naager was taught by Stähuber, Ferdinand Barth, Hackl and Seitz. An architect, art critic and collector, he is also known for his frescoes, mosaics and sculptural decorations on public monuments in Berlin....
(b Lugano, May 1, 1544; d Dresden, Sept 20, 1620).
Swiss sculptor, architect, painter, writer and collector, active in Germany. He was the son of Bernardinus Zamelinus Nosseni and Lucia Verda. His move to Dresden, via Florence, was organized by the intermediary Johann Albrecht von Sprintzenstein, and in 1575 he was appointed court sculptor, architect, painter and decorative artist on an annual salary of 400 taler. He was commissioned to exploit the sources of alabaster and marble in Saxony for the Electors Augustus and Christian I (reg 1586–91). In the following years Nosseni worked in the fields of sculpture and painting (including portraiture), made furniture and other stone and wooden objects for the royal art collection and designed buildings. He also devised triumphal processions, masked celebrations, allegorical plays and tournaments. The precious and semi-precious stones that he acquired were used for epitaphs, monuments, altars, sculptures and other works. It appears that he designed or conceived all these works but actually executed only a few of them. He created his own workshop, in which he employed Italian artists and craftsmen, whom he had engaged during a trip to Italy at the end of ...
[Noël]
(b Dunfermline, Fife, 1821; d Edinburgh, Dec 25, 1901).
Scottish painter, illustrator, sculptor and collector. From his earliest years he drew avidly, seeking inspiration from ancient history, the Bible and from tales of romance and legend. His father was a keen antiquarian, and his habit of collecting items of historical interest and artistic merit was inherited by his son who amassed a collection, which included arms and armour, now in the National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh. He used items from the collection in a large number of his paintings such as ‘I wonder who lived in there?’ (1867; Mrs Eva Noël Findlay priv. col.), the Fairy Raid (1867; Glasgow A.G. & Mus.), In die Malo (1881) and Oskold and the Ellé Maids (1874). After three years as head designer in one of the biggest sewn-muslin factories in Paisley, Strathclyde, Paton went to London in 1842. Although he did not take a studentship at the Royal Academy Schools, it was there that he met John Everett Millais, and they became lifelong friends. He won prizes in the Westminster Hall competitions in ...
(b London, Oct 14, 1900; d Chiddingly, E. Sussex, April 23, 1984).
English patron, poet, painter, sculptor and collagist. After completing his BA at Queens’ College, Cambridge, in 1922, he worked as a painter in France from 1922 to 1935 and through Max Ernst became closely involved with the Surrealist group in Paris. On his return to England, he established the British Surrealist Group and in 1936 organized the first International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries in London, which provided Britain’s first full-scale exposure to the movement. He took part in most of the group’s activities and was secretary and treasurer of its showcase, the London Gallery, as well as co-editor of its publication, the London Gallery Bulletin.
Penrose began collecting art in the early 1930s and in 1938 bought Paul Eluard’s collection of Surrealist, African and other art. This included 40 major works by Max Ernst, including the Elephant Celebes (1921; London, Tate), several paintings by Giorgio De Chirico, most notably the ...
Italian former Benedictine abbey near the mouth of the Po River and 45 km north of Ravenna in the province of Emilia Romagna. Although first documented in
The proportions of the wooden-roofed basilican church, along with the polygonal outline of its main apse, reflect influence from nearby Ravenna and Classe and suggest a date in the 8th or 9th century. An elaborate pavement of mosaic and cut stone (opus sectile...
[Chucho]
(b Guadalajara, Oct 10, 1882; d Mexico City, Aug 5, 1977).
Mexican painter, sculptor, and collector. He led a very curious life, surrounded by the antiques that he collected. In Guadalajara and later in Mexico City he produced what he called his ‘smeared papers’: sheets of India paper painted with washes of brilliantly coloured aniline dyes that he prepared himself, with the occasional addition of silver or gilt. Horses and cockerels were his favourite subjects, but he also painted exhausted girls, bleeding Christs, angels, demons and angel–demons, skulls, clowns, prostitutes, circus performers, monks, doves, and flowers. His painting has a very particular charm, inspired by popular and colonial art, the aesthetic value of which he was instrumental in promoting. Though influenced by Georges Rouault and by Marc Chagall (whom he met in Mexico in 1942), he was one of the most original figures in 20th-century Mexican art.
Kassner, L. S. de: Jesús Reyes Ferreira: Su universo pictórico. Mexico City, 1978....