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(b London, Nov 28, 1757; d London, Aug 12, 1827).

English printmaker, painter and poet. His reputation as a visual artist increased during the 20th century to the extent that his art is as well known as his poetry (see fig.). Yet in his own mind Blake never completely separated the two, and his most original work is to be found in hand-printed books of prophecy, which developed a personal mythology of limitless intellectual ambition. In these books, text and design are completely integrated in what he called ‘illuminated’ printing. He also made many pen and watercolour drawings, prints in various media and a small number of tempera paintings, but even in these his broader aims were primarily theological and philosophical: he saw the arts in all their forms as offering insights into the metaphysical world and therefore potentially redemptive of a humanity he believed to have fallen into materialism and doubt.

(b Vercelli, Piedmont, March 11, 1806; d Dijon, March 5, 1867).

French painter, illustrator, set designer and poet. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Guillaume Lethière from 1821. The Punishment of Mazeppa (1827; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.), inspired by the scene from Byron’s poem, in which Mazeppa is tied to the back of a wildly stampeding horse, is his most important early painting and one of the key images of the Romantic movement.

Early in his career Boulanger became friendly with Eugène and Achille Devéria. Through them he met Victor Hugo, who became his ardent supporter and the source of many of his most typical works. Among Boulanger’s illustrations were those for Hugo’s Odes et ballades (1829), Les Orientales (1829), Les Fantômes (1829) and Notre-Dame de Paris (1844). Boulanger interpreted the macabre and romantic quality of Hugo’s texts with an imaginative power and freedom that anticipated Redon (e.g. ‘...

[Fidelio] (Antonovich)

(b Milan, Dec 15, 1801; d St Petersburg, Sept 11, 1875).

Russian painter, etcher, teacher and museum director of Italian birth. He was the son of the Swiss artist Antonio Baroffi Bruni (1767–1825), who moved to Russia with his family in 1807, taking the name Anton Osipovich Bruni. In 1809 he became a pupil at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he studied under Aleksey Yegorov (1776–1851), Andrey Ivanov (1776–1848) and Vasily Shebuyev and graduated in 1818. Between 1819 and 1836 he lived in Italy, principally in Rome, where he perfected his skills by copying works by the Old Masters. He also painted portraits in order to earn a living. In his best-known portrait of this time, Princess Zinaida Volkonskaya in the Costume of Tancred (c. 1820; St Petersburg, Rus. Mus.), the sitter’s fantastical, theatrical knight’s costume and her expression of heartfelt languor and radiant sadness are characteristic of Romantic portraiture. In 1824...

(b Lyon, 1798; d Paris, June 16, 1838).

French painter, designer and interior decorator. Throughout his career he was an advocate of the importance of art and design for industry and manufacture. In 1830 he was appointed adviser to the Sèvres Porcelain Factory by the director Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847). There Chenavard made cartoons for stained-glass windows, a stoneware ‘Vase de la Renaissance’ shown at the 1833 Sèvres exhibition and designs for the Duc d’Orléans (future King Louis-Philippe), such as a silver-gilt ewer made by M. Durant and shown at the 1834 Paris Exposition Universelle. Chenavard exhibited designs at the Paris Salons of 1827, 1831, 1833 and 1834, among them his Gothic-style designs, in collaboration with Achille Mascret, for the decoration of the chapel at the château of Eu, and his sketches for the restoration of the Théâtre Français and Opéra Comique in Paris. Material by Chenavard is preserved in the Musée National de Céramique at Sèvres and the ...

(b Bolton-le-Moor, Lancs, Feb 1, 1801; d Catskill, NY, or 11, 12).

American painter and poet of English birth. Cole was the leading figure in American landscape painting during the first half of the 19th century and had a significant influence on the painters of the Hudson River school, among them Jasper Cropsey, Asher B. Durand and Frederic Church (Cole’s only student). In the 1850s these painters revived the moralizing narrative style of landscape in which Cole had worked during the 1830s. From the 1850s the expressive, Romantic landscape manner of Cole was eclipsed by a more direct and objective rendering of nature, yet his position at the beginning of an American landscape tradition remained unchallenged (for an example of his work, see View on the Catskill—Early Autumn, 1836–37; New York, Met.).

He spent his first 17 years in Lancashire. Industrialized since the 18th century, Lancashire provided a stark contrast to the wilderness Cole encountered when he followed his family to Steubenville, OH, via Philadelphia, in ...

(b Bordeaux, July 16, 1804; d Paris, Feb 18, 1868).

