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(b Grüneberg, June 28, 1865; d Dresden, Feb 1, 1910).

German writer and publisher. From 1892 to 1894 he edited the Freie Bühne (later renamed Neue deutsche Rundschau), the Berlin-based magazine that acted as the chief mouthpiece of literary naturalism. He took up the cause of modernist painting in his very first publication, A. Böcklin (1891), a text introducing 15 heliographs of the artist’s work, and this was followed by publications on Fritz von Uhde (1893; 1908) and on Hans Thoma (1904). In 1894, with Julius Meier-Graefe, Bierbaum founded Pan, which was to become the leading avant-garde journal of the period in Germany, notable for its typography and for the inventive integration of text and illustration. There were also reproductions of paintings, drawings and sculpture, and the list of contributors included Franz von Stuck, Thoma, von Uhde, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Paul Signac, Georges Seurat, Félix Vallotton, ...

(b Saintes, Charente-Maritime, April 11, 1830; d Paris, May 11, 1888).

French critic. In 1851, as a young law student, he demonstrated against the coup d’état by Louis-Napoleon. He joined a law firm but soon began to write art criticism: his review of the Paris Salon of 1857 in the journal Le Présent attracted considerable attention. He continued to write Salon criticism for the next 22 years for the Monde illustré and subsequently Siècle and the Nain jaune. Openly hostile to academic painting and to established teaching methods, under the influence of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Castagnary argued for a humanitarian and secular democratic art that dealt sympathetically with contemporary social issues. Genre painting was his preferred art form, although he also strongly supported the landscape painting of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau and Jean-François Millet. He had been critical of the pictures Gustave Courbet exhibited at the Salon of 1857, but when Castagnary met the painter in 1860 he rapidly became one of his closest friends and most articulate advocates. He introduced Courbet to the rich collector Etienne Baudry and to the area around Saintes, where Courbet stayed between ...

[Fleury; Husson, Jules(-François-Felix)]

(b Laon, 17 Sept 1821; d Sèvres, 6 Dec 1889). French critic and writer. He made his reputation in France as one of the chief spokesmen of the Realist movement in art and as a writer of Realist literature. He authored numerous novels, short stories, pantomimes and pioneering histories of caricature, faience and popular imagery. He published scholarly works on the Le Nain brothers and Maurice Quentin de la Tour and actively engaged in writing art criticism between 1844 and 1855.

In 1843 Champfleury settled in Paris and met Charles Baudelaire. The following year he joined the staff of L’Artiste, adopted his pseudonym and began writing art criticism. Champfleury ranks among the first art critics to record praise for the paintings of Gustave Courbet. His initial article on Courbet appeared in Le Pamphlet on 28 September 1848; it notes the solid qualities of the artist’s work and predicts that Courbet would be a great artist. It was not until the following year, according to Champfleury, that Courbet truly made his mark on the public consciousness with ...

(Jean-Baptiste)

(b Brussels, Dec 13, 1830; d Brussels, April 27, 1880).

Belgian painter and writer. He showed an instinctive aptitude for painting while still very young. Rather than go to an academy, he worked in Thomas Couture’s studio in Paris before enrolling at the Atelier Saint-Luc in Brussels (1853–63), where his contemporaries included Félicien Rops and Constantin Meunier. At the Salon of 1851 in Paris he met Gustave Courbet, whose paintings struck a chord with his own artistic aspirations. He adopted Realist theories and became their champion in Brussels. Like Courbet, he extolled a free and personal interpretation of nature and reality, under the motto ‘freedom and sincerity’.

At the Salon of 1860 in Brussels, Dubois exhibited two important canvases: Storks (1858) and Roulette (1860; both Brussels, Mus. A. Anc.). These struck the critics by their boldness of composition, treatment of light and the broad and sensual handling that recalled the Belgian painterly tradition that had been dormant since the time of Rubens....

(b Siena, March 1, 1817; d Florence, Jan 10, 1882).

Italian sculptor and writer. He was among the foremost sculptors in Tuscany in the generation after Lorenzo Bartolini. His early experiments in naturalism attracted such hostile criticism that he was forced to abandon this style in favour of a sensual neo-Greek manner. His later works are marked by a richly expressive eclecticism.

He trained with his father, a wood-carver, and briefly attended the Istituto di Belle Arti in Siena. By 1826 or 1827 he was in Florence, where he joined the workshop of the wood-carver Paolo Sani. Dupré alternated this work with practical attempts at teaching himself, particularly drawing, as part of his ambition to become a sculptor. His first proper sculpture, a wooden figure of St Philomena, was shown in 1838 at the annual exhibition of the Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, where it attracted the praise of Lorenzo Bartolini, among others. In 1840 he made a jewel casket, inspired by the interior architecture of the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Florence, which was acquired by ...

