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(b Aarschot, 1728; d Leuven, 1811).

Belgian painter. He was a late imitator of Rubens, and his entire career reflects his unwillingness to come to terms with the Neo-classicism of the late 18th century. At 18 he was in the studio of Balthazar Beschey in Antwerp. There he studied the work of Rubens and the Antwerp school. For the first 20 years of his career Verhagen received few commissions and supported himself with decorative work. His first important painting was the Presentation of the Virgin (Ghent, Mus. S. Kst.), and this large Baroque work brought him commissions (e.g. St Stephen Receiving the Papal Legates, Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). Charles of Lorraine (1712–81) offered to finance Verhagen on a visit to Italy. Verhagen left for Italy in 1771 but found the Neo-classicism prevalent in Rome of little interest. He did, however, produce a few works in this period, for example the Pilgrims to Emmaus (Laxenburg, Altes Schloss). He left Rome in ...

(b Lille, March 9, 1760; d Saint-Saulve, Aug 24, 1822).

French architect and urban planner. He began his architectural education at the Académie des Arts in Lille, completed it at the Académie Royale d’Architecture in Paris and returned to Lille in 1786 to practise architecture. Projects in Lille, Arras and Saint-Omer quickly earned him regional recognition, for example the conversion of the church of St Laurent, Lille, into a ‘Temple de la Raison’ in 1793–4, but he achieved special prominence through a series of plans (1792–5; unexecuted) for the reconstruction of Lille after the French Revolution. The most visionary of these was one for a group of secular monuments comprising a public hall, belfry, baths and a theatre. Their design reflected the taste for large scale and for extensive, flat surfaces, simple geometry and novel formal juxtapositions that was exemplified in contemporary works in Paris by Jacques Gondoin, François-Joseph Belanger and Claude-Nicolas Ledoux—at least some of which Verly may have seen at first hand. Verly left Lille in ...

(b Oporto, May 13, 1765; d Funchal, Madeira, May 2, 1805).

Portuguese painter. He was the son of the painter Domingos Francisco Vieira (d 1804), with whom he attended the Oporto studio of the French artist Jean Pillement. He moved to Lisbon in 1787 to take drawing lessons and two years later left for Rome, on a bursary from a group of mainly British merchants from Oporto. In Rome he studied with Domenico Corvi, became a member of the Accademia di S Luca and in 1791 set up his own studio, receiving the patronage of the Portuguese ambassador, João de Almeida e Mello e Castro, and Alexandre de Sousa Holstein, father of the 1st Duque de Palmela. The canvases he returned to Portugal, for instance St John the Baptist (1791; Oporto, N. Mus. Soares dos Reis) and St Augustine, St Ambrose, St Jerome and St Gregory (1792–3; Faro, Museu Mun.), show the influence of Corvi. At this time Vieira developed a rapid, synthesizing draughtsmanship while copying or drawing from nature, though the invention of figures caused him greater difficulty (sketchbooks, Lisbon, Mus. N. A. Ant.). In Italy he also began to study classical composition, as exemplified in the work of Poussin and the Carracci. His painting was subsequently characterized by the submission of colour to line....

(b Montpellier, June 18, 1716; d Paris, March 27, 1809).

French painter, draughtsman and engraver. He was one of the earliest French painters to work in the Neo-classical style, and although his own work veered uncertainly between that style and the Baroque, Vien was a decisive influence on some of the foremost artists of the heroic phase of Neo-classicism, notably Jacques-Louis David, Jean-François-Pierre Peyron, Joseph-Benoît Suvée and Jean-Baptiste Regnault, all of whom he taught. Both his wife, Marie-Thérèse Reboul (1738–1805), and Joseph-Marie Vien fils (1762–1848) were artists: Marie-Thérèse exhibited at the Salon in 1757–67; Joseph-Marie fils earned his living as a portrait painter and engraver.

