1.
Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
2.
Library
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A library is a collection of sources of information and similar resources, made accessible to a defined community for reference or borrowing. It provides physical or digital access to material, and may be a building or room, or a virtual space. Libraries range in size from a few shelves of books to several million items, in Latin and Greek, the idea of a bookcase is represented by Bibliotheca and Bibliothēkē, derivatives of these mean library in many modern languages, e. g. French bibliothèque. The first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in Sumer. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC. In the 6th century, at the close of the Classical period. A library is organized for use and maintained by a body, an institution. In addition to providing materials, libraries also provide the services of librarians who are experts at finding and organizing information, Libraries often provide quiet areas for studying, and they also often offer common areas to facilitate group study and collaboration. Libraries often provide facilities for access to their electronic resources. Modern libraries are increasingly being redefined as places to get unrestricted access to information in many formats, the first libraries consisted of archives of the earliest form of writing—the clay tablets in cuneiform script discovered in temple rooms in Sumer, some dating back to 2600 BC. These archives, which consisted of the records of commercial transactions or inventories, mark the end of prehistory. Things were much the same in the government and temple records on papyrus of Ancient Egypt, the earliest discovered private archives were kept at Ugarit, besides correspondence and inventories, texts of myths may have been standardized practice-texts for teaching new scribes. There is also evidence of libraries at Nippur about 1900 BC, philosopher Laozi was keeper of books in the earliest library in China, which belonged to the Imperial Zhou dynasty. Also, evidence of catalogues found in some destroyed ancient libraries illustrates the presence of librarians, the Library of Alexandria, in Egypt, was the largest and most significant great library of the ancient world. It flourished under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty and functioned as a center of scholarship from its construction in the 3rd century BC until the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 BC. The library was conceived and opened either during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter or during the reign of his son Ptolemy II, an early organization system was in effect at Alexandria. The Library of Celsus in Ephesus, Anatolia, now part of Selçuk, Turkey was built in honor of the Roman Senator Tiberius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus by Celsus’ son, the library was built to store 12,000 scrolls and to serve as a monumental tomb for Celsus. Private or personal libraries made up of books appeared in classical Greece in the 5th century BC
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Institute
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Noun- An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. Often they are research organisations created to do research on specific topics, an institute can also be a professional body, or one involved in adult education, see Mechanics Institutes. The word institute comes from the Latin word institutum meaning facility or habit, from instituere meaning build, create, in some countries, such as South Korea and Japan, private schools are sometimes referred to as institutes, rather than schools. In Spain secondary schools are referred to as institutes, furthermore, if a company is carrying on a business under a different name to the company name, that business name must comply with the Business Names Act. Use of the title institute requires approval from the Secretary of State, failure to seek approval is a criminal offence. Chair Consortium Institution Private foundation Policy institute List of policy institutes Research institute Some Institutes for Advanced Study
4.
New Haven, Connecticut
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New Haven, in the U. S. state of Connecticut, is the principal municipality in Greater New Haven, which had a total population of 862,477 in 2010. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut. It is the second-largest city in Connecticut, with a population of 129,779 people as of the 2010 United States Census, according to a census of 1 July 2012, by the Census Bureau, the city had a population of 130,741. New Haven was founded in 1638 by English Puritans, and a year later eight streets were laid out in a four-by-four grid, the central common block is the New Haven Green, a 16-acre square, and the center of Downtown New Haven. The Green is now a National Historic Landmark and the Nine Square Plan is recognized by the American Planning Association as a National Planning Landmark, New Haven is the home of Yale University. The university is an part of the citys economy, being New Havens biggest taxpayer and employer. Health care, professional services, financial services, and retail trade also help to form a base for the city. The city served as co-capital of Connecticut from 1701 until 1873, New Haven has since billed itself as the Cultural Capital of Connecticut for its supply of established theaters, museums, and music venues. New Haven is also the birthplace of George W. Bush, New Haven had the first public tree planting program in America, producing a canopy of mature trees that gave New Haven the nickname The Elm City. The area was visited by Dutch explorer Adriaen Block in 1614. Dutch traders set up a trading system of beaver pelts with the local inhabitants, but trade was sporadic. In 1637 a small party of Puritans reconnoitered the New Haven harbor area, the Quinnipiacs, who were under attack by neighboring Pequots, sold their land to the settlers in return for protection. By 1640, the theocratic government and nine-square grid plan were in place. However, the north of New Haven remained Quinnipiac until 1678. The settlement became the headquarters of the New Haven Colony, at the time, the New Haven Colony was separate from the Connecticut Colony, which had been established to the north centering on Hartford. Economic disaster struck the colony in 1646, however, when the town sent its first fully loaded ship of goods back to England. This ship never reached the Old World, and its disappearance stymied New Havens development in the face of the rising power of Boston. In 1660, founder John Davenports wishes were fulfilled, and Hopkins School was founded in New Haven with money from the estate of Edward Hopkins, in 1661, the judges who had signed the death warrant of Charles I of England were pursued by Charles II
5.
Connecticut
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Connecticut is the southernmost state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. Connecticut is also often grouped along with New York and New Jersey as the Tri-State Area and it is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its capital city is Hartford, and its most populous city is Bridgeport, the state is named for the Connecticut River, a major U. S. river that approximately bisects the state. The word Connecticut is derived from various anglicized spellings of an Algonquian word for long tidal river, Connecticut is the third smallest state by area, the 29th most populous, and the fourth most densely populated of the 50 United States. It is known as the Constitution State, the Nutmeg State, the Provisions State, and it was influential in the development of the federal government of the United States. Connecticuts center of population is in Cheshire, New Haven County, Connecticuts first European settlers were Dutch. They established a small, short-lived settlement in present-day Hartford at the confluence of the Park, initially, half of Connecticut was a part of the Dutch colony New Netherland, which included much of the land between the Connecticut and Delaware rivers. The first major settlements were established in the 1630s by England, the Connecticut and New Haven Colonies established documents of Fundamental Orders, considered the first constitutions in North America. In 1662, the three colonies were merged under a charter, making Connecticut a crown colony. This colony was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution, the Connecticut River, Thames River, and ports along the Long Island Sound have given Connecticut a strong maritime tradition which continues today. The state also has a history of hosting the financial services industry, including insurance companies in Hartford. As of the 2010 Census, Connecticut features the highest per-capita income, Human Development Index, and median household income in the United States. Landmarks and Cities of Connecticut Connecticut is bordered on the south by Long Island Sound, on the west by New York, on the north by Massachusetts, and on the east by Rhode Island. The state capital and third largest city is Hartford, and other cities and towns include Bridgeport, New Haven, Stamford, Waterbury, Norwalk, Danbury, New Britain, Greenwich. Connecticut is slightly larger than the country of Montenegro, there are 169 incorporated towns in Connecticut. The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain in Salisbury in the northwest corner of the state, the highest point is just east of where Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York meet, on the southern slope of Mount Frissell, whose peak lies nearby in Massachusetts. At the opposite extreme, many of the towns have areas that are less than 20 feet above sea level. Connecticut has a maritime history and a reputation based on that history—yet the state has no direct oceanfront
6.
Louis Kahn
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Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935, while continuing his private practice, he served as a design critic and professor of architecture at Yale School of Architecture from 1947 to 1957. From 1957 until his death, he was a professor of architecture at the School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania. Kahn created a style that was monumental and monolithic, his buildings for the most part do not hide their weight, their materials. Louis Kahns works are considered as monumental beyond modernism, famous for his meticulously built works, his provocative proposals that remained unbuilt, and his teaching, Kahn was one of the most influential architects of the twentieth century. He was awarded the AIA Gold Medal and the RIBA Gold Medal, at the time of his death he was considered by some as Americas foremost living architect. Louis Kahn, whose name was Itze-Leib Schmuilowsky, was born into a poor Jewish family in Pärnu, formerly in Russian Empire. He spent his childhood in Kuressaare on the island of Saaremaa. At the age of three, he saw coals in the stove and was captivated by the light of the coal and he put the coal in his apron, which caught on fire and seared his face. He carried these scars for the rest of his life, in 1906, his family emigrated to the United States, as they feared that his father would be recalled into the military during the Russo-Japanese War. His birth year may have been recorded in the process of immigration. According to his sons 2003 documentary film, the family could not afford pencils and they made their own charcoal sticks from burnt twigs so that Louis could earn a little money from drawings. Later he earned money by playing piano to accompany silent movies in theaters and he became a naturalized citizen on May 15,1914. His father changed their name to Kahn in 1915, Kahn trained at the University of Pennsylvania in a rigorous Beaux-Arts tradition, with its emphasis on drawing. After completing his Bachelor of Architecture in 1924, Kahn worked as draftsman in the office of the city architect. He worked on the designs for the 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition, in 1928, Kahn made a European tour. He was interested particularly in the walled city of Carcassonne, France. In 1932, Kahn and Dominique Berninger founded the Architectural Research Group, whose members were interested in the populist social agenda, among the more important of Kahns early collaborations was one with George Howe
7.
