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(Rossi)

(b Alderstone, England, Jan 27, 1851; d Bondi, Sydney, April 27, 1942).

Australian painter and writer . He attended the West London School of Art and, following the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1878 the newspaper owner David Syme invited Ashton to Melbourne to produce black-and-white illustrations for the Illustrated Australian News. After a disagreement with the management he transferred to the rival Australasian Sketcher. In 1883 he went to Sydney, where he joined the staff of the Picturesque Atlas of Australia and also contributed to the Sydney Bulletin. Ashton was an ardent disciple of Impressionist painting and claimed to have executed the first plein-air landscape in Australia: Evening, Merri Creek (1882; Sydney, A.G. NSW). Much of his work, as in the watercolour A Solitary Ramble (1888; Sydney, A.G. NSW), had a strong sentimental streak. In addition to his outdoor works Ashton painted a number of portraits, such as that of Helen Ashton...

(b Dolenčice, nr Škofja Loka, May 30, 1862; d Munich, Aug 5, 1905).

Slovenian painter and teacher, active in Germany . He trained in Ljubljana with the Slovenian painter Janez Wolf (1825–84), who taught him in a style derived from Anselm Feuerbach and the work of the Nazarenes and emphasized the ethical ideals and role of art. Ažbe studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna (1882–4), and at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich (1884–91), where he became an excellent draughtsman, especially with nudes and portrait heads. In the spring of 1891 he opened his own private school, the Ažbè-Schule, which established a reputation. From 1898 to 1901 Igor’ Grabar’ joined him as a teacher there. Its students included the Slovenian Impressionists Matija Jama (b 1872), Rihard Jakopič and Matej Sternen (b 1870), the Serbian Nadežda Petrović, the Croatian Josip Račić (1885–1909) and the Czech Ludvík Kuba, as well as Vasily Kandinsky and ...

(b Hamburg, April 14, 1868; d Berlin, Feb 27, 1940).

German architect, designer and painter. Progressing from painting and graphics to product design and architecture, Behrens achieved his greatest successes with his work for the Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG), in which he reconciled the Prussian Classicist tradition with the demands of industrial fabrication.

After attending the Realgymnasium in Altona, he began his painting studies in 1886 at the Kunstakademie in Karlsruhe. From there he moved to Düsseldorf, where he studied with Ferdinand Brütt. In December 1889 Behrens married Lilli Krämer, and the following year the couple moved to Munich, where he continued his studies with Hugo Kotschenreiter (1854–1908). Behrens was one of the founder-members of the Munich Secession (see Secession, §1) in 1893 and, shortly afterwards, a founder of the more progressive Freie Vereinigung Münchener Künstler, with Otto Eckmann, Max Slevogt, Wilhelm Trübner and Lovis Corinth. He also joined the circle associated with the magazine Pan, which included Otto Julius Bierbaum, Julius Meier-Graefe, Franz Blei, Richard Dehmel and Otto Eckmann....

(b Nyíregyháza, Jan 28, 1844; d Dolány, Czechoslovakia [now Szécsény, Hungary], July 16, 1920).

Hungarian painter and teacher. In 1861 he was accepted by the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, where from 1864 to 1869 he was a pupil of Karl Theodor von Piloty, whose influence can be seen in many of Benczúr’s works. During his first year at the academy he painted a small Self-portrait (Budapest, N.G.) that showed him to be already an accomplished artist. His talent as a modern portrait painter is illustrated by the sensitive portrait of his sister, Etelka with Black Lace Shawl (1868; Budapest, N.G.). Benczúr’s lack of ambition, however, led him to concentrate on history pictures: while he was still a pupil of Piloty’s he painted Laszló Hunyadi’s Farewell (1866; Budapest, N.G.), one of the greatest Hungarian history paintings. His early works are full of patriotic sentiments, but later Benczúr distanced himself from intense dramatic situations and from the triumphant episodes of Hungary’s past. In ...

American (?), 19th – 20th century, male.

Active in San Francisco.

Born 1859; died 1935.

Painter, teacher.

American, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 31 August 1850, in Manchester, New Hampshire; died 1921, in Lynn (Massachusetts).

Painter, illustrator, teacher.

