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(b Holywood, County Down, Ireland, Jan 26, 1922).

Australian painter, printmaker, book designer, lecturer, collector, gallery director and publisher of limited edition artists’ books, of Irish decent. He worked as a draughtsman before entering war service in the British Admiralty from 1940 to 1949, including five years in Colombo, where he made sketching trips to jungle temples with the Buddhist monk and artist Manjsiro Thero. Between 1949 and 1951 Adams worked as an exhibition designer in London and studied wood-engraving with Gertrude Hermes in her evening class at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central St Martin’s College of Art and Design). In 1951, after moving to Melbourne, Adams began a 30-year teaching commitment at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), where he instructed many of the younger generation of Australian printmakers, including George Baldessin and Jan Senbergs. A brief return to Britain and Ireland in 1957–8 provided experience with Dolmen Press, Dublin, which published his first book of engravings, ...

(bapt Mechelen, Jan 14, 1600; d Deurne, Antwerp, Nov 1, 1652).

Flemish painter, draughtsman and printmaker . In 1622–3 he became a master in the Guild of St Luke, Antwerp. In 1625–6 he took on Peter van de Cruys (fl 1625–44) as his pupil, who was followed by Frans Wouters in 1629 and Wouters’s brother, Pieter Wouters (1617–after 1632), in 1631–2. In 1631 van Avont became a citizen of Antwerp.

A recurring motif in van Avont’s work is a group of figures dominated by children and putti; these appear in a variety of forms—the Infant Christ, John the Baptist, angels—in van Avont’s many pictures of the Holy Family. The figure groups in these pieces are often of the same type: angels paying tribute to the Virgin and Child. The grouping is identical in several paintings. Van Avont also used figures of children in his bacchanals and in such allegorical scenes as the Four Elements (Basle, Kstmus.) and ...

[Pieter]

(b Antwerp, c. 1526–28; d Antwerp, 1584).

South Netherlandish painter, draughtsman, engraver and publisher. He was the son of the sculptor Balten Janszoon de Costere (fl 1524). In 1550 he became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp and in 1569 its dean. Primarily on the authority of van Mander, Baltens was long considered to be an inferior imitator of Bruegel family, §1 the elder. Baltens’s best-known work, the signed St Martin’s Day Kermis (e.g. versions Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.), was formerly thought to be a free copy after Bruegel’s treatment of the subject, known through an engraving and the Gift of St Martin, a fragment on cloth (Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.). The relationship between Baltens and Bruegel is, however, more complicated. In 1551 they collaborated on an altarpiece (destr.) for the Mechelen Glovemakers. Baltens’s other works, for example the Ecce homo (Antwerp, Kon. Acad. S. Kst.), reveal that the two artists were closely associated: a group from the ...

(b Dublin, 1728 or 1732; d London, May 29, 1784).

Irish painter . The son of a tailor, he first trained as a staymaker but then found work colouring prints for Silcock, a publisher in Dublin. In 1747 he was awarded first prize at the Dublin Society’s School, where he studied under Robert West. Among Barret’s earliest works is a group of landscapes (Dublin, N.G.) painted for Joseph Leeson, later 1st Earl of Miltown, in the 1740s and 1750s as architectural decorations for Russborough House, Co. Wicklow, built in 1742–55 by Richard Castle. They are rather stiff Italianate views, with somewhat contrived compositions. In the 1750s, perhaps through the influence of Edmund Burke, Barret embarked on a series of topographical paintings of the Dargle Valley, Powerscourt, Castletown and other locations around Dublin. These works established his reputation, and he moved to London in 1763. The following year he won a 50-guinea premium for a painting exhibited at the Free Society of Artists, and he was soon taken up by English patrons. In ...

(b Dolni Dŭbnik, nr Pleven, July 24, 1901; d Sofia, Jan 23, 1958).

Bulgarian cartoonist, illustrator, draughtsman, painter, teacher, editor and critic. In 1926 he studied painting at the Academy of Art, Sofia, and although he was later known for his paintings, he achieved greater fame as a political and social cartoonist and newspaper and magazine illustrator. His early cartoons are courageous commentaries on political events in Bulgaria from 1925 to 1934, wittily satirizing the monarchy and dictatorships. He also mocked the machinations of the various bourgeois political parties as they fought for power. Among his most celebrated cartoons are the Kidnapping of the Constitution and the Tsar’s Family, published in the Sofia newspapers Zemedelsko Zname and Sturetz, as well as Suvremennik and other left-wing publications. He also illustrated the series Spanish Chronicle (1936). In 1940 he began freelancing for the anti-Fascist satirical newspaper Sturshel (Sofia) and in 1941 became its editor. During World War II he executed many political cartoons opposing Fascism and Nazism (e.g. ...