Yale University
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Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony to train Congregationalist ministers, it is the third-oldest institution of education in the United States. The Collegiate School moved to New Haven in 1716, and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century the school introduced graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, the undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each schools faculty oversees its curriculum, the universitys assets include an endowment valued at $25.4 billion as of June 2016, the second largest of any U. S. educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States, Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents,19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices,20 living billionaires, and many heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress,57 Nobel laureates,5 Fields Medalists,247 Rhodes Scholars, and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University. Yale traces its beginnings to An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9,1701, the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, the group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as The Founders. Originally known as the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, the school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College, meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and it had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Lockes works and developed his original theology known as the new divinity
8.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
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Paul Mellon
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Paul Mellon was an American philanthropist and an owner/breeder of thoroughbred racehorses. He is one of five people ever designated an Exemplar of Racing by the National Museum of Racing. He was co-heir to one of Americas greatest business fortunes, derived from the Mellon Bank created by his grandfather Thomas Mellon, his father Andrew W. Mellon, Mellons autobiography, Reflections in a Silver Spoon, was published in 1992. He died at his home, Oak Spring, in Upperville, Virginia and he was survived by his wife, Rachel, his children, Catherine Conover and Timothy Mellon, and two stepchildren, Stacy Lloyd III and Eliza, Viscountess Moore. Paul Mellon was the son of Andrew W. Mellon, US Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932, and Nora McMullen of Hertfordshire and brother of Ailsa Mellon-Bruce. He was a benefactor of his alma maters, donating the Mellon Arts Center and the Mellon Science Center to Choate. After graduating from Yale he went to England to study at Clare College, Cambridge, receiving a BA in 1931, in 1930 he was a founding member, alongside Sir Timothy William Gowers, of the CRABS, the Clare Rugby And Boating Society. In 1938 he received an MA from Clare College and he was a major benefactor to Clare Colleges Forbes-Mellon library, opened in 1986. Mellon returned to Pittsburgh, to work for Mellon Bank and other businesses for six months, in 1935, he married Mary Conover Brown and the couple, who had two children, Catherine and Timothy, moved to Virginia. He enrolled at St. Johns College in Annapolis, Maryland in 1940 but six months later joined the United States Army, Mellon served with the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. He rose to the rank of major and was the recipient of four Bronze Stars, after his wife Marys death in 1946 from an asthma attack, he married Rachel Lambert Lloyd, known as Bunny, the former wife of Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr. She was a descendant of the Lambert family who formulated and marketed Listerine, Bunny Mellon was an avid horticulturist and gardener, whose fondness for French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting, as well as American art, Mellon came to share. By this marriage, he had two stepchildren, Stacy Lloyd III and Eliza Lambert Lloyd, while Mellon did not share his fathers interest in business, the two found common ground in their love of art and philanthropy. Shortly before Andrew Mellons death in 1937, construction began on the West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, four years later Paul Mellon presented both the building by John Russell Pope and his fathers collection of 115 paintings to the nation. He served on the board for more than four decades, as trustee, as president, as board chair. Mellon commissioned I. M. Pei to build the East Building and, with his sister Ailsa, over the years he and his wife Bunny donated more than 1,000 works to the National Gallery, among them many French and American masterworks. In 1936 Mellon purchased his first British painting, Pumpkin with a Stable-lad by George Stubbs, beginning in the late 1950s, with the help of English art historian Basil Taylor, Mellon amassed a major collection by the mid-1960s. London art dealer Geoffrey Agnew once said of his acquisitions, “It took an American collector to make the English look again at their own paintings. ”Mellon granted his extensive collection of British art, rare books, and related materials to Yale University in the 1960s, along with the funding to create an appropriate museum to house it
10.
Yale University Art Gallery
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The Yale University Art Gallery houses a significant and encyclopedic collection of art in several buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. Although it embraces all cultures and periods, the gallery emphasizes early Italian painting, African sculpture, the Yale University Art Gallery is the oldest university art museum in the western hemisphere. The gallery was founded in 1832, when patriot-artist, John Trumbull, donated more than 100 paintings of the American Revolution to Yale College and this building, on the universitys Old Campus, was razed in 1901. The gallerys main building was built in 1953, and was among the first designed by Louis Kahn, a complete renovation, which returned many spaces to Kahns original vision, was completed in December 2006, by Polshek Partnership Architects. The older Tuscan romanesque portion was built in 1928, and was designed by Egerton Swartwout, the Gallery reopened on December 12,2012, after a 14-year renovation and expansion project at a cost of $135 million. The expanded space totals 69,975 sq ft, the museum is a member of the North American Reciprocal Museums program. On the second floor was a valuable collection of paintings by John Trumbull. Among them were his paintings of the Battle of Bunker Hill, Death of Montgomery before Quebec, Surrender of Lord Cornwallis, Declaration of Independence. Trumbull gave the paintings to Yale in consideration of an annuity of $1,000 and subject to the condition that he, the Gallery’s encyclopedic collections number more than 185,000 objects ranging in date from ancient times to the present day. The permanent collection includes, African Art, over 1000 objects in wood, metal, ivory, American Decorative Arts, about 18,000 objects in silver, glass, wood, porcelain, and textile with an emphasis on the colonial and early federal periods. Ancient Art, over 13,000 objects from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Etruria, Art of the Ancient Americas, Mayan and Olmec figurines, vessels and sculptures. Prints, Drawings, and Photographs In 2005, the announced that it had acquired 1,465 gelatin silver prints by the influential American landscape photographer. In 2009, the museum mounted an exhibition of its collection of Picasso paintings and drawings. For the first time, portions of the Yale University Librarys, as an affiliate of Yale University, the gallery maintains a robust roster of education programs for university students, New Haven schools, and the general public. One such program is the Gallery Guide program, founded in 1998, the Yale Art Gallery charges no admission
11.
Travertine
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Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs, especially hot springs. Travertine often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, cream-colored and it is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot spring or in a limestone cave. In the latter, it can form stalactites, stalagmites, and it is frequently used in Italy and elsewhere as a building material. Travertine is a sedimentary rock, formed by the precipitation of carbonate minerals from solution in ground and surface waters. Similar deposits formed from water are known as tufa. The word travertine is derived from the Italian travertino, itself a derivation of the Latin tiburtinus ‘of Tibur’ and its namesake is also the origin of Tivoli, a district near Rome. Modern travertine is formed from geothermally heated supersaturated alkaline waters, with raised pCO2, on emergence, waters degas CO2 due to the lower atmospheric pCO2, resulting in an increase in pH. Since carbonate solubility decreases with increased pH, precipitation is induced, precipitation may be enhanced by factors leading to a reduction in pCO2, for example increased air-water interactions at waterfalls may be important, as may photosynthesis. Precipitation may also be enhanced by evaporation in some springs, both calcite and aragonite are found in hot spring travertines, aragonite is preferentially precipitated when temperatures are hot, while calcite dominates when temperatures are cooler. When pure and fine, travertine is white, but often it is brown to yellow due to impurities, travertine may precipitate out directly onto rock and other inert materials as in Pamukkale or Yellowstone for example. The latter has a historic value, because it was one of the quarries that Gian Lorenzo Bernini selected material from to build the famous Colonnade of St. Peters Square in Rome in 1656-1667. Michaelangelo also chose travertine as the material for the ribs of the dome of St Peters Basilica. Travertine derives its name from the town, known as Tibur in ancient Roman times. The ancient name for the stone was lapis tiburtinus, meaning tibur stone, detailed studies of the Tivoli and Guidonia travertine deposits revealed diurnal and annual rhythmic banding and laminae, which have potential use in geochronology. Cascades of natural lakes formed behind travertine dams can be seen in Pamukkale, Turkey, in Central Europes last post-glacial palaeoclimatic optimum, huge deposits of tufa formed from karst springs. On a smaller scale, these karst processes are still working, travertine has been an important building material since the Middle Ages. Travertine has formed sixteen huge, natural dams in a valley in Croatia known as Plitvice Lakes National Park, clinging to moss and rocks in the water, the travertine has built up over several millennia to form waterfalls up to 70 m in height. In the U. S. the most well-known place for travertine formation is Yellowstone National Park, Oklahoma has two parks dedicated to this natural wonder
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Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
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The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art is a scholarly centre in London devoted to supporting original research into the history of British Art. It was founded in 1970 and endowed by a gift from Paul Mellon, since 1996, it has been situated at 16 Bedford Square in a Grade I listed building. It also holds the records of its own archives, including a growing oral history collection. The centre compiled its own photographic archive from 1970-1996 and now holds the Tate photographic archive. All of these collections are available to consult in the Centres Public Study Room. As well as being incorporated as a British educational charity, the centre is part of Yale University and provides teaching in London for Yale students, through the successful Yale-in-London scheme. The centre supports a publication programme through Yale University Press and co-ordinates its activities with the sister institution, the centre is a registered charity under English law and is a member of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History. The Paul Mellon Centre underwrites the production costs of publications concerned with the study of British art, the books are produced and distributed by Yale University Press. In 2015 the Centre launched an online and open access journal, British Art Studies, the centre published an online catalogue raisonné of the artist Richard Wilson to coincide with the tercentenary of the artists birth. In 2016, the centre published another catalogue raisonné of the artist Francis Towne
13.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
14.