After spending his youth in various forms of employment, including work as a painter of faience and as an assistant to the artist Jacques Giral, Vien travelled to Paris and entered the studio of Charles-Joseph Natoire in 1740. Three years later he won the Prix de Rome and in 1744 went to the Académie de France in Rome. His participation in the energetic reappraisal of form, technique and purpose taking place in French art from the mid-1740s onwards is well demonstrated by paintings executed before and during his time in Italy. These include the ...

(b Arnhem, bapt March 5, 1752; d Amsterdam, bur Feb 16, 1802).

Dutch architect . His father, Hendrik (1718–81), who was the brother-in-law of Jacob Otten-Husly, and his uncle Anthony (1720–75) were town carpenters. Anthony’s son Roelof Roelofs (1755–1819) and Leendert moved early to Amsterdam, and Leendert probably trained there at his uncle Husly’s studio. In 1768 he became master mason in Amsterdam. During the years 1772 and 1776 he was involved as a mason in the construction of the town hall of Weesp, which was designed by Husly. He was much influenced by his uncle and also by contemporary professional literature. His own considerable capabilities as an architect can be seen in his design (1779) for the library and the museum room of Teyler’s Institute, Haarlem. The oval hall has two floors and is entirely panelled. The ground-floor employs an order of coupled pilasters into which the doors of arched entrances and cupboards are set. The floors are separated by a circular balcony. On the first floor the entablature runs over panels, between which bookcases and doors are fitted; overdoors feature medallions with heads of philosophers. The light comes in through a rooflight over the high, stuccoed ceiling. Between ...

(b Paris, Dec 30, 1746; d Paris, 3 or Aug 4, 1816).

French painter and draughtsman. He was one of the principal innovators in French art of the 1770s and 1780s, in the field of both Neo-classical subjects and themes from national history. Despite the fact that he worked in a variety of styles, his sense of purpose appears to have been coherent at a time of profound change. His stylistic sources lay in the art of Classical antiquity and such masters as Raphael, the great Bolognese painters of the 17th century and Charles Le Brun; yet he also studied reality in a quasi-documentary way. His work, too often confused with that of Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David or Louis-Léopold Boilly, is of a high standard, even though the completed paintings do not always uphold the promise of energy of his drawings and oil sketches.

He was the son of the miniature painter François-Elie Vincent (1708–90), who was perhaps his first teacher. He then studied in ...

(b Santiago, 1829; d Valparaíso, 1890).

Chilean architect. His father was unknown and his mother a humble laundress who made great efforts in order to educate her son. He began working for a cabinetmaker at the age of 13 and then joined a drawing class for craftsmen at the Instituto Nacional, Santiago. There were few professional architects in Chile at that time, and he was commissioned at the age of 18 to design the Casa de Orates building. Vivaceta Rupio joined the first architecture class of the Frenchman Claude François Brunet-Debaines (1788–1855), who had been contracted by the Chilean government. His fellow pupil Ricardo Brown and he were the first architects to be trained in Chile. As a result of his assiduity and determination, he was selected by Brunet-Debaines to complete outstanding works when the contract expired. Working in the 19th-century neoclassical tradition, with some gestures towards the neo-Gothic, Vivaceta Rupio rebuilt the towers of several Santiago churches and built several private houses and the church and convent of Carmen Alto. He contributed to repairs to the cathedral of Santiago and collaborated with ...

(b Munich, Aug 26, 1802; d Munich, Nov 14, 1848).

Bavarian and Austrian sculptor, son of Franz Jakob Schwanthaler. He first trained with his father and then (1819–22) attended the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, established in Munich in 1808. As a pupil of Albrecht Adam, he first trained as a painter of battle pictures but then turned increasingly to sculpture. After his father’s death he took over his studio, receiving his first official commission in 1824 from Maximilian I Joseph of Bavaria (reg 1806–25), for a cycle of reliefs with scenes from ancient mythology for a table centre. Schwanthaler was appointed a court sculptor, most of his activity being connected with the works of art and buildings commissioned by Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, from 1825. Periods spent by Schwanthaler in Rome in the years 1826–7 and 1832–4 were to have a crucial impact on his further development as a practising artist: in Bertel Thorvaldsen’s studio he saw how an up-to-date large-scale artist’s studio of European renown was run as a business, and he adopted this as a model for his own studio in Munich. There he soon became a much sought-after sculptor, both at court and among the middle classes. At times he had as many as 50 pupils working in his studio. In ...