William Johnson Bixbee studied at the Lowell Institute with Tommaso Inglaris, and in Boston under the supervision of Waterman and Triscott. He was a member of the Boston Art Club. He served in the Navy and travelled all over the world, especially to Japan and South America. His landscapes and seascapes such as ( ...

Irish, 20th century, female.

Born 1 March 1896, in Dublin.

Painter, art teacher.

Dorothy Isabel Blackman studied at the Royal Hibernia Academy, and was interested in the composition of posters. She exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Society of Ireland.

Dublin, 26 May 1993: The Lawns of St Stephen's in Summer...

(b Chelmsford, Essex, March 14, 1851; d Richmond, Surrey, Jan 8, 1941).

English teacher and painter. From 1868 to 1877 he studied at the National Art Training School, London (later the Royal College of Art), where he grew to detest the inept, mechanical teaching methods then prevalent in Britain. As headmaster of the Westminster School of Art (1877–92), Brown, inspired by Alphonse Legros’s reforms at the Slade School, taught his students basic observational and analytical skills while encouraging them to develop individual styles. In 1883 he studied at the Académie Julian, Paris; his work for several years thereafter, notably Hard Times (1886; Liverpool, Walker A.G.) and Marketing (1887; Manchester, C.A.G.), shows the influence of the French realist Jules Bastien-Lepage. Shortly before 1890 Brown took up portraiture in a style strongly influenced by Whistler; he was also drawn to Impressionist landscape painting by his friend Philip Wilson Steer, whose influence is noticeable in the Horse-shoe Bend of the Severn...

(b Williamsburg, IN, Nov 1, 1849; d New York, Oct 25, 1916).

American painter and printmaker. Chase received his early training in Indianapolis from the portrait painter Barton S. Hays (1826–75). In 1869 he went to New York to study at the National Academy of Design where he exhibited in 1871. That year he joined his family in St Louis, where John Mulvaney (1844–1906) encouraged him to study in Munich. With the support of several local patrons, enabling him to live abroad for the next six years, Chase entered the Königliche Akademie in Munich in 1872. Among his teachers were Alexander von Wagner (1838–1919), Karl Theodor von Piloty and Wilhelm von Diez (1839–1907). Chase also admired the work of Wilhelm Leibl. The school emphasized bravura brushwork, a technique that became integral to Chase’s style, favoured a dark palette and encouraged the study of Old Master painters, particularly Diego Velázquez and Frans Hals. Among Chase’s friends in Munich were the American artists Walter Shirlaw, J. Frank Currier and Frederick Dielman (...

(b Leitmeritz, Northern Bohemia [now Litoměřice, Czech Republic], June 12, 1865; d Vienna, Dec 17, 1946).

Austrian teacher and painter. He studied painting under the German painters Franz Rumpler (1848–1922), Josef Mathias von Trenkwald (1824–97) and Siegmund l’Allemand (1840–1910) at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna (1885–95), then he stayed in Munich and travelled in Switzerland, Italy, France and England. Initially he was a genre and portrait painter, for example in the Scene at the Hairdresser’s (1896; Leipzig, priv. col.) and the portrait of Emperor Francis-Joseph (1894; Graz, Graz, Karl-Franzens-U.), but he soon involved himself with the reform of art education. He saw the artistic individuality of a child as characterized by three types of instinctual responses, corresponding to order, structure and representation, which he thought were worth preserving.

Cižek was a schoolmaster from 1897 to 1903, and from 1904 to 1906 was a professor at the Kunststickereischule in Vienna, producing designs for embroidery and furniture. In ...

(b Feluy, Jan 10, 1849; d Ghent, Jan 11, 1920).

Belgian architect and writer. He trained as a civil engineer under Adolphe Pauli at the Ecole Spéciale de Génie Civil of the State University of Ghent. As a student he came into contact with the Belgian Gothic Revival movement centred on Jean-Baptiste Bethune and the St Luke School in Ghent, founded by Bethune in 1862. From 1874 Cloquet worked with the publishers Desclée. His early architectural work was similar to that of Bethune, Joris Helleputte and the first generation of St Luke architects. His most important projects were built around the turn of the century: the University Institutes (1896–1905), Ghent, and the Central Post Office (1897–1908), Ghent, the latter with Etienne Mortier (1857–1934), a pupil of Helleputte. In them Cloquet adopted a more eclectic though still predominantly medieval style, also introducing Renaissance motifs. Between 1904 and 1911 he designed a redevelopment plan for the historic centre of Ghent, between the early 14th-century belfry and the 15th-century church of St Michael, known as the Kuip, which was realized before the Ghent World Fair of ...