William Hogarth
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William Hogarth FRSA was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic series of pictures called modern moral subjects. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are referred to as Hogarthian. William Hogarth was born at Bartholomew Close in London to Richard Hogarth, a poor Latin school teacher and textbook writer, in his youth he was apprenticed to the engraver Ellis Gamble in Leicester Fields, where he learned to engrave trade cards and similar products. Young Hogarth also took a lively interest in the life of the metropolis and the London fairs. Around the same time, his father, who had opened an unsuccessful Latin-speaking coffee house at St Johns Gate, was imprisoned for debt in Fleet Prison for five years, Hogarth never spoke of his fathers imprisonment. Hogarth became a member of the Rose and Crown Club, with Peter Tillemans, George Vertue, Michael Dahl, by April 1720, Hogarth was an engraver in his own right, at first engraving coats of arms, shop bills, and designing plates for booksellers. In 1727, he was hired by Joshua Morris, a tapestry worker, Morris heard that he was an engraver, and no painter, and consequently declined the work when completed. Hogarth accordingly sued him for the money in the Westminster Court, in 1757 he was appointed Serjeant Painter to the King. In the bottom corner, he shows Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish figures gambling, while in the middle there is a huge machine, like a merry-go-round. At the top is a goat, written below which is Whol Ride, Other early works include The Lottery, The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light by the Gormogons, A Just View of the British Stage, some book illustrations, and the small print Masquerades and Operas. He continued that theme in 1727, with the Large Masquerade Ticket, in 1726 Hogarth prepared twelve large engravings for Samuel Butlers Hudibras. These he himself valued highly, and they are among his best book illustrations, in the following years he turned his attention to the production of small conversation pieces. One of his real low-life and real-life subjects was Sarah Malcolm who he sketched two days before her execution and he might also have printed Burlington Gate, evoked by Alexander Popes Epistle to Lord Burlington, and defending Lord Chandos, who is therein satirized. This print gave great offence, and was suppressed, however, modern authorities such as Ronald Paulson no longer attribute it to Hogarth. In 1731 Hogarth completed the earliest of his series of moral works, the collection of six scenes was entitled A Harlots Progress and appeared first as paintings before being published as engravings. The inaugural series was a success and was followed in 1735 by the sequel A Rakes Progress. The original paintings of A Harlots Progress were destroyed in the fire at Fonthill House in 1755, while A Rakes Progress is displayed in the room at Sir John Soanes Museum, London
15.
J. M. W. Turner
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Joseph Mallord William Turner, RA was an English Romanticist landscape painter. Turner was considered a figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting and he is commonly known as the painter of light. Joseph Mallord William Turner was baptised on 14 May 1775, and it is generally believed he was born between late April and early May. Turner himself claimed he was born on 23 April, but there is no proof and he was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, in London, England. His father, William Turner, was a barber and wig maker and his mother, Mary Marshall, came from a family of butchers. A younger sister, Mary Ann, was born in September 1778, the earliest known artistic exercise by Turner is from this period—a series of simple colourings of engraved plates from Henry Boswells Picturesque View of the Antiquities of England and Wales. Around 1786, Turner was sent to Margate on the north-east Kent coast, here he produced a series of drawings of the town and surrounding area foreshadowing his later work. Turner returned to Margate many times in later life, by this time, Turners drawings were being exhibited in his fathers shop window and sold for a few shillings. His father boasted to the artist Thomas Stothard that, My son, in 1789, Turner again stayed with his uncle who had retired to Sunningwell in Berkshire. A whole sketchbook of work from time in Berkshire survives as well as a watercolour of Oxford. The use of sketches on location, as the foundation for later finished paintings. By the end of 1789, he had begun to study under the topographical draughtsman Thomas Malton. Turner learned from him the tricks of the trade, copying and colouring outline prints of British castles. He would later call Malton My real master, topography was a thriving industry by which a young artist could pay for his studies. In the same year of 1789 he entered the Royal Academy of Art schools, when he was 14 years old, Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal Academy, chaired the panel that admitted him. At first Turner showed a keen interest in architecture, but was advised by the architect Thomas Hardwick to continue painting and his first watercolour painting A View of the Archbishops Palace, Lambeth was accepted for the Royal Academy summer exhibition of 1790 when Turner was 15. As a probationer in the academy, he was drawing from plaster casts of antique sculptures
16.
Thomas Gainsborough
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Thomas Gainsborough FRSA was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. He surpassed his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds to become the dominant British portraitist of the half of the 18th century. He painted quickly, and the works of his maturity are characterised by a light palette and he preferred landscapes to portraits, and is credited as the originator of the 18th-century British landscape school. Gainsborough was a member of the Royal Academy. He was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woollen goods, and his wife, the artist spent his childhood at what is now Gainsboroughs House, on Gainsborough Street. The original building survives and is now a dedicated House to his life. Gainsborough was allowed to leave home in 1740 to study art in London and he assisted Francis Hayman in the decoration of the supper boxes at Vauxhall Gardens, and contributed to the decoration of what is now the Thomas Coram Foundation for Children. In 1746, Gainsborough married Margaret Burr, a daughter of the Duke of Beaufort. The artists work, then consisting of landscape paintings, was not selling well. He returned to Sudbury in 1748–1749 and concentrated on painting portraits, in 1752, he and his family, now including two daughters, moved to Ipswich. Commissions for personal portraits increased, but his clientele included mainly local merchants and he had to borrow against his wifes annuity. The Artists family and Self-Portrait In 1759, Gainsborough and his moved to Bath. There, he studied portraits by van Dyck and was able to attract a fashionable clientele. In 1761, he began to work to the Society of Arts exhibition in London. He selected portraits of well-known or notorious clients in order to attract attention, the exhibitions helped him acquire a national reputation, and he was invited to become a founding member of the Royal Academy in 1769. His relationship with the academy was not a one and he stopped exhibiting his paintings in 1773. In 1774, Gainsborough and his moved to London to live in Schomberg House. A commemorative blue plaque was put on the house in 1951, in 1777, he again began to exhibit his paintings at the Royal Academy, including portraits of contemporary celebrities, such as the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland
17.
