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Article

Andrade [D’Andrade], Alfredo (Cesare Reis Freire) de  

Lucília Verdelho da Costa and Sandro Callerio

(b Lisbon, Aug 26, 1839; d Genoa, Nov 30, 1915).

Portuguese painter, architect and restorer, active in Italy. He came from a middle-class family with trading interests in Italy. In 1854 Andrade went to Genoa, and friendships there with such artists as Tammar Luxoro (1824–99) led him to study painting with Alexandre Calame and later to study architecture at the Accademia Ligustica di Belle Arti. He travelled widely, and in Italy he came into contact with Antonio Fontanesi and Carlo Pittura (1835/6–91), with whom he became one of the most active painters of the Scuola di Rivara. According to Telamaro Signorini, Andrade was among the painters who frequented the Caffè Michelangiolo in Florence. The influence of the macchiaioli painters is also evident from 1863 in his paintings, especially in Return from the Woods at Dusk (1869; Genoa, Mus. Accad. Ligustica B.A.)

Lucília Verdelho da Costa

Andrade’s work represents a transition from the Romantic school of Calame to the Naturalism of the Barbizon school. His landscapes show careful observation of nature. The locations in northern Italy seem to have been chosen for their melancholy and serenity, as in the landscapes of Fontanesi. Andrade’s pastoral scenes at dawn or dusk are seen through morning mists or against sunsets, or they depict uninhabited countryside. Most of these works, for example ...

Article

Benrath, Frédéric  

French, 20th century, male.

Born 1930, in Chatou.

Painter (including gouache).

Nuagisme.

Gérard studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Toulon from 1949 to 1952, and travelled to Germany the following year, where he was inspired by the Romanticism of Schloss Benrath (near Düsseldorf); his pseudonym combines the castle's name with Nietzsche's first name, Friedrich. He lives and works in Paris....

Article

Boberg, (Gustaf) Ferdinand  

(b Falun, April 11, 1860; d Stockholm, May 7, 1946).

Swedish architect, draughtsman and painter. After studying at the Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan and the Kungliga Akademien för de fria Konsterna (1878–84), with his artist-wife Anna Boberg (b 1864) he made extensive journeys in Italy, France, Spain and the rest of the Mediterranean region, also visiting Britain. Early on he was impressed by the work of H. H. Richardson, and this was reinforced by his visit to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893) and to the studio of Louis Sullivan. Boberg’s highly personal style amalgamated these American influences with impressions from Italy, Spain and North Africa, and his ornamentation in particular is connected both to Sullivan and to the Moorish and Byzantine. Gävle Fire Station (1890) shows clearly the Richardsonian use of the Romanesque with round-arched doorways in heavy granite, picturesque asymmetry and colonette motifs. Industrial buildings for the Stockholm Gas and Electricity Works in the 1890s demonstrate Boberg’s effective use of colourful brick and stone. The surviving portal of an electricity station (destr.) in central Stockholm is decorated by ornamentation of electric light-bulbs with a Sullivanesque sharpness, and postal motifs of a similar nature adorn the Central Post Office (...

Article

Calì, Giuseppe  

Mario Buhagiar

(b Valletta, Aug 14, 1846; d Valletta, March 1, 1930).

Maltese painter. He was the nephew of Antonio Calì (1788–1866) and the cousin of Beniamino Calì (b 1832), both of whom achieved fame as sculptors in Naples in the 19th century. Because of unrest in Italy during the Risorgimento (1796–1870), his parents moved to Malta shortly before his birth. In 1863 he studied in Naples at the Accademia di Belle Arti e Liceo Artistico under Giuseppe Mancinelli (1813–75) and then in the studio of Domenico Morelli, whose dynamic and sensuous work made a lasting impression on him. Another important formative influence was the work of Delacroix, which inspired Calì’s early Death of Dragut (1867; Valletta, Fort St Elmo, War Mus.). This painting, remarkable for its superb colours and vigour, made Calì Malta’s most popular artist. He was extremely versatile and prodigiously prolific, painting in a Romantic style. His output ranges from easel paintings and altarpieces to large-scale decorations for church vaults. His vast oeuvre is uneven in quality and some of his works are spoiled by a sickly morbidity, although he was an excellent draughtsman. His best works are boldly and freely rendered with an exciting exuberant spontaneity. He is best known for the huge ceiling painting of the ...