(b London, Sept 28, 1852; d Tokyo, 1920).

English architect, active in Japan. He was articled to Roger Thomas Smith and then entered the office of William Burges. In 1876 he was awarded the Soane Medallion by the RIBA. In the next year he was appointed the first professor of architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering (now Tokyo University) in Japan, in which role he taught every aspect of architecture and building construction. During this period he was also active as an architect, designing such buildings as the Tokyo Imperial Museum (1877–80; now Tokyo National Museum) and a national banqueting house, Rokumeikan (Deer Cry Pavilion), for the Ministry of Public Works. After leaving his academic and governmental posts, Conder went into private practice and designed many residences, including the Iwasaki residence in Kayacho (1896; see Japan, §III, 5), the Shimazu residence (1915) and the Furukawa residence (1917). His style gradually changed from Gothic to more classical. He is often called the father of Western architecture in Japan, not only on account of his designs but also because of his role in establishing the Western method of architectural higher ...

(b Liverpool, Aug 15, 1845; d Horsham, W. Sussex, March 14, 1915).

English painter, illustrator, designer, writer and teacher. He showed artistic inclinations as a boy and was encouraged to draw by his father, the portrait painter and miniaturist Thomas Crane (1808–59). A series of illustrations to Tennyson’s The Lady of Shalott (Cambridge, MA, Harvard U., Houghton Lib.) was shown first to Ruskin, who praised the use of colour, and then to the engraver William James Linton, to whom Crane was apprenticed in 1859. From 1859 to 1862 Crane learnt a technique of exact and economical draughtsmanship on woodblocks. His early illustrative works included vignette wood-engravings for John R. Capel Wise’s The New Forest: Its History and its Scenery (1862).

During the mid-1860s Crane evolved his own style of children’s book illustration. These so-called ‘toy books’, printed in colour by Edmund Evans, included The History of Jenny Wren and The Fairy Ship. Crane introduced new levels of artistic sophistication to the art of illustration: after ...

(b Veracruz, Mar 13, 1880; d Stamford, CT, Jan 10, 1961).

Mexican illustrator, writer, gallery owner, and publisher, active in the USA. He was the son of a wealthy Mexican lawyer and publisher. De Zayas started his career as an artist by providing drawings for his father’s newspaper in Veracruz. In 1906 he moved on to Mexico City’s leading newspaper, El Diario, but a year later, after the ascension of the dictator Porfirio Diaz, whom the newspaper had opposed, he fled to the USA. There he landed a position making caricatures for the New York Evening World. Shortly after his arrival in the USA, he came into contact with Alfred Stieglitz, who staged solo shows of De Zayas’s caricatures at his gallery Gallery 291 in 1909 and 1910, both of which proved to be huge popular successes.

In 1910 De Zayas traveled to Paris, where he stayed almost a year, scouting out adventurous forms of modern art for Stieglitz, notably the cubist work of Picasso and African sculpture. On his return, equipped with knowledge of European modern art and inspired by the work of the French modernist ...

(b Görlitz, Feb 21, 1871; d Lüneburg, March 10, 1948).

German designer, painter, teacher and theorist. A self-taught artist, he made several study trips to Italy and the Tyrol. In painting he found inspiration in late German Romanticism, before turning to the English Arts and Crafts Movement. His designs were exhibited in 1899 at the exhibition of the Bayerische Kunstgewerbeverein (Munich, Glaspal.) and in 1901 at the first Ausstellung für Kunst im Handwerk in Munich. In 1902 he founded the Lehr- und Versuch-Atelier für Angewandte und Freie Kunst with the Swiss artist Hermann Obrist, developing a modern co-educational teaching system based on reformist pedagogy and popular psychology. In preliminary courses, classes and workshops, a broad practical training was offered primarily in arts and crafts. This precursor of the Bauhaus encouraged contact with dealers and collectors and was widely accoladed. When Obrist resigned from the school in 1904, Debschitz founded the Ateliers und Werkstätten für Angewandte Kunst and the Keramischen Werkstätten production centres attached to the school. In ...

American, 19th – 20th century, female.

Born 25 November 1863, in Houtsville (Alabama).