[Biermann]

(b Basle, Dec 14, 1758; d Basle, July 18, 1844).

Swiss painter and art dealer. He began his career as a portrait painter in Basle and Pruntrut but in 1775 moved to Berne, where he took up landscape painting. From 1777 to 1781 he worked with Johann Ludwig Aberli and was also a colour-printer with the publisher Abraham Wagner (1734–82). In 1781 he went to Rome, where he remained for ten years working for Louis Ducros and for Giovanni Volpato. While in Rome he painted landscapes in watercolour and drew in bistre, using a soft brush and making little use of the pen. He also sketched in the Alban Hills, being particularly attracted to the waterfalls at Tivoli and Terni. He became a member of Goethe’s circle in Rome, and, under the influence of its members, he adopted Claude as his model. His watercolours and bistre drawings, enlivened by Greco-Roman or contemporary staffage, became more tranquil, more classical in style and increasingly strengthened with pen outlines. In ...

(b Basle, Aug 11, 1793; d Basle, Sept 27, 1847).

Swiss painter and publisher, son of Peter Birmann. From about 1811 he worked in his father’s studio, where he drew mainly landscapes in pencil, pen, watercolour and bistre (e.g. Rigi, 1814; Basle, Kstmus.). In 1815 he went to Rome with the landscape painters Jakob Christoph Bischoff (1793–1825) and Friedrich Salathé (1793–1858). He executed a few oil paintings and also studies and detailed landscapes, usually in the hills around Rome, for which he employed pen, pencil, watercolour and wash. In 1817 he visited Sicily and produced drawings of luminous horizons in a Romantic vein, precisely delineated, yet with an economy of detail. In late 1817 he returned to Basle and worked in his father’s business while sketching in the Alps each summer. In 1818 he exhibited in Berne and in 1820, 1821 and 1825 in Zurich. In 1822, together with a group of other Swiss artists that included his brother ...

(b Antwerp, bapt Oct 22, 1622; d Paris, Sept 3, 1674).

Flemish painter, draughtsman and etcher. He came from an artistic family: his father Jan Boel (1592–1640), was an engraver, publisher and art dealer; his uncle Quirin Boel I was an engraver; and his brother Quirin Boel II (1620–40) was also a printmaker. Pieter was probably apprenticed in Antwerp to Jan Fyt, but may have studied previously with Frans Snyders. He then went to Italy, probably visiting Rome and Genoa, where he is supposed to have stayed with Cornelis de Wael. None of Boel’s work from this period is known. In 1650 he became a master in the Antwerp Guild of St Luke (having given his first name as Jan, not Pieter). His marriage to Maria Blanckaert took place at about the same time. Boel dated only a few of his paintings, making it difficult to establish a chronology. He is best known for his hunting scenes, some of which clearly show his debt to Snyders, but the dominant influence on his work was that of Fyt, particularly evident in his emphatic brushwork. However, Boel was more restrained both in his treatment and in his handling of outline. He also borrowed the theme of open-air hunting still-lifes (e.g. ...

(b Mechelen, 1545; d Antwerp, 1608).

Flemish painter, engraver and draughtsman. His identity is confused: it is known that a painter called Pieter van der Borcht worked in Mechelen for the Antwerp publisher Christoph Plantin from 1564 onwards. From 1552 until at least 1592 this artist—referred to as Pieter van der Borcht IV by Hollstein and as Pieter van der Borcht II by Bénézit—made etchings as well as woodcuts with the inscription fecit petrus van der borcht.

In addition, there was a Pieter van der Borcht active in Mechelen, who, after 1552, made woodcuts which he signed p.b. Thus, either one artist had a steady output of woodcuts and etchings over a long career (1552–c. 1600) or there were a number of artists with the same name. The second hypothesis seems the more likely. It is supported by other facts. In 1580 a ‘Pieter Verborcht, painter’ became a master in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp, of which he served as dean in ...

(b London, c. 1758; d Byfleet, Surrey, June 4, 1834).

Miniature painter and publisher. He was originally self-taught and then a pupil of John Smart (1741–1811), whose work he copied and whose style he imitated: between 1783 and 1828 he was an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy, being appointed in 1789 painter in watercolours to George III and miniature painter to Queen Charlotte (1744–1818). He was a keen promoter of history painting and in 1792 launched a prospectus for an edition of David Hume’s History of England, to be ‘superbly embellished’ with illustrations engraved after historical paintings by leading artists, including Benjamin West, Robert Smirke, Francis Wheatley and Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg. Bowyer also published the Historic Gallery, which, until its failure, with great financial loss, in 1806, provided substantial patronage to history painters and fostered a taste for national history paintings, especially of medieval subjects. The five folios that appeared contained, in addition to engravings of historical paintings, engraved portraits, manuscripts and antiquarian material. Bowyer also published ...

