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(b Paris, June 1, 1855; d Paris, April 4, 1926).

French critic, writer and administrator. Although his formal education stopped short of a lycée degree, in his youth he steeped himself in the positivist, socialist and Romantic currents of the day. In the early 1880s he met his mentors: Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), who preached evolutionary, socialist politics; and Emile Zola and Edmond de Goncourt, who inculcated in him their Naturalist literary theories. Geffroy also formed close friendships with Claude Monet, Auguste Rodin, J.-F. Raffaëlli, Félix Bracquemond and Eugène Carrière, all of whom helped to shape his aesthetic views.

As a journalist covering art, literature and politics from the 1880s to about 1907, Geffroy was an important witness to the cultural life of the early Third Republic. His chief endeavour was the art criticism that he wrote, in the 1880s, for Clemenceau’s newspaper La Justice and, from 1893, for Le Journal. About a third of his output for these and other periodicals was collected in ...

(b Oporto, Nov 24, 1836; d Lisbon, Sept 27, 1915).

Portuguese writer and critic. His literary career began in 1870 with the publication of the periodical, As farpas, on which, until 1872, he collaborated with the writer José Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845–1900), through whom he discovered the new theories of Realism and Naturalism. According to Ramalho Ortigão, art should try to reproduce, with feeling, the truth presented in nature. Eventually, however, he rejected the more radical ideas of Courbet and Zola and espoused a sincere love only for the Naturalism of the Barbizon school. This latter form was introduced into Portugal by António Silva Porto, whose aesthetic programme was associated with Ramalho Ortigão’s work, and both were linked with the Grupo do Leão, founded in 1881. Involved in pure, simple naturalism, Ramalho Ortigão was unable to resolve the contradiction between that and his subjective delight in Dutch painting, which he masterfully described in A Holanda (...

(b Bebri farmstead, near Saldus, March 18, 1866; d Helsinki, Dec 26, 1916).

Latvian painter, graphic designer, writer, critic and teacher. He was the son of a country blacksmith and at the age of sixteen moved to Riga, where he spent four years as a painter and decorator. He then worked as an extra in the Riga Latvian Society Theatre and briefly attended drawing classes at the German Trade School before entering the St Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1888. He studied under Vladimir Makovsky and in 1894 was made an artist of the first degree for Leaving Church: After the Service (Riga, Latv. Mus. F.A.), a realist depiction of the inequalities of country life and the hypocrisy of church-goers who ignore the beggars outside the church gates. The scene represented is one from his native region, a source that he was to exploit extensively and variously. In the ensuing years he utilized motifs from the landscape, mythology and everyday life of Latvia as, coming into contact with developments abroad, he experimented with his approach. Thus, ...