Search Results

French, 19th century, male.

Born 1817, in Paris; died 1887, in St-Germain-en-Laye.

Painter (gouache), watercolourist, engraver. Figures, portraits, genre scenes, still-lifes (including musical instruments), landscapes.

Realism.

François Bonvin's father was a game-keeper, first in Vaugirard and then in Montrouge. François Bonvin learnt to draw at a free course given in the Rue de l'École de Médecine, and after two years, forced to make his living, he became a type-setter, and then took a job in the Prefecture of Police. In his spare time he toured the museums, especially the Louvre, where he studied the Flemish and Dutch masters. He amassed sketches and watercolours of landscapes from life and portraits of the people he mixed with. In the evening he worked first at the Gobelins studio, and later at l'Académie Suisse. He first exhibited in 1847 with ...

German, 20th century, male.

Born 1942, in Dresden; died 1992, in Wiesbaden.

Engraver.

Preferring etching as a technique, Klaus Böttger has contributed to a revival of Realism, and his reputation in this field led to him being invited to the Biennale in Paris in 1971...

French, 17th century, male.

Born 2 February 1616, in Montpellier; died 8 May 1671, in Paris.

Painter, fresco artist, engraver, draughtsman. History painting, religious subjects, allegorical subjects, mythological subjects, battles, portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, landscapes with figures.

Realism.

Sébastien Bourdon was the son of Martin Bourdon, master painter and stained glass worker, who gave him a grounding in his craft. At the age of seven Bourdon went to Paris with an uncle and was placed under the tutelage of Jean Barthélemy. At 14, heading South again, he stopped long enough in Bordeaux to paint frescoes on a ceiling of a local château, which suggests a degree of artistic proficiency. However, the young artist did not meet with much success and, after a miserable stay in Toulouse, he became a soldier, a job for which he was ill-suited. He managed to obtain his release and was 18 when he left for Rome. He visited Venice and other large Italian cities. From 1634 to 1637 he lived in Rome from the copies, some say pastiches, he produced of Cerquozzi, Benedetto Castiglione, Lodovico Carracci, Claude Lorraine, Andrea Sacchi, and particularly Bamboccio (Van Laer). He was a Calvinist, had to leave Rome when a colleague, the painter de Rieux, reported him as a heretic to the Holy Inquisition....

Austrian, 20th century, male.

Active also active in France, and in Israel.

Born 4 July 1929, in Vienna.

Watercolourist, painter (gouache), engraver. Figure compositions.

Phantastischer Realismus group.

Erich Brauer studied between 1945 and 1951 at the fine arts academy in Vienna. He spent the years between ...

Swiss, 19th century, male.

Born 15 August 1828, in Feldbrunnen (Solothurn); died 22 November 1890, in Feldbrunnen.

Painter, engraver. Portraits, genre scenes, landscapes.

Realism.

Buchser travelled widely throughout his life. He studied painting in Italy in 1847. Poverty forced him to join the Pope's Swiss Guard. In 1849, he became a Garibaldian and left for Paris, where he studied under Schnetz. He travelled to Spain and Morocco, where, in 1859, he followed the Spanish-Moroccan war in his capacity as historical painter for Spain. He also lived in England and worked in North America, where he met with great success. Between 1864 and 1871, he crossed the USA from one end to the other, painting portraits and taking notes that he subsequently used in his works. On his return to Europe, he founded the Union of Swiss Painters in 1865. He again travelled widely in southern Europe, visiting in turn Greece, Corfu, Dalmatia and Montenegro....

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 1914, in Turin; died 1993.

Engraver.

Calandri was an aquatint engraver. His graphic style, even though the subject-matter went beyond reality, had at times the precision of Hyperrealism. His works depicted figures, animals and barely defined beings wandering through a hostile world. He participated in group exhibitions including, in ...

Ukrainian, 19th century, male.

Born 1795, in Yekaterinoslav (now Dnepropetrovsk); died 1828, in Vera Cruz, murdered.

Draughtsman, lithographer.

Choris probably studied in Moscow. He accompanied the naturalist F.A. Marshall de Bierberstein in the Caucasus and between 1815 and 1818, the Captain Otto de Kotzebue in the South Seas. On his return, he was for a while a pupil of Gérard and of Regnault in Paris. In ...

British, 19th century, male.

Born 1791, in Norwich; died 1862, in London.

Engraver. Natural history.

John Curtis was a naturalist, known for his representations of natural history subjects.

French, 19th century, male.

Born 26 February 1808, in Marseilles; died 10 February 1879, in Valmondois (Val-d’Oise).

Painter, lithographer, draughtsman, sculptor.

Realism.

Honoré Daumier was born to a modest Marseilles family who moved to Paris when Daumier was still a child. From bailiff’s errand boy, young Honoré graduated without enthusiasm to bookshop assistant. He was attracted to the Louvre and wanted to draw. His parents turned a deaf ear until Alexandre Lenoir, who created the Musée des Monuments Français and was an acquaintance of Daumier’s father, encouraged him to let his son follow his bent. The first trial, however, proved inconclusive, probably because conventional tutoring was ill-suited to the student’s temperament. Despite this, he managed to get a job under a lithographer named Ratelet. There he drew alphabets, ornaments for the covers of romances, and so on. He went on to work for the publisher Zéphirin Bélliard and then for Achille Ricourt, until he finally made a modest journalistic debut, collaborating on the ...