(Nikiforovich)

(b Novoye Usol’e in Perm’, Oct 27, 1759; d St Petersburg, March 5, 1814).

Russian architect and designer. His mother was a serf on one of the estates of Count Aleksandr Sergeyevich Stroganov, who is generally considered to have been his father, and who certainly took a great interest in his education. Stroganov sent Voronikhin to study painting in Moscow (1777–9), where he is said to have participated in frescoing the refectory vestibule at the Trinity-Sergius Monastery (1778). While in Moscow, he developed an interest in architecture and came to the notice of Vasily Bazhenov and Matvey Kazakov, the two most distinguished Russian architects of the day. At their prompting, Stroganov enrolled Voronikhin in the St Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. In 1786 he was sent abroad and, before leaving Russia, was given his freedom. He travelled to Switzerland and France, where he studied under Charles de Wailly, returning to Russia on the outbreak of the French Revolution.

In St Petersburg, Voronikhin was employed by Count ...

(b Balingen, nr Tübingen, Feb 28, 1762; d Stuttgart, Aug 14, 1852).

German painter. He was one of the leading figures of German Neo-classicism and a precursor of the Nazarenes. From 1781 to 1784 he trained as an artist at the Karlsschule in Stuttgart and worked on his own in Mannheim. In 1785 he went to Paris, where he studied with Jean-Baptiste Regnault until 1792. From either 1792 or 1793 to 1798 he lived in Rome and was influenced by Asmus Jakob Carstens’s strict formal language and tendency to monumentalize. He was also impressed with Classical art and the work of Italian painters of the 13th and 14th centuries. He created his most original works in Rome, among them Job and his Friends (begun 1793 or 1794, completed 1824; Stuttgart, Staatsgal.). His choice of a biblical subject and his flat relief-like space accounts for his subsequent popularity with the Nazarene painters. In 1796 he married Franziska Bandini and converted to Catholicism. In ...

(b Karthaus Prüll, nr Regensburg, April 14, 1839; d Munich, Dec 26, 1881).

German sculptor and painter. He trained at the Munich Akademie der Bildenden Künste, where he soon turned against the basically Neo-classicist attitudes of his teacher Max von Widnmann and turned to naturalism, following the example of Reinhold Begas. After establishing a studio of his own in 1860, he received few commissions for sculpture and turned his hand to genre painting instead. Between 1868 and 1874 he exhibited paintings at the Royal Academy in London. However, he went on to achieve wide recognition through commissions from Ludwig II and from the Munich Akademie, which made him an honorary member in 1872.

Wagmüller is considered the most important Munich representative of naturalistic sculpture; he left a substantial body of work, which displays both a knowledge of antique sculpture and scrupulous attention to living models. Even in his most mature works Wagmüller emphasized the painterly values of light and shade and rich detail, as well as clear formal construction. This combination is exemplified by his own tomb at the cemetery in Old Schwabing, a sarcophagus decorated with sphinxes supporting a seated female figure holding a child. In contrast, the decorative figures in Baroque garb modelled for ...

(b Paris, Nov 9, 1730; d Paris, Nov 2, 1798).

French architect, designer and urban planner. As one of the pre-eminent architects of the second half of the 18th century, he enjoyed an international reputation, and his practice embraced architecture, the decorative arts, urban planning and teaching. His oeuvre is characterized by an eclectic, dramatic personal style informed by the study of antiquity and the architecture of Baroque Rome and Genoa.