French painter, illustrator and writer. His early training was as a theatrical scene painter and a designer of lithographic illustrations. In Bordeaux he studied with Pierre Lacour (ii) (1778–1859) and worked with Thomas Olivier (1772–1839), chief scene designer at the Grand-Théâtre. He subsequently studied in Paris in the studio of the landscape and history painter Julien-Michel Gué (1789–1843) and worked for the decorators of the Théâtre Italien.

From 1827 Dauzats provided lithographic designs for Isidore-Justin-Séverin Taylor’s series Voyages pittoresques et romantiques dans l’ancienne France (1820–78). He travelled in the French provinces, particularly Champagne, Dauphiné and Languedoc, often sketching the medieval monuments that had come into vogue during the Romantic period.

Dauzats also collaborated on lithographs for many other publications, including Taylor’s Voyage en Orient. For this last project Dauzats travelled to Egypt, Syria, Palestine and Turkey in 1830, a trip that he described in his book ...

(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 ...

(b Newburgh, NY, Oct 31, 1815; d Hudson River, NY, July 28, 1852).

American writer, horticulturist, landscape gardener and architect. From the age of seven he was trained in the family nursery garden by his elder brother Charles Downing (1802–85), an experimental horticulturist. Before he was 15, Downing came under the influence of André Parmentier (1780–1830), a Dutch-trained landscape gardener, and he studied the 700-acre estate that Parmentier had landscaped in the English manner at Hyde Park, NY. Downing was also influenced by the mineralogist Baron Alois von Lederer (1773–1842) and the landscape painter Raphael Hoyle (1804–38). In 1834 Downing’s first article, ‘Ornamental Trees’, appeared in journals in Boston, MA, and France. His article ‘The Fitness of Different Styles of Architecture for Country Residences’ (1836) was the first important discussion of the topic in America. He expressed enthusiasm for a variety of styles and insisted they must be used in appropriate settings. His ...

(b Paris, March 20, 1808; d Chaville, Seine-et-Oise, July 14, 1888).

French sculptor, painter, etcher, architect and writer. The son of a decorative sculptor, he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1824 as a pupil of Charles Dupaty (1771–1825), moving in 1825 to the studio of James Pradier. Ingres also took an interest in his education, and Etex’s gratitude towards him and Pradier was later expressed in projects for monuments to them (that to Pradier not executed, that in bronze to Ingres erected Montauban, Promenade des Carmes, 1868–71).

Etex failed three times to win the Prix de Rome, but in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1830 his Republican sympathies gained him a government scholarship that enabled him to spend two years in Rome. There he sculpted the intensely tragic group Cain and his Children Cursed by God, the plaster version of which (Paris, Hôp. Salpêtrière) was one of the great successes of the 1833 Paris Salon. During this period Etex asserted the Republican views that were to earn him the distrust of many of his fellow artists and of the establishment but also gain him the support of the influential critic and politician Adolphe Thiers. He behaved in Romantic fashion as a misunderstood artist, but nevertheless displayed a remarkable tenacity in forwarding his pet projects, including, for instance, schemes for sculptures representing ...

(b Frankfurt am Main, Aug 28, 1749; d Weimar, March 22, 1832).

German writer, statesman, scientist, historian and theorist. By virtue of his prodigious literary output, his writings on art (notably in collaboration with Friedrich Schiller), his patronage as chief minister of Weimar, the extraordinary variety of his interests, and his sheer longevity, he had a profound influence on European culture.

Goethe began writing in the late 1760s, when the Romantic reaction against Neo-classicism had already started. The Rococo view of the Classical heritage, which stressed the formal elegance and rationality of the Greeks, was being dismantled by such writers as Johann Gottfried Herder, Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, all of whom influenced Goethe. Herder’s study of folk art, Homer and the Bible concurred with Goethe’s celebration of Shakespeare—in Rede zum Shäkespears Tag (1771)—and of Gothic art—in Von deutscher Baukunst (1772)—in acknowledging the role of passion and daemonic energy in art. These elements, it was claimed, were also present in Classical art; this contrasted with the Neo-classical emphasis on its rationality. This period of Goethe’s life produced such characteristically Romantic poems as ...

(b Aix-en-Provence, Dec 17, 1775; d Malvalat, Nov 21, 1849).