George Stubbs
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George Stubbs ARA was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses. Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant, information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the end of Stubbss life. Stubbs worked at his fathers trade until he was 15 or 16, thereafter as an artist he was self-taught. In the 1740s he worked as a painter in the North of England. He had had a passion for anatomy from his childhood, in 1756 he rented a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow, Lincolnshire, and spent 18 months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer. He moved to London in about 1759 and in 1766 published The anatomy of the Horse, the original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy. In 1759 the 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large pictures from him, and his career was soon secure. By 1763 he had produced works for several dukes and other lords and was able to buy a house in Marylebone, a fashionable part of London. His most famous work is probably Whistlejacket, a painting of a prancing horse commissioned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham and this and two other paintings carried out for Rockingham break with convention in having plain backgrounds. Throughout the 1760s he produced a range of individual and group portraits of horses, sometimes accompanied by hounds. He often painted horses with their grooms, whom he painted as individuals. Meanwhile, he continued to accept commissions for portraits of people. From 1761 to 1776 he exhibited at the Society of Artists of Great Britain, Stubbs also painted more exotic animals including lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys, and rhinoceroses, which he was able to observe in private menageries. His painting of a kangaroo was the first glimpse of this animal for many 18th-century Britons and he became preoccupied with the theme of a wild horse threatened by a lion and produced several variations on this theme. These and other works became known at the time through engravings of Stubbss work. Stubbs also painted pictures, but these are much less well regarded. From the late 1760s he produced work on enamel. In the 1770s Josiah Wedgwood developed a new and larger type of enamel panel at Stubbss request, Stubbs hoped to achieve commercial success with his paintings in enamel, but the venture left him in debt
18.
Joseph Wright of Derby
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Joseph Wright ARA, styled Joseph Wright of Derby, was an English landscape and portrait painter. He has been acclaimed as the first professional painter to express the spirit of the Industrial Revolution, Wright is notable for his use of chiaroscuro effect, which emphasises the contrast of light and dark, and for his paintings of candle-lit subjects. Many of Wrights paintings and drawings are owned by Derby City Council, Joseph Wright was born in Irongate, Derby to a respectable family of lawyers. The third of five children of John Wright, attorney, and Town Clerk of Derby, Joseph had two elder brothers, John and Richard Wright. Deciding to become a painter, Wright went to London in 1751, after painting portraits for a while at Derby, Wright again worked as an assistant to Hudson for fifteen months. Wright also spent a period in Liverpool, from 1768 to 1771. These included pictures of a number of prominent citizens and their families, Wright married Ann Swift, the daughter of a leadminer, on 28 July 1773 Wright and his wife had six children, three of whom died in infancy. Wright set off in 1773 with John Downman, a pregnant Ann Wright and their ship took shelter for three weeks in Nice before they completed their outward voyage in Livorno in Italy in February 1774. Downman returned to Britain in 1775, on his return from Italy he established himself at Bath as a portrait-painter, but meeting with little encouragement he returned to Derby in 1777, where he spent the rest of his life. He became increasingly asthmatic and nervous about the house, and for these complaints he was treated by his friend Erasmus Darwin, Ann Wright died on 17 August 1790. On 29 August 1797 Wright died at his new home at No.28 Queen Street, Derby, where he had spent his final months with his two daughters. Wright was a frequent contributor to the exhibitions of the Society of Artists, and to those of the Royal Academy, of which he was elected an associate in 1781 and his Old Man and Death is also a striking and individual production. It hangs in the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College and its companion piece, Dovedale by Sunlight captures the colors of day. Another memorable image from his tour of the Lake District is Rydal Waterfall of 1795, cave at evening is painted with the same dramatic chiaroscuro for which Joseph Wright is noted. The painting was executed during 1774, while he was staying in Italy, notice the similarities to the Museum of Fine Arts, Bostons holding, Grotto by the Seaside in the Kingdom of Naples with Banditti, Sunset. Wright had close contact with the industrialists of the Midlands. One of Wrights students, William Tate, was uncle to the eccentric gentleman tunneler Joseph Williamson, Wright also had connections with Erasmus Darwin and other members of the Lunar Society, which brought together leading industrialists, scientists, and philosophers. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, shows people gathered round observing an early experiment into the nature of air, the Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers Stone depicts the discovery of the element phosphorus by German alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669
19.
John Constable
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John Constable, RA was an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale. I should paint my own places best, he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, painting is and his most famous paintings include Wivenhoe Park of 1816, Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821. Although his paintings are now among the most popular and valuable in British art and he did not become a member of the establishment until he was elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 52. His work was embraced in France, where he sold more works than in his native England, John Constable was born in East Bergholt, a village on the River Stour in Suffolk, to Golding and Ann Constable. His father was a corn merchant, owner of Flatford Mill in East Bergholt and, later. Golding Constable owned a ship, The Telegraph, which he moored at Mistley on the Stour estuary. He was a cousin of the London tea merchant, Abram Newman, although Constable was his parents second son, his older brother was intellectually disabled and John was expected to succeed his father in the business. After a brief period at a school in Lavenham, he was enrolled in a day school in Dedham. Constable worked in the business after leaving school, but his younger brother Abram eventually took over the running of the mills. In his youth, Constable embarked on amateur sketching trips in the surrounding Suffolk and Essex countryside, which was to become the subject of a large proportion of his art. These scenes, in his own words, made me a painter, and I am grateful, the sound of water escaping from mill dams etc. willows, old planks, slimy posts. He was introduced to George Beaumont, a collector, who showed him his prized Hagar and the Angel by Claude Lorrain, in 1799, Constable persuaded his father to let him pursue a career in art, and Golding granted him a small allowance. Entering the Royal Academy Schools as a probationer, he attended classes and anatomical dissections. Among works that inspired him during this period were paintings by Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Lorrain, Peter Paul Rubens, Annibale Carracci. He also read widely among poetry and sermons, and later proved a notably articulate artist, by 1803, he was exhibiting paintings at the Royal Academy. In 1802 he refused the position of drawing master at Great Marlow Military College, Constables usual subjects, scenes of ordinary daily life, were unfashionable in an age that looked for more romantic visions of wild landscapes and ruins. He made occasional trips further afield, in 1803 he spent almost a month aboard the East Indiaman ship Coutts as it visited south-east ports, and in 1806 he undertook a two-month tour of the Lake District
20.
Joshua Reynolds
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Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential eighteenth-century English painter, specialising in portraits. He promoted the Grand Style in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect and he was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and was knighted by George III in 1769. Reynolds was born in Plympton, Devon, on 16 July 1723 the third son of the Rev. Samuel Reynolds and his father had been a fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, but did not send any of his sons to the university. One of his sisters was Mary Palmer, seven years his senior, author of Devonshire Dialogue, in 1740 she provided £60, half of the premium paid to Thomas Hudson the portrait-painter, for Joshuas pupilage, and nine years later advanced money for his expenses in Italy. His other siblings included Frances Reynolds and Elizabeth Johnson, as a boy, he came under the influence of Zachariah Mudge, whose Platonistic philosophy stayed with him all his life. The work that came to have the most influential impact on Reynolds was Jonathan Richardsons An Essay on the Theory of Painting, having shown an early interest in art, Reynolds was apprenticed in 1740 to the fashionable London portrait painter Thomas Hudson, who had been born in Devon. Hudson had a collection of old master drawings, including some by Guercino, although apprenticed to Hudson for four years, Reynolds only remained with him until summer 1743. Having left Hudson, Reynolds worked for some time as a portrait-painter in Plymouth Dock and he returned to London before the end of 1744, but following his fathers death in late 1745 he shared a house in Plymouth Dock with his sisters. In 1749, Reynolds met Commodore Augustus Keppel, who invited him to join HMS Centurion, of which he had command, while with the ship he visited Lisbon, Cadiz, Algiers, and Minorca. From Minorca he travelled to Livorno in Italy, and then to Rome, while in Rome he suffered a severe cold, which left him partially deaf, and, as a result, he began to carry a small ear trumpet with which he is often pictured. Reynolds travelled homeward overland via Florence, Bologna, Venice, and he was accompanied by Giuseppe Marchi, then aged about 17. Apart from a brief interlude in 1770, Marchi remained in Reynolds employment as an assistant for the rest of the artists career. Following his arrival in England in October 1752, Reynolds spent three months in Devon, before establishing himself in London, where he remained for the rest of his life. He took rooms in St Martins Lane, before moving to Great Newport Street and he achieved success rapidly, and was extremely prolific. In 1760 Reynolds moved into a house, with space to show his works and accommodate his assistants. Alongside ambitious full-length portraits, Reynolds painted large numbers of smaller works, in the late 1750s, at the height of the social season, he received five or six sitters a day, each for an hour. By 1761 Reynolds could command a fee of 80 guineas for a full-length portrait, the clothing of Reynolds sitters was usually painted either by one of his pupils, his studio assistant Giuseppe Marchi, or the specialist drapery painter Peter Toms. Lay figures were used to model the clothes and he had an excellent vantage from his house, Wick House, on Richmond Hill, and painted the view in about 1780
21.