Article

Cesetti, Giuseppe  

Italian, 20th century, male.

Born 1902, in Tuscania (Tuscany); died 1990.

Painter. Portraits, landscapes, still-lifes, flowers.

Cesetti was self-taught. His narrative style derived from a decorative romanticism. He taught at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice.

Milan, 10 Dec 1970...

Article

Debschitz, Wilhelm von  

A. Ziffer

(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 ...

Article

Fjaestad, Gustaf  

Torsten Gunnarsson

(Edolf)

(b Stockholm, Dec 22, 1868; d Arvika, July 7, 1948).

Swedish painter, printmaker and designer. He trained at the Royal Academy of Arts in Stockholm in 1891–2. Subsequently he studied with Bruno Liljefors and Carl Larsson, assisting them with such decorative schemes as Larsson’s fresco at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (1896). In 1897 he moved to the Arvika district of Värmland, where he worked together with his wife, Maja (1873–1961), as painter, craftsman and cabinetmaker, and gathered around him a circle of artists who became known as the Racken group. He first achieved public recognition at the Stockholm Artists Union exhibition in 1898 with some of his snow landscapes, which were an immediate popular success and were often reproduced. He had his first one-man exhibition in Stockholm in 1908, and his paintings were well received when exhibited in Berlin in 1914 and in London in 1927.

Fjaestad’s speciality was the winter landscape. The approach he adopted in such early works as ...

Article

Gallen-Kallela, Akseli  

Sixten Ringbom

(Valdemar) [Gallén, Axel until 1904]

(b Pori [Swed. Björneborg], Finland, April 26, 1865; d Stockholm, March 7, 1931).

Finnish painter, graphic artist and designer. He learnt the elements of drawing and painting in Helsinki at the School of the Finnish Arts Society and the studio of the painter Adolf von Becker (1831–1909).

His first significant painting, The Boy and the Crow (1884; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.), shows his ambition to keep abreast of developments in Naturalism, a style introduced to him through the works of young Finnish and Scandinavian painters in Paris. In the autumn of 1884 he arrived in Paris, where he attended the Académie Julian and the studio of Fernand Cormon. In 1885 he completed his oil painting Old Woman with a Cat (Turku, A. Mus.), a veristic study of poverty and deprivation. Gallén’s single-figure compositions of this period followed a formula exploited by Jean-François Millet, Jules Breton and Jules Bastien-Lepage. In these seemingly static images, the life story of the protagonist was suggested through significant attributes, physiognomic elaboration and background details....

Article

Gesellius, Lindgren, Saarinen  

Pekka Korvenmaa

Finnish architectural partnership formed in 1896 by Herman Gesellius (1874–1916), Armas Lindgren and Eliel Saarinen (see Saarinen, (Gottlieb) Eliel), the year before they graduated from the Polytekniska Institutet in Helsinki. It dissolved in 1907, although Lindgren left the office in 1905. National and international recognition came in 1900, when they designed the Finnish pavilion for the Exposition Universelle in Paris, having won the competition for its design in 1898. The design linked a number of international influences as well as particularly Finnish elements (motifs such as bears, squirrels and pine cones) and forms from Art Nouveau. It also included neo-Romanesque elements reminiscent of the H. H. Richardson school in the USA. The interior of the pavilion’s cupola was decorated with paintings by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The overall effect was of an Arts and Crafts ambience. It was one of the first examples of the architecture of ...

Article

Halonen, Pekka  

Aimo Reitala

(b Lapinlahti, Sept 23, 1865; d Tuusula [Swed. Tusby], Dec 1, 1933).

