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[Rosenberg, Lev (Samoylovich)]

(b Grodno, Belarus, May 10, 1866; d Paris, Dec 27, 1924).

Russian painter and stage designer of Belorussian birth. Born into a middle-class Jewish family, Bakst was educated in St Petersburg, attending a gymnasium and then the Academy of Arts (1883–6). He began professional life as a copyist and illustrator of teaching materials but quickly moved on to illustration for popular magazines. His tastes were influenced and horizons enlarged when he met Alexandre Benois and his circle in 1890. Bakst travelled regularly to various countries in Europe and North Africa and studied in Paris with a number of notable artists including the French Orientalist painter Jean-Léon Gérôme at the Académie Julian and, from 1893 to 1896, the Finnish landscape painter Albert Edelfelt. Returning to St Petersburg, he became active as a book designer and fashionable portrait painter. With Benois and Serge Diaghilev he was a founder and leading member of the World of Art (Mir Iskusstva) group in 1898...

(b Brussels, Nov 28, 1854; d Helsinki, 1930).

Belgian painter and potter. He studied painting at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts et Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Brussels from 1878 to 1880. He was a founder-member of XX, Les, a group of 20 avant-garde artists who held annual exhibitions of paintings and decorative arts between 1884 and 1895. Initially Finch painted land- and seascapes in the Impressionist style. In 1887—after Seurat and Camille Pissarro exhibited with Les XX—Finch adopted their divisionist painting technique. An early work in the Neo-Impressionist style, the Race Course at Ostende (1888; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), shows his unfamiliarity with this new technique. His subsequent proficiency is evident in the work English Coast at Dover (1891; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), which also makes use of a border constructed of divisionist dots, a device he borrowed from Seurat. Finch came to excel at rendering the atmospheric effect of the damp climate of the Channel coast—his main subject—through the use of widely spaced dots in related colour values. Finch served as a liaison between ...

(b Loucká u Ředhoště, nr Roudnice nad Labem, Jan 14, 1872; d Častolovice, nr Rychnov nad Kněžnou, Aug 11, 1941).

Bohemian painter. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, in 1887–91 under Maximilián Pirner, in Munich in 1891–3 under Anton Ažbé and Otto Seitz (1846–1912) and again in Prague until 1894 under Václav Brožík. He spent some time studying in Italy (1902 and 1909) and had numerous one-man exhibitions from 1900 onwards. His early work concentrated on the figure, inspired by lyrical plein-air painting, and for a while he was influenced by Art Nouveau and Symbolism (e.g. Spring Fairy-tale, 1898; Prague, N.G.). Having come into contact with the school of Julius Mařák in 1897, Hudeček devoted himself to landscapes, producing a large group of paintings of the village of Okoř. The works of this period approach the lyricism of the Glasgow School (exhibited Prague, 1903) and the sensuous impressionism of his friend Antonín Slavíček. Hudeček gradually renounced melancholy, symbolic colour harmonies and refined techniques, using his brush with greater flourish and accenting light with more striking colours (e.g. ...

(b Brussels, Nov 26, 1865; d Brussels, July 5, 1916).

Belgian painter and decorative artist. He showed a precocious talent, first exhibiting in 1875. His only formal study was at a local school of drawing. Between 1884 and 1886 he showed at the Essor group in Brussels paintings that were based on Dürer and Holbein and closely related to those of Lemmen’s contemporary, Khnopff. When Lemmen became a member of Les XX in 1888 his style developed quickly, influenced principally by French Neo-Impressionism and the English Arts and Crafts Movement. Lemmen adopted the pointillist technique following Seurat’s first showing with Les XX in 1887. His best pointillist canvases include The Carousel (1890–91; priv. col., see Belgian Art, 1880–1914, exh. cat., New York, Brooklyn Mus., 1980, p. 118, fig.) as well as portraits of Julie (1891; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) and Mme Lemmen (1894–5; Paris, Mus. Orsay).

In the early 1890s Lemmen became a leader in the burgeoning decorative arts movement. In ...

(b Banyuls-sur-Mer, Oct 8, 1861; d Perpignan, Sept 24, 1944).

French sculptor, painter, designer and illustrator. He began his career as a painter and tapestry designer, but after c. 1900 devoted himself to three-dimensional work, becoming one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. He concentrated almost exclusively on the nude female figure in the round, consciously wishing to strip form of all literary associations and architectural context. Although inspired by the Classical tradition of Greek and Roman sculpture, his figures have all the elemental sensuousness and dignity associated with the Mediterranean peasant.

Maillol first intended to become a painter and went to Paris in 1881, where he lived in extreme poverty. Three years later the Ecole des Beaux-Arts finally accepted him as a pupil, where he began studies under Alexandre Cabanel. He found the teaching there discouraging and his early painted work was more strongly influenced by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Paul Gauguin, and the Nabis group which he joined around ...

(b Albi, Tarn, Nov 24, 1864; d Château de Malromé, nr Langon, Gironde, Sept 9, 1901).

French painter and printmaker. He is best known for his portrayals of late 19th-century Parisian life, particularly working-class, cabaret, circus, nightclub and brothel scenes (see fig.). He was admired then as he is today for his unsentimental evocations of personalities and social mores. While he belonged to no theoretical school, he is sometimes classified as Post-Impressionist. His greatest contemporary impact was his series of 30 posters (1891–1901), which transformed the aesthetics of poster art.

Many of the defining elements of Toulouse-Lautrec’s life and work came to him at birth. His parents, Comte Alphonse-Charles de Toulouse-Lautrec (...

( Vasil’yevna )

(b Wiesbaden, Jan 31, 1870; d Chêne Bougerie, nr Geneva, Dec 27, 1902).

Russian painter, decorative artist and designer . She was a major Symbolist artist in Russia and played a significant role in the revival of folk traditions in Russian art in the late 19th century. She grew up in Moscow and studied (1885–8) under Yelena Polenova and Vasily Polenov as an external student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Subsequently she joined Yelena Polenova’s group for the study of the historical and archaeological monuments of Moscow and became closely associated with the Abramtsevo group. From 1888 she spent winters in Paris, where she enrolled as a student at the Académie Julian. Her paintings, sometimes consisting of melancholic depictions of decaying mansions in the manner of Viktor Borisov-Musatov, were dominated by decorative landscapes. Always striving to express the synthetic inner vitality of organic life, she concentrated on forest motifs (e.g. The Window and Aspen and Fir Tree (both pokerwork and oil on panel, ...