(Richard)

(b Croydon, London, March 31, 1888; d Toronto, March 21, 1955).

Canadian painter, critic and writer of English birth. He emigrated in 1905 to Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. In 1921 he moved to Toronto to work as an editor and publisher. He is best known as a pioneer of abstract painting in Canada. His show (1927) at Toronto’s Arts & Letters Club was the first solo exhibition of abstract art by a Canadian artist. His early work is characterized by the bold non-objective imagery seen in the complex Sounds Assembling (1928; Winnipeg, A.G.). After 1930 he reassessed his artistic direction: he turned first to figurative imagery (e.g. Torso, 1937; Ottawa, N.G.) and then looking to Cubism he re-examined the nature of abstraction in his painting, without returning to the non-objectivity of his earlier work. Between 1926 and 1930 Brooker wrote ‘The Seven Arts’, a syndicated column of art criticism for the Southam Press. In addition, he edited The Yearbook of the Arts in Canada...

(fl 1660–83)

English miniature painter, writer, printmaker and print publisher. In 1665 he taught limning to Elizabeth Pepys, wife of Samuel Pepys, probably on the recommendation of Pepys’s superior, Sir William Penn, whose daughter he had previously taught. Pepys, finding Browne over-familiar, terminated the acquaintance the following year. In 1669 Browne published Ars Pictoria, or an Academy Treating of Drawing, Painting, Limning and Etching, with 31 plates etched by himself after Old Master painters. It was published with Browne’s portrait by Jacob Huysmans, engraved by Arnold de Jode (b 1638; fl 1658–66), as its frontispiece. Six years later Browne added An Appendix to the Art of Painting in Miniture [sic] or Limning, etc and in 1677 published A Commodious Drawing Book with 40 plates after modern masters. In 1683, according to Horace Walpole, Browne obtained a 14-year patent to publish 100 mezzotint prints from works by Anthony van Dyck and ...

(b Nantes, Sept 17, 1907; d Paris, May 8, 1977).

French painter, sculptor, draughtsman and poet. He moved in 1926 to Paris, where he became involved with Surrealism, soon afterwards publishing his first collection of poems, Opoponax (Paris, 1927). In 1934 he exhibited a series of automatic drawings, which were followed by images produced with the assistance of objets trouvés: in Street Object (1936; Paris, Pompidou), for instance, he placed a sheet of paper on the road and then drove a car over it so as to leave the imprint of the tyre tracks. Another work of this period consisted of a bus sign bearing the same letters as his initials, so that it could be read as his signature. He also produced assemblages in a Surrealist spirit, such as Morphology of Desire (wood, plaster, metal, candle and torch, 1934–7; Paris, Pompidou). After World War II Bryen turned increasingly towards painting, through which he became a leading exponent of ...

(fl 1558–74).

French painter, draughtsman, print publisher and possibly engraver. He was a painter working in Orléans and published about 20 prints, dated between 1558 and 1574, which he may have engraved himself. He may have gained his knowledge of the art of the School of Fontainebleau from Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (i), who was at one point established in Orléans. It is possible, however, that he worked at the château of Fontainebleau, since his engraving the Masquerade of Persepolis is an interpretation of a painting by Francesco Primaticcio in the chamber of the Duchesse d’Etampes there. Chartier also published and possibly engraved the same artist’s Ulysses Recognized by his Dog, the 34th picture in the Galerie d’Ulysse at Fontainebleau. Original prints by him, such as Blazons of Virtue and the Naked Man Walking on Hot Coals, are typical of the style of Fontainebleau and representative of provincial French Mannerism in their almost excessive and somewhat angular refinement....

[Ch’en Chi-juzi Zhongshunhao Meigong, Meidaoren, Migong]

(b Huating, Jiangsu Province [modern Songjiang, Shanghai Municipality], 16 Dec 1558; d 19 Oct 1639). Chinese editor, writer, calligrapher and painter. He exemplified the literati ideal of the accomplished gentleman–scholar who rejected the sordid world of political involvement and devoted himself to a life of literary, artistic and philosophical pursuit. At the age of 28, having passed the prefectural examination, the first important step leading to a career in government office, Chen renounced official life in a dramatic gesture, by burning his Confucian cap and gown. Thereafter he lived at country retreats at Kunshan and then Mt She, near Huating in Jiangsu Province: entertaining guests; writing and editing; composing the poems, prefaces, epitaphs and biographies for which he was in constant demand; and travelling to places of scenic beauty in the company of friends.