Finnish painter. He was born into an artistic peasant family; his cousin was the sculptor Eemil Halonen (1875–1950). Pekka received his initial training at the Finnish Arts Association’s School of Drawing in Helsinki (1886–90). Over the next two years he worked in Paris at the Académie Julian, and his work was first exhibited in 1891. Halonen’s themes were the Finnish landscape and people, and his artistic approach was always rooted in Realism. The Mowers (1891; priv. col., see Lindström, p. 108) is an important example of his Realist plein-air painting, which was tinged with Jean-François Millet’s brand of idealization, while The Shortcut (1892; Helsinki, Athenaeum A. Mus.) is a sombre study of the landscape of eastern Finland. Halonen spent the years 1893–4 in Paris as a pupil of Paul Gauguin; his interest in Symbolism was short-lived, but Gauguin’s decorative Synthetism, as well as Japanese woodcuts, made a lasting impression on his work, in particular on his later portrayals of Finnish landscape....

Article

Heinicke, Georg Karl  

German, 20th century, male.

Born 15 November 1888, in Bautzen (Saxony).

Painter, engraver. Landscapes.

Georg Karl Heinicke is noted for his landscapes, which are characterised by strong evocative power and violent romanticism.

Article

Hoeydonck, Patrick van  

Belgian, 20th century, male.

Born 1959, in Merksem; died 1984.

Sculptor.

Van Hoeydonck attended the art academy in Mechelen. He produced classical work which is not without a certain romanticism.

Article

Kohler-Chevalier, Walter  

Swiss, 20th century, male.

Born 1941, in Zofingen.

Draughtsman.

Walter Kohler-Chevalier's drawings have a very distinctive atmosphere that is both oppressive, in that death always seems to be present, and quaint, due to his romanticism. He makes use of the scumbling technique. He has exhibited mainly in Germany, including in Berlin (...

Article

Kreuger, Nils (Edvard)  

Torsten Gunnarsson

(b Kalmar, Oct 11, 1858; d Stockholm, May 11, 1930).

Swedish painter, draughtsman and illustrator. From 1874 he studied at the Konstakademi in Stockholm, where he soon became a friend of Richard Bergh and Karl Nordström, both of whom were later prominent exponents of the more advanced Swedish painting of the 1880s and 1890s. After being forced to interrupt his studies because of illness, Kreuger trained from 1878 at the art school of Edvard Perséus (1841–90) in Stockholm before he travelled to Paris, where he stayed for the most part until 1887. He made his début at the Paris Salon in 1882, and he also resided in the artists’ colony in Grez-sur-Loing. During this period he painted such works as Old Country House (1887; Stockholm, Nmus.) with a free brushwork and sense of light that owed much to Jules Bastien-Lepage. In 1885 Kreuger was active in organizing the Opponenterna, a protest movement led by Ernst Josephson against the conservative establishment of the Konstakademi in Stockholm, and the following year he helped to found the ...

Article

Lidval’, Fyodor  

S. G. Fyodorov and B. M. Kirikov

(Ivanovich) [Lidval, Johann-Friedrich]

(b St Petersburg, June 1, 1870; d Stockholm, March 14, 1945).

Swedish architect, active in Russia. He studied at the Academy of Arts, St Petersburg, from 1890 to 1896, where he spent his final years in the studio of Leonty Benois. He subsequently established a reputation as one of the most important architects in St Petersburg in the early 20th century. In his early works there he created an original version of northern European Art Nouveau (Rus. modern), related to Swedish and Finnish National Romantic architecture but distinguished by its strict restraint and elegant forms. In the block of flats on Kamennoostrovsky Prospect 1–3 that belonged to his mother (1899–1904), he used a deep cour d’honneur to form a spacious nucleus to the well-equipped and comfortable complex. The sophisticated plastic quality of the buildings, which are of various heights, the free design and textural variety of the façades and the stylized motifs of flora and fauna all distinguish this as northern ...

Article

Lönn, Wivi  

Paula Kivinen

(b Tampere, May 20, 1872; d Helsinki, Dec 27, 1966).