French painter and museum official. The son of a master mason, he revealed an early talent for drawing in his copies of his father’s collection of prints after François Boucher and Vernet family, §1. After studying with an unidentified Italian landscape painter, he became a pupil of Jean-Antoine Constantin at the free drawing academy in Aix-en-Provence. One of his fellow pupils was Auguste de Forbin, the painter and future Director-General of the Musées Royaux. In 1793 Granet left Aix with the local Société Populaire to assist in the siege of Toulon. He worked as a draughtsman with the artillery battery; his autobiography provides a vivid account of his experiences during the siege and destruction of the town. On a subsequent tour of duty he was employed to paint republican motifs on ships in the naval base at Toulon.

Granet made his first journey to Paris in 1796. He studied in the Louvre, where he was encouraged by Fragonard, and in his memoirs he recorded his admiration for works of the Dutch and Flemish schools, mentioning in particular how he copied the ...

(b Mohrungen, Aug 25, 1744; d Weimar, Dec 18, 1803).

German theorist. He was the most consistent and influential critic of German Enlightenment philosophy and aesthetic theory. His impeccable Enlightenment pedigree as a student of Kant at the University of Königsberg in the early 1760s and his acquaintance with Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert during his visit to Paris in 1769 were combined with a friendship and sympathy for the person and works of Johann Georg Hamann and other professed opponents of the Enlightenment. His insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the Enlightenment enabled him to offer an alternative theoretical basis for the work of the younger Sturm und Drang writers of the 1770s, headed by Goethe. In 1776 he was appointed at Goethe’s behest to the post of General Superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Weimar, where he remained until his death.

Although Herder published in several fields, ranging from the philosophy of language and epistemology to aesthetics and theology, all he wrote revolved around a critique of the ahistorical character of the German Enlightenment. His thought combines two main elements: the recognition that reason is grounded in sentiment, a position later described as ‘metacritical’; and the perception that the grounding of reason is the product of a specific history, and cannot be understood apart from it....

(b Lyon, 1795; d Vernon, 1873).

French art critic and journalist. His career began in 1818 with a pamphlet, Mes visites au Musée Royal du Luxembourg (Paris, 1818), in which he divided the history of painting in France into three ages: the golden age of Poussin and Claude, the period of decadence of Boucher and Carle Vanloo, and the era of revival of Joseph-Marie Vien and David. His most significant contributions to art criticism were his works on the Paris Salons, written between 1819 and 1833, particularly those of 1824 and 1827, which provide useful insight into the debate between classicism and Romanticism that emerged in French painting during the 1820s.

Jal perceived decadence in the Neo-classical paintings at the Salon of 1824, which he criticized for over-emphasis on precise rendering and excessive use of academic form. He defined Romanticism as a school of painting disdaining style and correctness, and he accused Delacroix of careless drawing, strident colour and a lack of decorum in the ...

(b Wormsley Grange, Hereford & Worcs, Feb 11, 1751; d London, April 23, 1824).

English writer, connoisseur and collector (see fig.). He was the son of a clergyman from a wealthy dynasty of iron-masters. His father died in 1764, and shortly afterwards he inherited a considerable estate from his uncle, which ensured his financial independence. He was a sickly child and was educated at home, becoming well versed in Classical history, Latin and Greek. In 1772 he travelled in France and Italy and was abroad again in 1776, touring Switzerland with the landscape painter John Robert Cozens. The following year he travelled to Sicily on an archaeological expedition taking with him the painters Philipp Hackert and his pupil, the amateur artist Charles Gore (1729–1807). Knight kept a detailed journal (Weimar, Goethe- & Schiller-Archv) illustrated by his companions and on his return to England commissioned Cozens and Thomas Hearne to paint watercolours (London, BM) from Hackert’s and Gore’s sketches (London, BM). It seems probable that the journal was intended for publication and that the expedition may have had an entrepreneurial aspect, as archaeology was a fashionable subject and the Sicilian sites largely unexplored....

[Thabaud, Hyacinthe-Joseph-Alexandre]

(b La Châtre, Indre, Feb 3, 1785; d Aulnay, nr Paris, Feb 27, 1851).

French writer and critic. He was a pioneer of literary romanticism and an influential literary figure, whose paid work as a government official allowed him to produce novels, verse and essays. He also wrote art criticism, and the Salon of 1817 prompted no less than seven articles to Le Constitutionnel. The first (3 May) gave a general and favourable survey of the exhibition and commended as best the works by Pierre Guérin, Antoine-Jean Gros and Abel de Pujol (1785–1861). In his second article (8 May) he suggested that aspiring artists should emulate the draughtsmanship of Gros and the composition of Guérin. In 1819 an anonymous book entitled Lettres à David sur le salon de 1819 was published, consisting of 34 initialled letters, most, if not all, of which are thought to have been written by Latouche. Their object was to draw attention to Jacques-Louis David, then in self-imposed exile, and to align the young generation of Romantics with the Davidian tradition. The eighth letter is devoted to ...

