Search Results

(b Copenhagen, Sept 11, 1743; d Frederiksdal, Copenhagen, June 4, 1809).

Danish painter, designer and architect. His paintings reveal both Neo-classical and Romantic interests and include history paintings as well as literary and mythological works. The variety of his subject-matter reflects his wide learning, a feature further evidenced by the broad range of his creative output. In addition to painting, he produced decorative work, sculpture and furniture designs, as well as being engaged as an architect. Successfully combining both intellectual and imaginative powers, he came to be fully appreciated only in the 1980s.

He studied at the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi in Copenhagen (1764–72), and in 1767 he assisted Johan Edvard Mandelberg (1730–86) in painting the domed hall of the Fredensborg Slot with scenes from the Homeric epic the Iliad. In 1772 he was granted a five-year travelling scholarship from the Kunstakademi to study in Rome. During his Roman sojourn he extensively copied works of art from the period of antiquity up to that of the Carracci family. His friendships with the Danish painter Jens Juel, the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and the Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fuseli placed him among artists who were in the mainstream of a widespread upheaval in European art. In these years Abildgaard developed both Neo-classical and Romantic tastes; his masterpiece of the period is ...

(b Beirut, 1925).

Lebanese painter and writer active in the USA. Daughter of a Greek Christian mother and a Syrian Muslim father, Adnan was educated in Lebanon before going on to study philosophy at the Sorbonne, Harvard, and the University of California, Berkeley. For many years she taught aesthetics at Dominican College, San Rafael, CA; she also lectured and taught at many other colleges and universities. During the 1970s Adnan regularly contributed editorials, essays, and cultural criticism to the Beirut-based publications Al-Safa and L’Orient-Le Jour. In 1978 she published the novel Sitt Marie Rose, which won considerable acclaim for its critical portrayal of cultural and social politics during the early years of the Lebanese Civil War. Adnan published numerous books of poetry, originating in her opposition to the American war in Vietnam and proceeding to encompass topics as diverse as the landscape of Northern California and the geopolitics of the Middle East. Her poetry served as the basis for numerous works of theater and contemporary classical music....

(b Bottrop, Ruhr, March 19, 1888; d New Haven, CT, March 25, 1976).

American painter, printmaker, sculptor, designer, writer and teacher. He worked from 1908 to 1913 as a schoolteacher in Bottrop and from 1913 to 1915 trained as an art teacher at the Königliche Kunstschule in Berlin, where he was exposed to many current art movements and to the work of such Old Masters as Dürer and Holbein. His figurative drawings of the next few years, which he kept hidden and which were discovered only after his death (many now in Orange, CT, Albers Found.), show that he applied these influences to his consistent concern with the simplest and most effective means of communicating his subject; he drew rabbits, schoolgirls and the local landscape in as dispassionate and impersonal a manner as possible. After his studies in Berlin he returned to Bottrop and from 1916 to 1919 began his work as a printmaker at the Kunstgewerbeschule in nearby Essen. In 1919 he went to Munich to study at the Königliche Bayerische Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, where he produced a number of nude drawings and Bavarian landscapes (Orange, CT, Albers Found.)...

(Henry) [Spinky]

(b Charlotte, NC, Nov 29, 1907; d April 27, 1977).

African American painter, sculptor, graphic artist, muralist and educator. In 1913, Charles Alston’s family relocated from North Carolina to New York where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School. In 1929, he attended Columbia College and then Teachers College at Columbia University, where he obtained his MFA in 1931. Alston’s art career began while he was a student, creating illustrations for Opportunity magazine and album covers for jazz musician Duke Ellington.

Alston was a groundbreaking educator and mentor. He directed the Harlem Arts Workshop and then initiated the influential space known simply as “306,” which ran from 1934 to 1938. He taught at the Works Progress Administration’s Harlem Community Art Center and was supervisor of the Harlem Hospital Center murals, leading 35 artists as the first African American project supervisor of the Federal Art Project. His two murals reveal the influence of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957). His artwork ranged from the comic to the abstract, while often including references to African art. During World War II, he worked at the Office of War Information and Public Information, creating cartoons and posters to mobilize the black community in the war effort....

(b Rome,1850; d Rome, July 2, 1881).

Italian painter and art teacher active in Australia. He trained at the Accademia di S Luca, Rome. His conservative style emulates his teacher Alessandro Capalti’s use of drape, column and rhetorical gesture, as seen in Capalti’s portraits at the University of Sydney. On Bishop James Quinn’s advice, Anivitti emigrated to Brisbane in 1871 with the sculptor Achille Simonetti. In 1875 he was appointed first teacher of painting and drawing at the Art Training School of the New South Wales Academy of Art, founded in 1871. Among his 30 recorded pupils were medal winners Frank Mahony (1862–1916), artist for the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, whose drawing of Anivitti is at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and A. J. Fischer, staff artist for the Illustrated Sydney News and Bulletin.