Thomas Lawrence
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Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA FRS was a leading English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper, at the age of ten, having moved to Bath, he was supporting his family with his pastel portraits. At eighteen he went to London and soon established his reputation as a painter in oils, receiving his first royal commission. He stayed at the top of his profession until his death, aged 60, self-taught, he was a brilliant draughtsman and known for his gift of capturing a likeness, as well as his virtuoso handling of paint. He became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1791, a member in 1794. Lawrences love affairs were not happy and, in spite of his success, at his death, Lawrence was the most fashionable portrait painter in Europe. His reputation waned during Victorian times, but has since been partially restored, Thomas Lawrence was born at 6 Redcross Street, Bristol, the youngest surviving child of Thomas Lawrence, a supervisor of excise, and Lucy Read, the daughter of a clergyman. The couple had 16 children but only five survived infancy, Lawrences brother Andrew became a clergyman, William had a career in the army, sisters Lucy and Anne married a solicitor and a clergyman. Soon after Thomas was born his father decided to become an innkeeper and took over the White Lion Inn and next-door American Coffee House in Broad Street, Bristol. It was during the familys stay at the Black Bear Inn that Lawrence senior began to make use of his sons precocious talents for drawing and reciting poetry. Visitors would be greeted with the words Gentlemen, heres my son – will you have him recite from the poets, among those who listened to a recitation from Tom, or Tommy as he was called, was the actor David Garrick. Lawrences formal schooling was limited to two years at The Fort, a school in Bristol, when he was aged six to eight, and he also became accomplished in dancing, fencing, boxing and billiards. But once again Lawrence senior failed as a landlord and, in 1779, he was declared bankrupt, from now on, Lawrence was to support his parents with the money he earned from his portraits. The family settled at 2 Alfred Street in Bath, and the young Lawrence established himself as a portraitist in pastels, the oval portraits, for which he was soon charging three guineas, were about 12 inches by 10 inches, and usually portrayed a half-length. His sitters included the Duchess of Devonshire, Sarah Siddons, Sir Henry Harpur, Warren Hastings, sometime before his eighteenth birthday in 1787 Lawrence arrived in London, taking lodgings in Leicester Square, near to Joshua Reynolds studio. He was introduced to Reynolds, who advised him to study nature, Lawrence set up a studio at 41 Jermyn Street and installed his parents in a house in Greek Street. In the Royal Academy exhibition of 1788 Lawrence was represented by five portraits in pastels and one in oils, a medium he quickly mastered. Between 1787 and his death in 1830 he would miss two of the annual exhibitions, once,1809, in protest about the way his paintings had been displayed and once, in 1819
22.
Robert Bevan
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Robert Polhill Bevan was an English painter, draughtsman and lithographer. He was a member of the Camden Town Group, the London Group. He was born in Brunswick Square, Hove, near Brighton, the fourth of six children of Richard Alexander Bevan, a banker, the Bevans had been a Quaker family with long associations with Barclays Bank. They were descended from Silvanus Bevan the Plough Court apothecary and Robert Barclay the Quaker Apologist, the family, who could trace direct descent from Iestyn ap Gwrgant, had left Wales in the 17th century and settled in London. His first teacher of drawing was Arthur Ernest Pearce, who became head designer to Royal Doulton potteries. In 1888 he studied art under Fred Brown at the Westminster School of Art before moving to the Académie Julian in Paris, amongst his fellow students were Paul Sérusier, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. Bevan made his first visit to Brittany with a fellow student Eric Forbes-Robertson in 1890 and stayed at the Villa Julia and he made a second visit in the autumn of the following year before travelling to Morocco by way of Madrid to study Velasquez and Goya at first hand. He appears to have done more fox-hunting in Tangier than drawing in the company of the artists Joseph Crawhall, Bevan returned to Brittany in 1893. There is no evidence that he had ever met Van Gogh but it is obvious in the swirling trees and it is known that he was friendly with Paul Gauguin, who gave him several prints. Bevan also received encouragement from Renoir, particularly in his drawing of horses, on his return to England in 1894 Bevan went to live on Exmoor where he was able to combine painting with hunting. In the summer of 1897 Bevan met the Polish painter Stanisława de Karłowska at the wedding of Polish art student Eric Forbes-Robertson in Jersey, at the end of the year Bevan and de Karłowska married in Warsaw. Her father had land in central Poland and for the remainder of their married life they would make long summer visits there. In 1900 the Bevans settled in London at 14 Adamson Road and their first child, Edith Halina, had been born in December 1898 and their second, Robert Alexander, in March 1901. The summers of 1901,1903 and 1904 were spent in Poland, the influence of Gauguin was a key role in Bevans development, helping him to discover the pure colour which led him to a premature Fauvism in 1904. His Courtyard of that year has been described as “one of the first exercises in the use of pure colour in this century”. However his first one-man exhibition in 1905, which contained probably the most radical paintings by a British artist at that time, was not a success and was hardly noticed by the critics. Bevan evidently lost confidence in the direction it pointed and never again produced so outstanding a painting of this type. Sir Philip Hendy, in his preface to the 1961 Bevan retrospective exhibition at Colnaghis and he was certainly far in advance of his Camden Town colleagues in this respect
23.
Stanley Spencer
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Sir Stanley Spencer CBE RA was an English painter. Spencer referred to Cookham as a village in Heaven and in his biblical scenes, although his compositions became more claustrophobic and his use of colour less vivid he maintained an attention to detail in his paintings akin to that of the Pre-Raphaelites. Spencers works often express his fervent if unconventional Christian faith and this is especially evident in the scenes that he based in Cookham which show the compassion that he felt for his fellow residents and also his romantic and sexual obsessions. Spencers works originally provoked great shock and controversy, Spencers early work is regarded as a synthesis of French Post-Impressionism, exemplified for instance by Paul Gauguin, plus early Italian painting typified by Giotto. Stanley Spencer was born in Cookham, Berkshire, the surviving child of William. His father, usually known as Par, was a music teacher, stanleys younger brother, Gilbert Spencer, also became a notable artist, known principally for his landscapes. The family home, Fernlea, on Cookham High Street, had built by Spencers grandfather Julius Spencer. Stanley Spencer was educated at home by his sisters Annie and Florence, as his parents had reservations about the council school. However, Gilbert and Stanley took drawing lessons from a local artist, Par Spencer approached local landowners, Lord and Lady Boston, for advice, and Lady Boston agreed Stanley could spend time drawing with her each week. In 1907 Lady Boston arranged for Stanley to attend Maidenhead Technical Institute, from 1908 to 1912, Spencer studied at the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London, under Henry Tonks and others. His contemporaries at the Slade included Dora Carrington, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Edward Wadsworth, Isaac Rosenberg, so profound was his attachment to Cookham that most days he would take the train back home in time for tea. It even became his nickname, his fellow student Christopher R. W. Nevinson dubbed him Cookham, while at the Slade, Spencer allied with a, short-lived, group who called themselves the Neo-Primitives which was centred on Bomberg and William Roberts. In 1912 Spencer exhibited the painting John Donne Arriving in Heaven, in 1914 Spencer completed Zacharias and Elizabeth and The Centurions Servant. The latter painting featured not only Spencer himself as the servant, but also his brothers and he also began work on a self-portrait. Self-portrait was painted in Wisteria Cottage, a decaying Georgian house Spencer rented, from the local coalman in Cookham, apple Gatherers had been bought by the artist Henry Lamb, who promptly sold it to the art collector Edward Marsh. Marsh later bought Self-portrait and considered it to be masterly. glowing with genius, at the start of World War One Spencer was keen to enlist but his mother persuaded him, given his poor physique, to apply for ambulance duties. After thirteen months at Beaufort, the RAMC transferred Spencer to overseas duties and he left Beaufort in May 1916 and after ten weeks training at Tweseldown Camp in Hampshire, the 24-year-old Spencer was sent to Macedonia, with the 68th Field Ambulance unit. In 1917 he subsequently volunteered to be transferred to a regiment, the 7th Battalion
24.