Finnish architect. She qualified as an architect in 1896, and in 1898 she travelled on a scholarship in central Europe, England and Scotland studying stone and brick construction, as well as school architecture. Lönn was based in Tampere between 1898 and 1911. Her first projects were houses and schools in various parts of Finland—for which she adapted the innovations she had seen in Britain. The Tampere Central Fire Station (1908), her best building, is still in use: its picturesque, loose massing reflects a ground-plan that enhances the building’s efficiency. It also suits the castle-like character lent by such details as the turrets, characteristic of National Romanticism in Finland—of which this station is a good example. She was in Jyväskylä from 1911 to 1918 and was invited to design buildings for Johannes Parviainen Factories Ltd in Säynätsalo. She in fact designed them all. Estonia Theatre in Tallinn (1913...

Article

Minton, (Francis) John  

Virginia Button

(b Cambridge, Dec 25, 1917; d London, Jan 20, 1957).

English painter and illustrator. He attended St John’s Wood School of Art from 1935 to 1938. A celebrity of London’s bohemia and a key figure of Neo-Romanticism in the 1940s, he lived and worked with most of the younger generation Neo-Romantics including Michael Ayrton (1921–76), Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde and Keith Vaughan. Invalided out of the army in 1943, he devoted himself to art, producing work for seven one-man shows between 1945 and 1956.

Minton’s eclectic style combined elements of French and British Neo-Romanticism. His main theme, partly homoerotic, was the young male figure in emotionally charged settings. Five phases in his work have been identified, ranging from landscapes reminiscent of those of Samuel Palmer, for example Recollections of Wales (1944; Brit. Council; for illustration see Neo-Romanticism), to scenes of urban decay, such as Rotherhithe from Wapping (1946; Southampton, C.A.G.). In the post-war years he was attracted to exotic places in search of new subjects....

Article

Munthe, Gerhard  

Vidar Poulsson

(Peter Frantz Wilhelm)

(b Skanshagen at Elverum, July 19, 1849; d Baerum, Jan 15, 1929).

Norwegian painter and designer. He trained as a landscape painter at the art school in Christiania (after 1877 Kristiania, now Oslo) run by J. F. Eckersberg and his followers from 1870 to 1874. He travelled widely throughout his career but was most attracted to eastern Norway, where he had been born. His first ambition was to paint in a realistic style that would also accommodate impulses from fantasy and literature. During the winters of 1874–5 and 1875–6 he visited his relative the painter Ludvig Munthe at Düsseldorf and was impressed by his work. An Autumn Landscape (1876; Bergen, Meyers Saml.) was Gerhard Munthe’s first major painting. During a long stay at Munich (1877–82) he studied the Old Masters as well as contemporary art. He painted about 70 oils, mainly dark in tone but quite varied in content. They are largely based on impressions of the coastal towns or interior of Norway rather than being inspired by German motifs. ...

Article

Myslbek, Josef Vaclav  

Czech, 19th – 20th century, male.

Born 20 June 1848, in Prague; died 1922, in Prague.

Sculptor.

Josef Vaclav Myslbek was Karel Myslbek's father and was a representative of Czech Romanticism. There are many of his sculptures in Prague, notably the equestrian statue in Wenceslas Square, and other Bohemian towns....

Article

Nordström, Karl  

Göran Söderlund

(Fredrik)

(b Tjörn, July 11, 1855; d Drottningholm, Aug 16, 1923).

Swedish painter. In 1875 he went to Stockholm, where he studied at the Konstakademi and at the art school of Edvard Perséus (1841–90). At the former, he met the painters Richard Bergh and Nils Kreuger, who became his lifelong friends. He spent his formative years in France (1880–86) as a member of the Scandinavian artists’ colonies in Paris and Grèz-sur-Loing. Having been attracted to Paris by the ideals of French Naturalism, he visited the Seventh Impressionist Exhibition (1882), which had an effect on his painting of this period (e.g. the Old Bridge at Grèz, 1882; Stockholm, Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde). He spent most of his time in Grèz, dedicating himself to plein-air painting.

Nordström shared the radical views of his colleagues in exile and together they formed the protest movement Opponenterna. Led by the Swedish painter Ernst Josephson, they revolted against the conservatism of the Konstakademi in Stockholm and demanded its reorganization. In ...