The son of a cloth merchant whose family was originally from Amiens, de Wailly began his architectural training in Paris in the offices of Jean-Laurent Legeay and Jacques-François Blondel. He studied at Blondel’s Ecole des Arts from 1748 to 1752, when he won the Prix de Rome of the Académie Royale d’Architecture. De Wailly received permission to share his scholarship to the Académie de France in Rome with his friend Pierre-Louis Moreau-Desproux, who had been placed third in the competition. The two travelled in Italy from the autumn of ...

(b Philadelphia, PA, Sept 4, 1804; d Philadelphia, Oct 30, 1887).

American architect. In 1818 he was apprenticed as a bricklayer to his father, the builder Joseph Walter (1782–1855), who was contracted that year to build William Strickland’s Second Bank of the United States (1819–24) in Philadelphia, one of the earliest examples of Greek Revival architecture in the USA. Although no formal architectural curriculum had been established at this time, Walter’s professional education followed a pattern that later became standard practice. During a six-year apprenticeship he acquainted himself with the operations of Strickland’s office and learnt Euclidian geometry. After becoming a master mason in 1824, he joined his father’s business, took membership in the Bricklayers’ Company and enrolled in the ‘Drawing School’ at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, under the direction of John Haviland. After four years studying mathematics, physics, draughtsmanship and other subjects related to building, as well as landscape painting in watercolour, he entered Strickland’s office as a draughtsman in ...

(b Tiverton, RI, Aug 5, 1783; d Providence, Nov 16, 1860).

American architect. Born into a family of builders, he was the first individual in Rhode Island to make the transition from architect–builder to architect. His move in 1800 to Bristol, RI, where he worked as a carpenter with his brothers, was timely: under the mercantile leadership of the De Wolf family, Bristol experienced an economic boom based on shipping and the illegal slave trade. Warren designed four large, elaborate houses for that family between 1808 and 1840; the two early ones, Hey Bonnie Hall (1808; destr.) and Linden Place (1810), gave the talented young designer an early opportunity to deal with ambitious commissions for sophisticated patrons.

By 1827, after a few years in Charleston, SC, Warren was in Providence, RI, where he was associated with Tallman & Bucklin. Warren and James C. Bucklin introduced the Greek Revival to Rhode Island with their monumental Providence Arcade (1828...

(b Karlsruhe, Nov 29, 1766; d Karlsruhe, March 1, 1826).

German architect, urban planner, writer and teacher . He was one of the most important architects consistently to employ strict Neo-classical tenets in the context of urban planning. As city architect of Karlsruhe , Weinbrenner shaped the architectural image of the enlarged city, and his ideas came to influence all public architecture in the district of Baden. However, the persistence with which he clung to the architectural idiom he had introduced earned him the harsh criticism of the younger generation.

Weinbrenner learnt carpentry in his father’s workshop and also attended craft school and drawing classes. Due to the lack of an adequate teacher in Baden, he studied in Switzerland (1788–90), Vienna and Dresden. He was also influenced and greatly inspired by a visit to Berlin (1791–2), especially by the work of Carl Gotthard Langhans and Hans Christian Genelli. While in Berlin he also produced a design for a Protestant church for Karlsruhe, his first piece of independent work in the Neo-Classical style. A five-year stay in Rome (...

[Ulrik]

(b Stockholm, Feb 19, 1751; d Chester, DE, Oct 5, 1811).

Swedish painter, active also in France, Spain and the USA. He was trained in sculpture and painting at the Stockholm Academy and was a student of Joseph-Marie Vien in Paris (1772–5) and Rome (1775–9). In 1781 he settled in Paris, painting Ariadne on the Shore of Naxos (1783; Stockholm, Nmus.), a meticulously executed Neo-classical work. He became a member of the French Academy in 1784 and First Painter to Gustavus III of Sweden. The latter commissioned him in 1784 to paint the massive Marie Antoinette and her two Children Walking in the Trianon Gardens (Stockholm, Nmus.). Wertmüller’s most interesting work, Danaë and the Shower of Gold (1787; Stockholm, Nmus.), a masterpiece of mythological portrayal, is the foremost example of Swedish Neo-classical painting.