Barbara Hepworth
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Dame Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth DBE was an English artist and sculptor. Her work exemplifies Modernism and in modern sculpture. She was one of the few artists of her generation to achieve international prominence. Along with artists such as Ben Nicholson and Naum Gabo, Hepworth was a figure in the colony of artists who resided in St Ives during the Second World War. Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth was born on 10 January 1903 in Wakefield, West Riding of Yorkshire and her father was a civil engineer for the West Riding County Council, who in 1921 became County Surveyor. An upwardly mobile family, and a dominant father determined her to exploit fully her natural talents and it was there that she met her fellow student, Henry Moore. They became friends and established a rivalry that lasted professionally for many years. Hepworth was the first to sculpt the pierced figures that are characteristic of works by both and they would lead in the path to modernism in sculpture. Following her studies at the RCA, Hepworth travelled to Florence, Italy, Hepworth was also the runner-up for the Prix-de-Rome, which the sculptor John Skeaping won. After travelling with him to Siena and Rome, Hepworth married Skeaping on 13 May 1925 in Florence, in Italy, Hepworth learned how to carve marble from the master sculptor, Giovanni Ardini. Hepworth and Skeaping returned to London in 1926, where they exhibited their works together from their flat and their son Paul was born in London in 1929. Her early work was highly interested in abstraction and art movements on the continent, in 1933, Hepworth travelled with Ben Nicholson to France, where they visited the studios of Jean Arp, Pablo Picasso, and Constantin Brâncuşi. Hepworth later became involved with the Paris-based art movement, Abstraction-Création, in 1933, Hepworth co-founded the Unit One art movement with Nicholson and Paul Nash, the critic Herbert Read, and the architect Wells Coates. The movement sought to unite Surrealism and abstraction in British art, Hepworth also helped raise awareness of continental artists amongst the British public. Hepworth married Nicholson on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office in north London, the couple had triplets in 1934, Rachel, Sarah, and Simon. Rachel and Simon also became artists, Hepworth, Nicholson and their children first visited Cornwall at the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Hepworth lived in Trewyn Studios in St Ives from 1949 until her death in 1975 and she said that Finding Trewyn Studio was sort of magic. Here was a studio, a yard, and garden where I could work in open air, St Ives had become a refuge for many artists during the war
25.
Ben Nicholson
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Benjamin Lauder Ben Nicholson, OM was a British painter of abstract compositions, landscape and still-life. His maternal grandmother Barbara Pryde was a niece of the famous artist brothers Robert Scott Lauder, the family moved to London in 1896. Nicholson was educated at Tyttenhangar Lodge Preparatory School, Seaford, at Heddon Court, Hampstead and then as a boarder at Greshams School, Holt, Norfolk. He trained as an artist in London at the Slade School of Fine Art between 1910 and 1911, where he was a contemporary of Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Mark Gertler, and Edward Wadsworth. His first marriage was to the painter Winifred Roberts, it took place on 5 November 1920 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, London. Nicholson and Winifred had three children, a son, Jake, in June 1927, a daughter, Kate, in July 1929, and his second marriage was to fellow artist Barbara Hepworth on 17 November 1938 at Hampstead Register Office. Nicholson and Hepworth had triplets, two daughters, Sarah and Rachel, and a son, Simon, in 1934, the third and final marriage was to Felicitas Vogler, a German photographer. They married in July 1957 and divorced in 1977 and his first notable work was following a meeting with the playwright J. M. Barrie on holiday in Rustington, Sussex, in 1904. As a result of meeting, Barrie used a drawing by Nicholson as the base for a poster for the play Peter Pan, his father William designed some of the sets. Nicholson was exempted from World War I military service due to asthma and he travelled to New York in 1917 for an operation on his tonsils, then visited other American cities, returning to Britain in 1918. Before he returned, Nicholsons mother died in July of influenza, from 1920 to 1933 he was married to the painter Winifred Nicholson and lived in London. After Nicholsons first exhibition of works in London in 1922, his work began to be influenced by Synthetic Cubism. In 1926 he became chair of the Seven and Five Society, in London Nicholson met the sculptors Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. On visits to Paris he met Mondrian, whose work in the style was to influence him in an abstract direction. His gift, however, was the ability to incorporate these European trends into a new style that was recognizably his own and he first visited St Ives, Cornwall, in 1928 with his fellow painter Christopher Wood, where he met the fisherman and painter, Alfred Wallis. In Paris in 1933 he made his first wood relief, White Relief, in 1937 he was one of the editors of Circle, an influential monograph on constructivism. He believed that art should be enjoyed by the general public, as shown by the Nicholson Wall. Nicholson moved to St Ives in 1939 living at Trezion, Salubrious Place, in 1943 he joined the St Ives Society of Artists
26.
Hans Holbein the Younger
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Hans Holbein the Younger was a German and Swiss artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century and he also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history of book design. He is called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, Hans Holbein the Elder, Born in Augsburg, Holbein worked mainly in Basel as a young artist. At first he painted murals and religious works and designed for stained glass windows and he also painted the occasional portrait, making his international mark with portraits of the humanist Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. When the Reformation reached Basel, Holbein worked for reformist clients while continuing to serve traditional religious patrons and his Late Gothic style was enriched by artistic trends in Italy, France and the Netherlands, as well as by Renaissance humanism. The result was a combined aesthetic uniquely his own, Holbein travelled to England in 1526 in search of work, with a recommendation from Erasmus. He was welcomed into the humanist circle of Thomas More, where he built a high reputation. After returning to Basel for four years, he resumed his career in England in 1532 and this time he worked under the patronage of Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. By 1535, he was Kings Painter to King Henry VIII, in this role, he produced not only portraits and festive decorations but designs for jewellery, plate and other precious objects. His portraits of the family and nobles are a record of the court in the years when Henry was asserting his supremacy over the English church. Holbeins art was prized from early in his career, the French poet and reformer Nicholas Bourbon dubbed him the Apelles of our time, a typical contemporary accolade. Holbein has also described as a great one-off of art history. After his death, some of his work was lost, but much was collected, recent exhibitions have also highlighted his versatility. He turned his fluid line to designs ranging from jewellery to monumental frescoes. Holbeins art has sometimes been called realist, since he drew and his portraits were renowned in their time for their likeness, and it is through Holbeins eyes that many famous figures of his day, such as Erasmus and More, are now seen. Holbein was never content, however, with outward appearance and he embedded layers of symbolism, allusion, and paradox in his art, to the lasting fascination of scholars. In the view of art historian Ellis Waterhouse, his portraiture remains unsurpassed for sureness and economy of statement, penetration into character, Holbein was born in the free imperial city of Augsburg during the winter of 1497–98. He was a son of the painter and draughtsman Hans Holbein the Elder, whose trade he and his brother, Ambrosius
27.
Peter Paul Rubens
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Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish/Netherlandish draughtsman and painter. He is widely considered as the most notable artist of Flemish Baroque art school, the catalogue of his works by Michael Jaffé lists 1,403 pieces, excluding numerous copies made in his workshop. His commissioned works were mostly history paintings, which included religious and mythological subjects and he painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house and he also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the royal entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not overly detailed and he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. For altarpieces he painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. Rubens was born in the city of Siegen to Jan Rubens and he was named in honour of Saint-Peter and Paul, because he was born on their solemnety. His father, a Calvinist, and mother fled Antwerp for Cologne in 1568, after increased religious turmoil and persecution of Protestants during the rule of the Spanish Netherlands by the Duke of Alba. Jan Rubens became the adviser of Anna of Saxony, the second wife of William I of Orange. Following Jan Rubens imprisonment for the affair, Peter Paul Rubens was born in 1577, the family returned to Cologne the next year. In 1589, two years after his fathers death, Rubens moved with his mother Maria Pypelincks to Antwerp, religion figured prominently in much of his work and Rubens later became one of the leading voices of the Catholic Counter-Reformation style of painting. In Antwerp, Rubens received a Renaissance humanist education, studying Latin, by fourteen he began his artistic apprenticeship with Tobias Verhaeght. Subsequently, he studied under two of the leading painters of the time, the late Mannerist artists Adam van Noort. Much of his earliest training involved copying earlier works, such as woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger. Rubens completed his education in 1598, at time he entered the Guild of St. Luke as an independent master. In 1600 Rubens travelled to Italy and he stopped first in Venice, where he saw paintings by Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, before settling in Mantua at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. The colouring and compositions of Veronese and Tintoretto had an effect on Rubenss painting. With financial support from the Duke, Rubens travelled to Rome by way of Florence in 1601, there, he studied classical Greek and Roman art and copied works of the Italian masters
28.