(b Paris, June 6, 1833; d Paris, April 9, 1880).

French writer and art critic. He studied briefly at the Collège Chaptal in Paris. In 1856 he became one of the driving forces behind the literary journal Réalisme, together with Jules Assézat (1832–76) and Dr Jean-Baptiste-Henri Thulié (1832–1916). Most of his art criticism dates from the 1860s and 1870s; from the outset it was particularly critical of the established art world. He frequented Parisian cafés such as the Café Guerbois and the Café de la Nouvelle Athènes, where he met the group of intellectuals around Champfleury, among them Gustave Courbet. In 1863 Duranty met Emile Zola, and his lifelong friendship with the writer led to closer personal acquaintance with the leading Impressionists, particularly with Manet and Degas, as well as with other figures in the forefront of the new French painting. Such connections were clearly reflected in his reviews of around 1870 in the Paris-Journal, in which he praised such great names of the future as Manet, Degas, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalès. Duranty also wrote about the Barbizon painters, the English painter Richard Parkes Bonington and Delacroix as representing high points in the development of art. In his criticism, especially in ...

(Mikhaylovich)

(b Domna estate, nr Donetsk, Ukraine, Feb 14, 1855; d St Petersburg, April 5, 1888).

Russian writer and theorist of Ukrainian birth. His work began to be published in 1876. He was a supporter of realism in art and was close to the Wanderers, on whose work he wrote critical essays, mainly analysing their group exhibitions. He posed for a number of paintings by Russian artists. His story ...

(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 Alcoy, Alicante, Dec 19, 1834; d Paris, Nov 27, 1901).

Spanish painter and museum director. From 1846 he studied at the Real Academia de S Fernando, Madrid, under José de Madrazo y Agudo and Federico de Madrazo y Küntz. While working in Rome on a grant (1855–60), he came into contact with the circles around the Academia Española de Bellas Artes. He belonged to the generation of post-Romantic and Realist Spanish painters whose works are eclectic in genre. However, because of his training, milieu and political beliefs, he produced primarily history paintings. These are linear and superbly drawn, but, though incorporating many erudite references, they lack colour and luminosity. His finest works include Communards on the Scaffold (1860; Madrid, Pal. de las Cortes) and the Execution of Gen. Torrijos and his Comrades (1888; Madrid, Casón Buen Retiro). The latter, among the best of its type, looks back to Goya’s renowned Third of May (1814; Madrid, Prado). Gisbert Pérez also painted genre and religious subjects and some fine portraits. Some of these portraits are Romantic in style (e.g. ...

[Edhem, Osman HamdiHamdi Bey]

(b Istanbul, Dec 30, 1842; d Eskihisar, Gebze, nr Istanbul, Feb 24, 1910).

Turkish painter, museum director and archaeologist. In 1857 he was sent to Paris, where he stayed for 11 years, training as a painter under Gustave Boulanger and Jean-Léon Gérôme. On returning to Turkey he served in various official positions, including two years in Baghdad as chargé d’affaires, while at the same time continuing to paint. In 1873 he worked on a catalogue of costumes of the Ottoman empire, with photographic illustrations, for the Weltausstellung in Vienna. In 1881 he was appointed director of the Archaeological Museum at the Çinili Köşk, Topkapı Palace, in Istanbul. He persuaded Sultan Abdülhamid II (reg 1876–1909) to issue an order against the traffic in antiquities, which was put into effect in 1883, and he began to direct excavations within the Ottoman empire. As a result he brought together Classical and Islamic objects for the museum in Istanbul, including the Sarcophagus of Alexander, unearthed in Sidon in ...

(b Boulogne-sur-Mer, May 10, 1809; d Comborn, April 8, 1877).

French painter, museum director and writer. In 1815 he returned to France with his father, who had been a prisoner of war in Britain. He was a pupil at the Collège Bourbon in Paris and subsequently spent several years in Haute-Vienne, where he worked in the ironworks. He returned to Paris in 1828 and became friendly with several painters, including Xavier Sigalon and François Souchon (1787–1857), who gave him advice on painting technique. While pursuing his career as a painter (he exhibited regularly at the Salon between 1831 and 1848), he participated in Republican politics in the circles of the leading opposition figures, Godefroy Cavaignac and Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. He demonstrated his political commitment through his involvement in the Revolution of July 1830, in the Société Libre de Peinture et de Sculpture and in his various articles for newspapers and reviews such as Pandore, Revue française and Revue du Nord...

(b Santeramo in Colle, nr Bari, Dec 24, 1832; d Naples, Aug 28, 1894).