Anivitti’s duties at the Academy included curatorship of a collection of paintings acquired by the Academy with government funds. These paintings became the foundation of the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, whose antecedents were in the Academy....

(b Manchester, Oct 19, 1832; d Abbots Langley, Herts, April 22, 1911).

English painter, designer and administrator of art education. When he left school he embarked on a business career in Manchester. In 1853 he travelled to Paris, where he became a pupil in the studio of Ary Scheffer. The semi-bohemian life that Armstrong led in Paris from 1853 to 1856, with his artist friends E. J. Poynter, T. R. Lamont (1826–98) and Whistler, is described in George Du Maurier’s novel Trilby (1894; the character Taffy is modelled on Armstrong). During the later 1850s Armstrong travelled and painted in Europe and in Algiers; after c. 1860 he settled in London.

Armstrong’s early paintings (e.g. A Street Scene in Manchester, 1861; Manchester, C.A.G.), which were exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution, the British Institution and the Royal Academy, generally treat themes of social deprivation. In the later 1860s Armstrong joined the circle of painters associated with the emergent Aesthetic Movement. He painted bland but harmonious figurative pictures without narrative subject or contemporary references, such as ...

(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 Anum, 1915; d Accra, 2001).

Ghanaian painter, educator, and art historian. One of six siblings, Asihene learned to paint from his father, Emmanuel Victor Asihene, a catechist who had taken classes in sketching and watercolor. One of his sisters, Theodosia Okoh (née Asihene; 1922–2015), was also an artist and won a contest to design the Ghanaian national flag. After completing his primary education at various Presbyterian mission schools, Asihene enrolled at the Presbyterian Training College located in Akroprong-Akwapin, graduating in 1935. Upon graduation, he began teaching art at Accra Teachers College alongside art educator Herbert Vladimir Meyerowitz (1900–1945) and later taught at Achimota Secondary School in the mid-1940s. In 1948 he was accepted into Goldsmiths College at the University of London, where he met Nigerian painter Ben Enwonwu and Ghanaian painter J. C. Okyere. Asihene received a degree in art in 1950, joined the Royal Society of Arts, and returned to his homeland in ...

(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 Paris, 1724; d Paris, April 13, 1806).

French painter, writer and administrator . A pupil 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 (untraced). He was essentially a flower and animal painter; as a successor to Jean-Baptiste Oudry 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 (Auxerre, Mus. A. & Hist.), for which he substituted a Roman Charity (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.) in 1764.

Bachelier exhibited regularly at the Salon from ...

[Shijun]

(b Kyoto, March 3, 1844; d Kyoto, February 20, 1895).

Japanese painter, book illustrator and art educator. Born the fourth son of Yasuda Shirobei, a Kyoto moneylender, the young Bairei was adopted into the Kōno family. In 1852 he began his artistic training under the Maruyama-school painter, Nakajima Raishō (1796–1871). After Raishō’s death, Bairei studied with the Shijō-school master Shiokawa Bunrin (1808–77). He also studied Chinese literature and calligraphy with Confucian scholars. In 1873 his talent was officially recognized when he was included among the painters selected to show at the second Kyoto Exhibition.

In 1878 he and the painter Mochizuki Gyokusen (1834–1913) successfully petitioned the governor of Kyoto Prefecture to establish the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School (Kyōto Fu Gagakkō) in 1880. Bairei was appointed instructor in the Kanō and Tōyō Sesshū styles of ink painting (suibokuga; see Japan §VI 4., (iii)), but in 1881 he resigned his post to open a private art academy. Among his students were ...

(b Paris, July 9, 1764; d Paris, Jan 22, 1846).

French architect, painter, engraver, and teacher. Louis-Pierre Baltard was a pupil of Antoine-François Peyre and began working with Richard Mique in 1784 on the design of the garden of the Petit Trianon. In 1788 he left for Italy, where he painted, drew, and engraved as well as studying antique monuments; he also met Percier and Fontaine there. He was in France again in 1791, where he presented himself primarily as a painter (his début at the Salon was in 1791) and held the position of scenery designer at the Opéra from 1792. In 1793 he became a military engineer and presented various fortification plans. He subsequently obtained a post as professor of architecture when the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris was created in 1796. Under the Consulate, he was the engraver for the publication documenting the Egyptian expedition. Baltard’s architectural career really began under the first Empire, a period when he became the architect of the Panthéon and subsequently of prisons, food depots, and markets in Paris. In ...

(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....

[Hsü Pei-hungJu Peon]

(b Yixing, Jiangsu Province, Jul 19, 1895; d Beijing, Sept 26, 1953).