Anthony van Dyck
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Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England, after enjoying great success in Italy and Flanders. He also painted biblical and mythological subjects, displayed outstanding facility as a draughtsman, the Van Dyke beard is named after him. Antoon van Dyck was born to parents in Antwerp. By the age of fifteen he was already an accomplished artist, as his Self-portrait, 1613–14. He was admitted to the Antwerp painters Guild of Saint Luke as a master by February 1618. His influence on the young artist was immense, Rubens referred to the nineteen-year-old van Dyck as the best of my pupils. At the same time the dominance of Rubens in the small and declining city of Antwerp probably explains why, despite his periodic returns to the city, van Dyck spent most of his career abroad. In 1620, at the instigation of George Villiers, Marquess of Buckingham, van Dyck went to England for the first time where he worked for King James I of England, receiving £100. After about four months he returned to Flanders, but moved on in late 1621 to Italy and he was already presenting himself as a figure of consequence, annoying the rather bohemian Northern artists colony in Rome, says Giovan Pietro Bellori, by appearing with the pomp of Zeuxis. He was mostly based in Genoa, although he travelled extensively to other cities. In 1627, he went back to Antwerp where he remained for five years, a life-size group portrait of twenty-four City Councillors of Brussels he painted for the council-chamber was destroyed in 1695. He was evidently very charming to his patrons, and, like Rubens, well able to mix in aristocratic and court circles, by 1630 he was described as the court painter of the Habsburg Governor of Flanders, the Archduchess Isabella. In this period he produced many religious works, including large altarpieces. King Charles I was the most passionate and generous collector of art among the British monarchs, and saw art as a way of promoting his elevated view of the monarchy. In 1628, he bought the collection that the Gonzagas of Mantua were forced to dispose of. In 1626, he was able to persuade Orazio Gentileschi to settle in England, later to be joined by his daughter Artemisia and some of his sons. Rubens was a target, who eventually came on a diplomatic mission, which included painting, in 1630. He was very well-treated during his visit, during which he was knighted
29.
Canaletto
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Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known as Canaletto, was an Italian painter of city views or vedute, of Venice. He also painted views, although the demarcation in his works between the real and the imaginary is never quite clearcut. He was further an important printmaker using the etching technique, in the period from 1746 to 1756 he worked in England where he created many sights of London. He was highly successful in England, thanks to the British merchant and connoisseur Joseph Smith and he was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto, and Artemisia Barbieri. Canaletto served his apprenticeship with his father and his brother and he began in his fathers occupation, that of a theatrical scene painter. Canaletto was inspired by the Roman vedutista Giovanni Paolo Pannini, and started painting the life of the city. After returning from Rome in 1719, he began painting in his topographical style and his first known signed and dated work is Architectural Capriccio. Studying with the older Luca Carlevarijs, a painter of urban cityscapes. It is like Carlevaris, but you can see the sun shining in it, much of Canalettos early artwork was painted from nature, differing from the then customary practice of completing paintings in the studio. However, his paintings are notable for their accuracy, he recorded the seasonal submerging of Venice in water. Canalettos early works remain his most coveted and, according to many authorities, one of his early pieces is The Stonemasons Yard which depicts a humble working area of the city. It is regarded one of his finest works and was presented by Sir George Beaumont in 1823/8, later Canaletto painted grand scenes of the canals of Venice and the Doges Palace. His large-scale landscapes portrayed the citys pageantry and waning traditions, making use of atmospheric effects. For these qualities, his works may be said to have anticipated Impressionism and his graphic print S. A Giustina in Prà della Vale was found in the 2012 Nazi loot discovery. Many of his pictures were sold to Englishmen on their Grand Tour and it was Smith who acted as an agent for Canaletto, first in requesting paintings of Venice from the painter in the early 1720s and helping him to sell his paintings to other Englishmen. In the 1740s Canalettos market was disrupted when the War of the Austrian Succession led to a reduction in the number of British visitors to Venice and he remained in England until 1755, producing views of London and of his patrons castles and houses. His 1754 painting of Old Walton Bridge includes an image of Canaletto himself and he was often expected to paint England in the fashion with which he had painted his native city. Historian Michael Levey described his work from this period as inhibited, the artist was compelled to give public painting demonstrations in order to refute this claim, however, his reputation never fully recovered in his lifetime
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Johan Zoffany
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Johan Joseph Zoffany, RA was a German neoclassical painter, active mainly in England. His works appear in many prominent British National galleries such as the National Gallery, London and his name is sometimes spelled Zoffani or Zauffelij. Of Bohemian origin, Johan Zoffany was born in Frankfurt on 13 March 1733 and he undertook an initial period of study in a sculptors workshop in Ellwangen in the 1740s and later at Regensburg with the artist Martin Speer. In 1750, he travelled to Rome, entering the studio of Agostino Masucci, in autumn 1760 he arrived in England, initially finding work with the clockmaker Stephen Rimbault, painting vignettes for his clocks. He also was popular with the Austrian Imperial family and in 1776 was created Baron by the Empress Maria Theresa, Johan Zoffany was a Freemason and was initiated into the Craft on 19 December 1763 at The Old Kings Lodge No 28. He was a master of what has called the theatrical conversation piece. Zoffany has been described by one critic as the real creator, in the later part of his life, Zoffany was especially known for producing huge paintings with large casts of people and works of art, all readily recognizable by their contemporaries. Though Zoffany made several visits to continental Europe and India in his lifetime, he remained in Britain and he is buried in the churchyard of St Annes Church, Kew. The painter Thomas Gainsborough was, by that artists own request, in the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan, the Major-General brags of being able to distinguish works by Raphael from works by Gerard Dou and Zoffany. Zoffany lived in Lucknow for a time, during his return to England, the survivors held a lottery in which the loser was eaten. William Dalrymple thus describes Zoffany as having been the first and last Royal Academician to have become a cannibal. Despite the high profile the artist enjoyed in his day, as painter in London and Vienna, Zoffany has, until very recently. In 1920 Lady Victoria Manners and Dr. G. C. Williamson published John Zoffany, R. A. his life and works. 1735–1810 – the first in-depth study of the artist and his work, privately printed, presumably at some cost and this was followed by Johan Zoffany, 1733–1810, Mary Websters short but authoritative illustrated guide for the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London. In December 2009, the first full biography was published, Johan Zoffany, Artist, in 2011 Mary Webster published her long-awaited monograph on the artist, Johan Zoffany 1733–1810. A2014 book by David Wilson describes Zoffany’s relationship with Robert Sayer, in this way he helped to secure Zoffany’s international reputation. Sayer and the artist became longstanding friends as well as business associates, in 1781 Zoffany painted Robert Sayer in an important ‘conversation piece’. The Sayer Family of Richmond depicts Robert Sayer, his son, James, from his first marriage, on Sayer’s death in 1794 the house was to become the residence of a future king of Great Britain
31.
John Singleton Copley
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John Singleton Copley RA was an American painter, active in both colonial America and England. He was probably born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Richard and Mary Singleton Copley and he is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects. His portraits were innovative in their tendency to depict artifacts relating to these individuals lives, Copleys mother owned a tobacco shop on Long Wharf. His father was from Limerick, his mother, of the Singletons of County Clare, Letters from John Singleton, Mrs. Copleys father, are in the Copley-Pelham collection. Richard Copley, described as a tobacconist, is said by biographers to have arrived in Boston in ill health and to have gone, about the time of Johns birth, to the West Indies. William H. Whitmore gives his death as of 1748, the year of Mrs. Copleys remarriage, james Bernard Cullen says, Richard Copley was in poor health on his arrival in America and went to the West Indies to improve his failing strength. No contemporary evidence has been located for either year, except for a family tradition that speaks of his precocity in drawing, nothing is known of Copleys schooling or of the other activities of his boyhood. His letters, the earliest of which is dated September 30,1762, in such a household young Copley may have learned to use the paintbrush and the engravers tools. The family lived next to the occupied by japanner Thomas Johnston and his family. His son, Lord Lyndhurst, wrote that he was entirely self taught, variants of this thesis are found almost everywhere in his earlier letters. They suggest that, while Copley was industrious and an executant, he was physically unadventurous and temperamentally inclined toward brooding. He could have seen at least a few paintings and many good prints in the Boston of his youth. The excellence of his own portraits was not accidental or miraculous and it is a remarkable work to have come from so young a hand. No other engraving has been attributed to Copley, such painting would obviously advertise itself anywhere. Without going after business, for his letters do not indicate that he was ever aggressive or pushy, besides painting portraits in oil, doubtless after a formula learned from Peter Pelham, Copley was a pioneer American pastellist. He wrote, on September 30,1762, to the Swiss painter Jean-Étienne Liotard, the requested pastels were duly received and used by Copley in making many portraits in a medium suited to his talent. By this time he had begun to demonstrate his genius for rendering surface textures and capturing emotional immediacy. Copleys fame was established in England by the exhibition, in 1766, of A Boy with a Squirrel, which depicted his half-brother, Henry Pelham, seated at a table and playing with a pet squirrel
32.