Painter, teacher.

Cornelia Earle was a pupil of G.L. Noyes and was awarded first prize by the Columbia Art Association in 1922.

Alternative art space founded by Stefan Eins (b 1943) at 2803 Third Avenue near 147th Street in the South Bronx, New York, from 1978 to 1993. Eins arrived in New York from Austria in 1967. He referred to Fashion Moda as a museum of “Science, Art, Technology, Invention, and Fantasy,” the title of its inaugural exhibition in 1979. He had previously run a downtown storefront art space called the Mercer Street Store at 3 Mercer Street from 1971 to 1978. Black downtown artist, poet and musician Joe Lewis served as Co-Director of the space with Eins, and William Scott, then a teenager from the neighborhood, served as Junior Director. Their collaborative ventures attempted to connect the street culture of the South Bronx, by then a neighborhood in the midst of massive economic decline, to an international cultural scene.

From its opening in 1978, annually funded with grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council of the Arts and other sources, Fashion Moda held auctions, performances, seminars and other events. Joe Lewis described it as “an outlet for the disenfranchised, a Salon des Réfusés that cut across the uptown/downtown dichotomy, across the black/white/Hispanic isolation.” Although its glass storefront was located in a neighborhood far from the Soho gallery district, its impact has been measured largely by its effect on the more mainstream art world of the 1980s and early 1990s. It introduced and exhibited a number of artists including Charles Ahearn, John Ahearn (...

(b Cochabamba, 1846; d La Paz, 1911).

Bolivian painter. In 1864 he went to Europe to study painting. He remained there for some years, visiting Rome and working in Paris, where he had a studio. On his return to Bolivia, he worked for a time and then returned to Europe. In 1880 he offered his services as portrait painter to the newspaper El Comercio in La Paz, stating that he had founded an academy of drawing and painting in the Instituto Nacional de Ciencias y Letras. At this time he painted murals with religious themes for Cochabamba Cathedral. In 1882 the Musée du Louvre in Paris bought one of his paintings. In 1889 he took part in the Exposition Universelle in Paris and in the Salon d’Artistes Libres, where he obtained an honorable mention for his painting Lake Titicaca. His style was academic, with rigid figures in grandiose poses, painted in a limited range of cool colors. He frequently made use of photography to treat urban topics. While in Paris he painted large views of the principal cities of Bolivia, based on photographs, for example ...

(Rowton)

(b Brighton, Feb 22, 1882; d Harefield, Middx [now in London], Nov 17, 1940).

English sculptor, letter-cutter, typographic designer, calligrapher, engraver, writer and teacher. He received a traditional training at Chichester Technical and Art School (1897–1900), where he first developed an interest in lettering. He also became fascinated by the Anglo-Saxon and Norman stone-carvings in Chichester Cathedral. In 1900 Gill moved to London to become a pupil of William Douglas Caröe (1857–1938), architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. He took classes in practical masonry at Westminster Institute and in writing and illuminating at the Central School of Art and Design, where he was deeply influenced by the calligrapher Edward Johnston. Johnston’s meticulous training was to be a perfect preparation for Gill’s first commissions for three-dimensional inscriptions in stone, the foundation stone for Caröe’s St Barnabas and St James the Greater in Walthamstow, London, and the lettering for the lychgate at Charles Harrison Townsend’s St Mary’s, Great Warley, Essex. Further commissions followed after Gill left Caröe in ...

(b Paris, Dec 25, 1834; d Paris, May 17, 1908).

French architect and teacher. He was an outstanding student for 11 years at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1853–64), where he was taught by Henri Labrouste and Jules André (1819–90). While there he amassed awards and in 1864 won the Grand-Prix de Rome with a project for a hospice in the Alps. The previous year he had found himself at the head of the huge majority of students at the school who opposed the attempt at reform made by Napoleon III’s government. In 1871 he began teaching architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and from 1894 until his death he taught theory there. Although he agreed with Viollet-le-Duc on the principles of a reasoned and analytical study of architecture, Guadet’s vision of architectural education was founded on the relationship of mutual trust between master and pupil within an independent study-group. He believed that ‘in all things the first studies must be classical’ and rejected the idea that the teaching of aesthetics should be obligatory and founded exclusively on the study of medieval architecture. He was also opposed to the exercises in restoration that were imposed on the ...