(b Baccarat, Oct 31, 1763; d Epinal, Feb 11, 1832).

French painter. A pupil of Jean-François Durand (1731–after 1778) in Nancy and later of the miniature painter J.-B. Augustin in Paris (c. 1785–6), he began his career as a porcelain and miniature painter. In the latter capacity he exhibited in the Salon between 1791 and 1800, after which he gave up miniatures in favour of small genre paintings, which he exhibited regularly until 1831. In 1806 he received a Prix d’Encouragement and in 1808 a first-class medal. In 1804, when he showed Woman Playing the Lute (acquired by the Empress Josephine; now Arenenberg, Napoleonmus.), he was hailed by Vivant Denon as a painter of ‘very delicate and very distinguished talent’ and as worthy of comparison with Gerrit Dou, Willem van Mieris and Gerard ter Borch (ii) (Paris, Archv. N., AF. IV 1050). He was highly regarded by Josephine, who bought six paintings from him between 1804 and ...

(b Cambuslang, Lanark [now Strathclyde], April 8, 1783; d London, December 14, 1843).

Scottish garden designer and writer. The son of a farmer, he was first apprenticed to a nurseryman and landscape gardener, moving to London in 1803 to set himself up as a garden designer. That year he published his ‘Hints…[on] Laying Out the Grounds of the Public Squares in London’ in the Literary Journal (ii/12, 31 Dec 1803, cols 739–42), advocating a judicious mixture of deciduous and evergreen plants. He also carried out work for the Duchess of Brunswick at Brunswick House, Blackheath, London, and the following year spent some time in his native Scotland, improving the estates of several aristocratic clients. The same year he exhibited three drawings at the Royal Academy and published his first book, Observations on…Ornamental Plantations. In it he emphasized his adherence to Picturesque principles and those of Uvedale Price in particular. From this time on, and in addition to several forays into architectural design, Loudon’s career as a garden designer was inseparable from his vast publishing enterprises, by which he disseminated his advice and ideas....

(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 ...

(b Paris, Feb 16, 1808; d Paris, Sept 18, 1857).

French critic. In 1831 the originality, perspicacity and learning of his first Salon review secured him a leading position in French art criticism that he retained until his death. The first French writer to devote himself exclusively to art criticism, Planche set out to establish a conscientious and severe critical method. Initially this allowed him to reject the new prolific juste milieu and to be one of the foremost defenders of such Romantic artists as Delacroix. He conceived their art as a ‘bodily struggle with nature and truth’, but from the outset interpreted the idea of nature in a restricted and traditional sense. Much as he praised the boldness, energy and inventiveness of Delacroix, he deplored his incorrect and careless execution. Increasingly he endowed the Academic concept of high finish with implications of scientific exactitude, refusing in its name to allow individual expression, however poetical or dramatic, to take any liberties with visual truth. He maintained that artists should elaborate a distinct, logical and unequivocal language, rather than search for new modes of expression. At the same time Planche became increasingly opposed to the tendencies in the 1830s towards mere careful portrayal of reality; he was the first to use the word ...

(b 1747; d Yazor, Hereford & Worcs, Sept 14, 1829).

English landowner and writer. He was one of the leading promoters of the Picturesque, a quasi-aesthetic theory concerning the codification of types of landscape; this enjoyed a brief popularity in England at the end of the 18th century. In 1794 Price published An Essay on the Picturesque. The book was written to expand and redefine observations on the nature of Picturesque Beauty made during the 1770s and 1780s by the Rev. William Gilpin. In his essay of 1794 Price employed the term Picturesque to describe a category of landscape that evoked sensations that were not contained within the existing polarities of Sublime and Beautiful, established earlier in the century by Edmund Burke (A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful; 1757). According to Price ‘the two opposite qualities of roughness, and of sudden variation, joined to that of irregularity, are the most efficient causes of the picturesque’. Price loved systems and organized objects in nature—trees, animals and dwellings—into tables according to their level of picturesqueness. Thus in his view hovels are more picturesque than cottages, cows more picturesque than horses, idle peasants more picturesque than working ones, and so on. Price’s theories inspired, among other things, Thomas Rowlandson’s satirical illustrations to ...