Chinese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in Beijing and Dali (Yunnan Province), China.

Born 1963, in Handan, China.

Painter, printmaker.

Cynical Realism.

Part of the generation of artists who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), Fang Lijun graduated from the printmaking department at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in ...

Austrian, 20th century, male.

Born 1930, in Vienna.

Painter, draughtsman, engraver, illustrator, sculptor, collage artist, decorative designer. Scenes with figures, figures. Stage sets.

Groups: Hundsgruppe (Dog’s group), Phantastischer Realismus group.

Ernst Fuchs enrolled at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna in 1945. From 1946 to 1950, he was a pupil of Gütersloh, whom Salvador Dalí considered the most important painter of his time (after himself). In around 1950, he was one of the founders of the Viennese ...

Latvian, 20th century, male.

Born 24 October 1962, in Riga, Latvian SSR (now Latvia).

Painter, graphic artist, multimedia artist. Allegorical subjects, abstraction and portraiture. Sculptural objects, conceptual installations.

Of the generation that came of age during Latvia’s transition from Soviet occupation to political independence, Kristaps Ģelzis distinguished himself as the most cerebral of that nation’s artists while, paradoxically, anchoring his work in intrinsic properties of base materials, the timelessness of simple forms, and labour-intensive craft. The son and younger brother of renowned architects, Ģelzis resolved to pursue another creative vocation, first studying violin while attending Riga’s 50th Secondary School, then taking preparatory classes for the Latvian Art Academy in lieu of attending the art high school. As a student in the academy’s department of graphic art ...

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1939, in Antwerp.

Painter, engraver, illustrator.

André Goezu attended the academies in Brussels and Antwerp. His output, somewhat Symbolist, belongs to Fantastic Realism.

Brussels (Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Prints Collection)

Rome (Accademia Belga)

Lokeren, 11 March 1995...

French, 20th century, male.

Engraver, draughtsman, illustrator.

Gaston Goor was active between 1925 and 1952. A traditional artist, his realist style played on the effects of light and shade. He created several book covers, notably for Roger Peyrefitte, and also illustrated books, including: Writers and Artists...

American, 19th–20th century, male.

Born 24 February 1836, in Boston; died 29 September 1910, in Prout’s Neck (Maine).

Painter, watercolourist, etcher, wood engraver, draughtsman. Genre and military scenes, landscapes, seascapes.

Realism.

Winslow Homer was brought up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and showed an early interest in art, which was encouraged by his mother, who was an amateur watercolourist. At the age of 19, he went to work for a lithographer in Boston. A few years later Homer was working as a freelance illustrator for ...

Bulgarian, 20th century, male.

Born 1903.

Painter, engraver, illustrator. History painting.

Petrov Ilya taught at the school of fine art in Sofia and worked as an official artist. His compositions, in a Realist style, are filled with figures portraying scenes from history.

Sofia (Nacionalna chudozestvena galerija): ...

Chinese, 20th century, male.

Born 1910, in Jiangsu; died 1982.

Painter, engraver.

Jiang Feng was one of the young artists of the Realist School of the 1930s, whose art was closely associated with the Chinese Communist movement. Political commitment is especially perceptible in their wood engravings, stamped with a profound awareness of the poor conditions of the Chinese masses at the time. Although these works take their inspiration from Soviet Realism, they demonstrate more freedom, invention and vitality than their models. The works of Jiang Feng, in an Expressionist style with black predominating, celebrate political struggle....

American, 20th century, male.

Born 1909, in St Louis; died 1963, in Morristown (New Jersey).

Painter, watercolourist, printmaker. Landscapes, still-lifes.

Social Realism.

Joe Jones's worked as a house painter from the age of 14 and received no formal artistic training. He joined the Communist party in the 1930s and left St Louis where his Social Realist paintings of Midwestern farm labourers and industrial workers were at odds with the conservative status quo. Jones settled in New York where he worked for the Public Works of Art Project. In ...

French, 19th – 20th century, male.

Active then naturalised in England.

Born 8 May 1837, in Dijon; died 8 December 1911, in Watford, near London.

Painter, sculptor, engraver, draughtsman. Portraits, genre scenes.

Realism.

Alphonse Legros was the youngest child of a poor family and his education was so neglected that when, at the age of 11, he was apprenticed to a house painter he still could not read. In 1851 he went to Paris, worked with Cambon on theatre sets, then entered the École Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudron. Legros first exhibited at the Salon de Paris with ...

British, 18th – 19th century, male.

Born 1770; died 1819.

Engraver.

The naturalist and artist John William Lewin settled in Paramatta (New South Wales, Australia), from where he published a number of collections of original coloured prints: Prodromus Entomology (18 plates), Birds of New Holland (22 plates) and ...