Chen followed the lead of his close friend Dong Qichang, the foremost painter, calligrapher and connoisseur of the late Ming period (...

(b Portland, ME, March 4, 1832; d New York, March 26, 1920).

American painter, interior designer and writer. Colman grew up in New York, where his father, Samuel Colman, ran a successful publishing business. The family bookstore on Broadway, a popular meeting place for artists, offered Colman early introductions to such Hudson River school painters as Asher B(rown) Durand, with whom he is said to have studied briefly around 1850. Having won early recognition for his paintings of popular Hudson River school locations (see Storm King on the Hudson), he was elected an Associate of the National Academy of Design in New York in 1854. Most of Colman’s landscapes of the 1850s, for example Meadows and Wildflowers at Conway (1856; Poughkeepsie, NY, Vassar Coll., Frances Lehman Loeb A. Cent.), reveal the influence of the Hudson River school. An avid traveller, he embarked on his first European tour in 1860, visiting France, Italy, Switzerland and the more exotic locales of southern Spain and Morocco. His reputation was secured in the 1860s by his numerous paintings of romantic Spanish sites, notably the large ...

(b New York, Jan 24, 1919; d Key West, FL, May 7, 1996).

American dealer, patron, and painter. Born into a newspaper-publishing family, he responded to his upper-class establishment upbringing by seeking out ambivalence in art and life. Copley established the Copley Galleries in Los Angeles in 1948 with John Ployardt as partner and showed Magritte, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, and Joseph Cornell, as well as younger local artists. He regularly purchased a work from each show and built up his collection. Self-taught as a painter, in 1951 he closed the gallery to paint and moved to Paris, where he bought directly from the Surrealists. He returned to the USA in 1963, living and working in Roxbury, CT. He regularly exhibited at the Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, and elsewhere in the USA and Europe. He used Magritte’s method of ‘assembling images’ in his own narrative figurative paintings. As in some Surrealist works, eroticism is the guiding force in brightly coloured and witty paintings. He compared ...

(fl Milan, 1430–6).

Italian painter and illuminator. He was one of a large family of painters and illuminators working in Milan in the 15th century. He appears frequently in the registers of the building works of the city’s cathedral and as a creditor of the influential Borromeo family. First recorded in 1430 as the painter of two altarpieces for the cathedral, he is mentioned again in 1433 and 1444 for the gilding of sculpture and in 1442, 1446 and 1448 for further paintings. None of these works survives.

In 1445 and 1446 Giovanni was paid by Vitaliano Borromeo for the illumination of family imprese. However, Cipriani has suggested that these payments were for a group of decorated diplomas (Milan, Trivulziana) granted to the Borromeo family in 1445, and on this basis says that the designs may be by the much better-known Master of the Vitae Imperatorum. A miniature of Filippo Maria Visconti in Galessio da Correggio’s ...

(b Paris, c. 1604; d Laluque, Landes, March 29, 1678).

French painter, engraver and print publisher. Although it was as a painter that he was received (reçu) in 1663 by the Académie Royale, it is as an engraver that he is now remembered. His earliest known print is dated 1630, and he later made many plates, particularly reproductive engravings after his contemporaries Jacques Blanchard and Claude Vignon. He was one of Simon Vouet’s best interpreters, and Vouet himself commissioned from him at least 11 plates after his own paintings. Daret’s most important projects were the engraving of plates for and the publication of M. de Gomberville’s La Doctrine des moeurs (Paris, 1646) and the monumental collection of over 100 portraits in the Tableaux historiques où sont gravez les illustres français et estrangiers (Paris, 1652). His translation of Vasari’s life of Raphael, Abrégé de la vie de Raphael Sansio d’Urbin (Paris, 1651), is celebrated as the first monograph on an artist published in France....

(b Philadelphia, Dec 7, 1892; d New York, June 24, 1964).

American painter and printmaker (see fig.). He was born into an artistic family: his parents studied with Thomas Anshutz at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and his father was the art editor at the Philadelphia Press, a newspaper that included among its employees the Robert Henri circle of artist–reporters. Davis studied art under Henri in New York between 1909 and 1912. His earliest works, which chronicle urban life in the streets, saloons and theatres, are painted with the dark palette and thickly applied brushstrokes typical of the Ashcan school style inspired by Henri. Davis also published illustrations in the left-wing magazine The Masses between 1913 and 1916, and in The Liberator, which succeeded it in the 1920s.

With his contribution of five watercolours Davis was one of the youngest exhibitors at the Armory Show, the international exhibition of modern art that opened in New York in 1913...