Chinese painter and art educator. The most acclaimed Western-trained artist in modern China, he influenced the development of 20th-century Chinese painting through his role as art teacher and administrator as well as his painting. Xu Beihong studied painting as a child with his father, a village teacher and painter. After his father’s death, Xu moved to Shanghai, the cultural and commercial center of modern China, in 1915 to support his family. There he earned a living by painting popular pictures of beautiful women for Shenmei Shuguan (the Aesthetic Bookstore), a commercial art company founded by Gao Jianfu, and concurrently enrolled as a student in the French department of Zhendan University. In 1916 his painting of Changjie [Cangjie], the legendary inventor of Chinese characters, won first prize at an art contest of Changsheng Mingzhi University in Shanghai, earning him an invitation from the school founder to live at Hardoon Garden. There he became acquainted with prominent artistic and cultural intellectuals such as as ...

(Mikhailovich)

(b Moscow, June 10, 1925; d Feb 29, 2012).

Russian painter, sculptor, theorist and teacher. He attended the Surikov Institute of Art in Moscow (1942–7), where he completed undergraduate and postgraduate studies; his teachers there were Aristarkh Lentulov, Pavel Kuznetsov and Lev Bruni. He obtained a doctorate in art history and was a specialist in the historiography of Russian art. In 1948 he established an independent studio, which was unique for its time and which provided the base for the New Realist movement, a kind of monumental tachism. Over several years approximately 600 artists and architects passed through the studio. In 1962 he organized one of the first public exhibitions of avant-garde art in Moscow. Displayed at the Central Exhibition Hall (Manezh), it was wildly slandered by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the moment that proved most symptomatic of the end of a period of political thaw. From 1964 artists of the New Realist movement worked at Belyutin’s dacha at Abramtsevo, north of Moscow; unofficial exhibitions of their work were held there annually. In ...

(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 ...

(b Stockholm, March 29, 1828; d Stockholm, Sept 23, 1880).

Swedish painter and teacher. Edvard Bergh abandoned a legal career to enter the Konstakademi in Stockholm in 1852. In 1854 he received the Akademi’s travel scholarship and set out on a three-year study trip to Düsseldorf, Switzerland and Italy. In Düsseldorf he became a pupil of the Norwegian landscape painter Hans Fredrik Gude, whose paintings of dramatic mountainous landscapes and waterfalls, characterized by a careful study of detail and clear contrasts of light, left their impression on Bergh’s early style. Another important influence was that of the Swiss landscape painter Alexandre Calame, whom he met in Geneva. In 1861 Bergh was appointed to direct the recently founded landscape school at the Konstakademi in Stockholm. In 1867 he became a professor there and in this post had a significant influence on the development of Swedish landscape painting.

From the late 1860s Bergh stopped painting Düsseldorf subjects and concentrated on the landscape of central Sweden. Most typical of this period, on which Bergh’s great popularity came to rest, are summer landscapes with birch forests, lakes and grazing cattle, for example ...

(b Salzburg, May 1, 1753; d Prague, June 25, 1829).

Austrian painter, printmaker, draughtsman, illustrator and teacher, active in Bohemia. He was taught by his father, the sculptor and painter Josef Bergler the elder (1718–88), and, during his stay in Italy, by Martin Knoller in Milan and Anton von Maron in Rome. An accomplished portrait painter, he was employed as official painter by bishops and cardinals at Passau and painted a number of altarpieces in Austria and especially in Bohemia. He helped establish the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague (1800), which placed a new emphasis on draughtsmanship, composition and Classical subjects and models. As the first Director of the Academy, Bergler won new academic prestige for art in Bohemia and, for himself, a privileged position in obtaining commissions such as the Curtain at the Estates Theatre (sketches, 1803–4; Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes). He also published albums of engravings intended as models (Compositions and Sketches...

(b Gotha, Dec 27, 1725; d Vienna, March 23, 1806).

German sculptor, painter and architect. He was the son of a court gardener who worked first in Gotha and then in Württemberg. He was originally intended to become an architect; in 1747 Duke Charles-Eugene of Württemberg sent him to train in Paris where, under the influence of painters such as Charles-Joseph Natoire and François Boucher, he turned to painting. The eight-year period of study in Rome that followed prompted Beyer to devote himself to sculpture, as he was impressed by antique works of sculpture and was also influenced by his close contacts with Johann Joachim Winckelmann and his circle. He also served an apprenticeship with Filippo della Valle, one of the main representatives of the Neo-classical tendency in sculpture. In 1759 Beyer returned to Germany, to take part in the decoration of Charles-Eugene’s Neues Schloss in Stuttgart.

In Stuttgart Beyer made an important contribution to the founding and improvement of facilities for the training of artists, notably at the Akademie, and to manufacture in the field of arts and crafts, particularly at the ...