A lack of portrait commissions in Paris prompted Wertmüller in 1788 to go and work for wealthy merchants in Bordeaux, Madrid and Cadiz. His career as a portrait painter proceeded successfully; his portraits display an unsentimental and cool, smooth style. In ...

(b Springfield [now Swarthmore], PA, Oct 10, 1738; d London, March 11, 1820).

American painter and draughtsman, active in England (see fig.). He was the first American artist to achieve an international reputation and to influence artistic trends in Europe. He taught three generations of his aspiring countrymen. His son Raphael Lamar West (1769–1850) was a history painter.

He was one of ten children of a rural innkeeper whose Quaker family had moved to Colonial America in 1699 from Long Crendon, Bucks. In romantic legends perpetuated by the artist himself, he is pictured as an untutored Wunderkind. However, it has become clear that West received considerable support from talented and generous benefactors. West’s earliest known portraits, Robert Morris and Jane Morris...

(b London, July 15, 1775; d London, Sept 2, 1856).

English sculptor, son of Richard Westmacott (the elder). He was apprenticed at 14 to his maternal grandfather Thomas Vardy. He travelled to the Continent in 1792 and studied at the Accademia di S Luca in Rome (1793–6). He won first prize for his terracotta relief Joseph Confiding Benjamin to Judah (Rome, Accad. N. S Luca) in the student competition of 1795. While in Rome, he made the acquaintance of Antonio Canova and purchased antiquities for the architect Henry Holland. On returning to London in 1796, Westmacott established himself in Mayfair. He made his debut at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1797 with two marble portrait busts, including one of Sir William Chambers (London, Soane Mus.). He was elected an ARA in 1805 and became a full RA six years later.

Westmacott was the leading sculptor of civic and national monuments of his generation, winning many prestigious government and private commissions. He obtained eight of the thirty-six commissions for national monuments ordered by the Committee of Taste from ...

(b Eichstätt, Oct 16, 1812; d Munich, March 6, 1895).

German sculptor . He entered the Munich Akademie der Bildenden Künste as a pupil of Konrad Eberhard and Ludwig von Schwanthaler as early as 1825. He continued his studies under Bertel Thorvaldsen during a period from 1836 to 1839 spent in Rome, and under his influence he completely adopted the Neo-classical style. On his return to Munich he attracted the attention of Ludwig I, King of Bavaria, who commissioned many sculptures from him. After Schwanthaler’s death in 1848 Widnmann inherited his position at the Munich Akademie, where he taught sculpture students until his retirement in 1887.

On his appointment Widnmann was described by the Akademie as belonging to the ‘purely classical trend’ and manifesting ‘at the same time his skill in treating Romantic subjects’; the official commissions allocated by Ludwig I, such as the conventional busts for the Ruhmeshalle or the colossal statues of outstanding Bavarian historical personalities, epitomize the conflict of aspirations in sculpture in Munich at this period. The final impression made by Widnmann’s ...

(b Norwich, Aug 31, 1778; d Cambridge, Aug 31, 1839).

English architect, writer and collector . A ‘profound knowledge of the principles both of Grecian and Gothic architecture’ generated the career of Wilkins, who was also remembered as ‘a most amiable and honourable man’. He promoted the archaeological Greek Revival in Britain and a Tudor Gothic style. More intellectual than imaginative, his architecture was distinguished by a deft and disciplined manipulation of select historical motifs, a refined sense of scale and intelligent planning, outmoded by the time of his death. Besides his architecture and extensive antiquarian writings, Wilkins assembled an eclectic art collection and owned, or had a financial interest in, several theatres in East Anglia.

The theatres and Wilkins’s architectural bent were inherited from his father, a Norwich architect also called William Wilkins (1751–1815), who assisted Humphry Repton from 1785 to 1796 and established a successful domestic practice, mainly in the Gothick style. His eldest son was educated at Norwich School, then at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, from which he graduated Sixth Wrangler in ...