Italian painter and critic. He was taught privately by Giuseppe Bonolis but first studied law. After taking his degree, however, he enrolled in 1855 at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples and also attended the independent art school run by the painters Tommaso De Vivo (1787/90–1884) and Michele De Napoli (1808–92). In 1856 Netti went to Rome where he remained for three years studying Ancient art. On his return to Naples he came to know the artist Domenico Morelli and from 1862 to 1864 attended the life-drawing classes of Filippo Palizzi. His first officially exhibited work was the Death of St Joseph Calasanzio (1859; Naples, Scu. Media Stat. Vittorio Emanuele II), which adopts the style of De Napoli’s religious works. He then painted the Madness of Haidée (1860; untraced) and the dramatic scene of revolutionary activity, An Event of 15 May 1848 (exh. ...

(b Venezuela, c. 1810; d New York City, c. 1894).

Venezuelan painter, author, diplomat, and botanist. Páez was the son of José Antonio Páez, one of Bolívar’s most trusted generals and the colorful first president of Venezuela. Little is known of his childhood. Páez himself refers to his education in Caracas as a boy and later on in 1841 as a student at the Jesuit college of Stonyhurst in England. Early sources of artistic inspiration were most likely Páez’s cousin, Carmelo Fernández (1810–1887; a landscape artist who was a member of the Comisión Corográfica, the first national expedition to survey Colombia for more precise information on indigenous groups, the topography, and the natural resources of the country); the English portrait painter, Lewis Adams (1809–1853), who painted most members of the Páez family; Charles Thomas, an English miniature painter; and the German landscape painter Ferdinand Bellermann (1814–1889).

In 1849 General Páez was exiled and was accompanied by Ramón. From ...

(b Prague, Sept 7, 1827; d Prague, Dec 30, 1901).

Bohemian painter, caricaturist, designer and administrator. He was the son of the liberal politician Anton Maria Pinkas and the son-in-law of the art historian Anton Springer. In 1849 he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (Akademie Výtvarných Umění) in Prague, where in the previous year he had belonged to a group of students who were leaders in supporting the democratic revolution. In 1850 he continued his studies in Munich with Johann Berdellé (1813–76). Children Playing on Kampa Peninsula in Prague (Prague, N.G., Convent of St Agnes), exhibited in Prague in 1854, was a demonstration of unpretentious realism and the artist’s interest in contemporary life. In 1854 he went to France, where he remained until 1869. Thus he, rather than his friend and fellow artist Jaroslav Čermák, became the first Bohemian painter to spend considerable time in contact with the work of contemporary French artists who did not enjoy official recognition. Initially he studied under ...

(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, ...

[ Zhmuydzinavichyus, Antanas ( Ionasovich )]

(b Seiriai, Seinai region, Oct 31, 1876; d Kaunas, Aug 9, 1966).

Lithuanian painter, administrator and writer. He qualified as a drawing teacher at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts and taught at the Warsaw Commercial College (1899–1905) while continuing his studies. He also studied in Paris (from 1905), Munich (1908–9) and Hamburg (1912). During a short stay in Vilnius in 1906–7 he became close to Petras Rimša and Mikalojus Čiurlionis, founding the Lithuanian Art Society, which combined two trends in Lithuanian art: realist (Žmuidzinavičius, Petras Kalpokas, Rimša) and Symbolist (Čiurlionis). He was the initiator of the first Lithuanian Art Exhibition, held in Vilnius in 1907, at which he showed 35 paintings, among them Peasant Kitchen (1905; Kaunas, A. Žmuidzinavičius Mem. Mus.). During these years Žmuidzinavičius was influenced by the work of the Symbolists, as evident in Horseman (1910–12; Kaunas, A. Žmuidzinavičius Mem. Mus.). His essays on art were published in periodicals and newspapers in Vilnius, Kaunas and Warsaw in the first two decades of the 20th century. He maintained contact with Lithuanian emigrés in the USA, which he visited in ...

(b Paris, April 2, 1840; d Paris, Sept 29, 1902).

French writer and critic . He was brought up in Aix-en-Provence, and arrived in Paris in 1858, where he frequented painters’ studios and visited the salons. Cézanne was a childhood friend to whom Zola dedicated his first article of art criticism, which appeared in L’Evénement in 1866. He later recreated his passionate discussions with other artists in his novel L’Oeuvre (Paris, 1886), in which he debated all the aesthetic problems of the second half of the 19th century. Zola’s aesthetic analysis of painting was based on rules close to those of the Naturalist novel ( see Naturalism ), which he defined in 1864 as ‘a corner of creation seen through a temperament’ (Correspondance, Paris and Montreal, 1978, p. 375). This definition was not solely concerned with reproducing reality; in Zola’s view the artist’s personality alone enabled him to produce a work of art. He thus vigorously defended certain painters such as Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Gustave Moreau, although their work was far from Naturalist, because of the seductive effect of their frescoes and canvases on him....