Benjamin West
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Benjamin West PRA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence and the Seven Years War. He was the president of the Royal Academy in London. He was offered a knighthood by the British Crown, but declined it and he said that Art is the representation of human beauty, ideally perfect in design, graceful and noble in attitude. West was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in a house that is now in the borough of Swarthmore on the campus of Swarthmore College, as the child of an innkeeper. The family later moved to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where his father was the proprietor of the Square Tavern, Benjamin West was an autodidact, while excelling at the arts, he had little education and, even when president of the Royal Academy, could scarcely spell. From 1746 to 1759, West worked in Pennsylvania, mostly painting portraits, while West was in Lancaster in 1756, his patron, a gunsmith named William Henry, encouraged him to paint a Death of Socrates based on an engraving in Charles Rollins Ancient History. His resulting composition, which differs from the source, has been called the most ambitious. During this time West met John Wollaston, a painter who had immigrated from London. West was a friend of Benjamin Franklin, whose portrait he painted. Franklin was the godfather of Wests second son, Benjamin, in common with many artists architects and lovers of the fine arts at that time he conducted a Grand Tour. West expanded his repertoire by copying works of Italian painters such as Titian, in Rome he met a number of international neo-classical artists including German-born Anton Rafael Mengs, Scottish Gavin Hamilton, and Austrian Angelica Kauffman. In August 1763, West arrived in England, on what he intended as a visit on his way back to America. In fact, he never returned to America and he stayed for a month at Bath with William Allen, who was also in the country, and visited his half-brother Thomas West at Reading at the urging of his father. In London he was introduced to Richard Wilson and his student Joshua Reynolds and he moved into a house in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. In 1765 he married Elizabeth Shewell, an American to whom he engaged in Philadelphia. All three prelates commissioned work from him, in 1766 West proposed a scheme to decorate St Pauls Cathedral with paintings. It was rejected by the Bishop of London, but his idea of painting an altarpiece for St Stephen Walbrook was accepted, at around this time he also received acclaim for his classical subjects, such as Orestes and Pylades and The Continence of Scipio. Benjamin West was known in England as the American Raphael and his Raphaelesque painting of Archangel Michael Binding the Devil is in the collection of Trinity College, Cambridge
33.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler
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James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American artist, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He was averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, and was a proponent of the credo art for arts sake. His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail, the symbol was apt, for it combined both aspects of his personality—his art was characterized by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative. Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler entitled many of his paintings arrangements, harmonies, and nocturnes and his most famous painting is Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, commonly known as Whistlers Mother, the revered and oft-parodied portrait of motherhood, Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his artistic theories and his friendships with leading artists and writers. James Abbott Whistler was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on July 10,1834 and his father was a railroad engineer, and Anna was his second wife. James lived the first three years of his life in a modest house at 243 Worthen Street in Lowell, today, the house is a museum dedicated to Whistler. During the Ruskin trial, Whistler claimed St. Petersburg, Russia, as his birthplace, declaring, I shall be born when and where I want, in 1837, the Whistlers moved from Lowell to Stonington, Connecticut, where George Whistler worked for the Stonington Railroad. Sadly, during this period, three of George and Anna Whistlers children died in infancy, in 1839, the Whistlers fortunes improved considerably when George Whistler received the appointment that would make his fortune and fame - that of chief engineer for the Boston & Albany Railroad. Thus, the moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, then one of the United States most prosperous cities. The Whistlers lived in Springfield until they left the United States in late 1842, Nicholas I of Russia learned of George Whistlers ingenuity in engineering the Boston & Albany Railroad, and offered Whistler a position in 1842 engineering a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow. In the winter of 1842, the Whistlers moved from Springfield to St. Petersburg, in later years, James Whistler played up his mothers connection to the American South and its roots, and presented himself as an impoverished Southern aristocrat. After her death, he adopted her name, using it as an additional middle name. Young Whistler was a moody child prone to fits of temper and insolence and his parents discovered in his early youth that drawing often settled him down and helped focus his attention. Beginning in 1842, his father was employed to work on a railroad in Russia, after moving to St. Petersburg to join his father a year later, the young Whistler took private art lessons, then enrolled in the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts at age eleven. In 1844, he met the noted artist Sir William Allan, Whistlers mother noted in her diary, the great artist remarked to me Your little boy has uncommon genius, but do not urge him beyond his inclination. In 1847-48, his family spent some time in London with relatives, Whistlers brother-in-law Francis Haden, a physician who was also an artist, spurred his interest in art and photography. Haden took Whistler to visit collectors and to lectures, and gave him a set with instruction
34.
Portrait
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A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person, for this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, nonetheless, many subjects, such as Akhenaten and some other Egyptian pharaohs, can be recognised by their distinctive features. The 28 surviving rather small statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in Sumeria between c.2144 -2124 BC, show a consistent appearance with some individuality. Some of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people who were not rulers are the Greco-Roman funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypts Fayum district. These are almost the only paintings from the world that have survived, apart from frescos, though many sculptures. Although the appearance of the figures differs considerably, they are considerably idealized, the art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of a symbol of what that person looked like. In the Europe of the Early Middle Ages representations of individuals are mostly generalized, true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in tomb monuments, donor portraits, miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and then panel paintings. Moche culture of Peru was one of the few ancient civilizations which produced portraits and these works accurately represent anatomical features in great detail. The individuals portrayed would have been recognizable without the need for other symbols or a reference to their names. The individuals portrayed were members of the elite, priests, warriors. They were represented during several stages of their lives, the faces of gods were also depicted. To date, no portraits of women have been found, there is particular emphasis on the representation of the details of headdresses, hairstyles, body adornment and face painting. One of the portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vincis painting titled Mona Lisa. What has been claimed as the worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old. Profile view, full view, and three-quarter view, are three common designations for portraits, each referring to a particular orientation of the head of the individual depicted. Such terms would tend to have greater applicability to two-dimensional artwork such as photography, in the case of three-dimensional artwork, the viewer can usually alter their orientation to the artwork by moving around it
35.
Conversation piece
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A conversation piece is an informal group portrait, especially those painted in Britain in the 18th century, beginning in the 1720s. They are distinguished by their portrayal of the group engaged in genteel conversation or some activity. Typically the group will be members of a family, but friends may be included, often the paintings are relatively small, about the same size as a half-length portrait but in horizontal or landscape format, others are much larger. The genre was developed from 17th century portraiture in the Low Countries, in this last work, Rubens showed how a garden could be used as a setting for amorous dalliance and courtship. In the Low Countries many group portraits were painted, both of groups and groups such as Governors or Regents of institutions, or militia officers. Frans Hals, Rembrandt and other artists had adopted a variety of poses to liven up the group portrait, for example the famous Night Watch. The name derives from the Italian term, also used in English, sacra conversazione for a similarly painting of the Virgin and Child with saints. There are many varieties of conversation piece, people may be portrayed sharing common activities such as hunts, meals, or musical parties. Dogs and/or horses are frequently featured. Arthur Devis was a regional painter famous for his small conversation pieces, william Hogarth also worked in the genre, and parodied it in his print A Midnight Modern Conversation, which depicted a group of men whose conversation has degenerated into drunken incoherence. Johann Zoffany specialized in complicated conversation pieces, and most portraits by George Stubbs take this form, joshua Reynolds would on request produce conversation pieces in the Grand Manner, and at his usual near-life scale. The phrase conversation piece later acquired a different meaning and it came to refer to objects that were perceived to be interesting enough to spark conversation about them. They provide a stimulus for prop-based conversation openers, the original conversation pieces sometimes depicted a group united in conversation about an object, which would typically be an item linked to science or scholarship. References Sources Mario Praz, Conversation Pieces, A Survey of the Informal Group Portrait in Europe and America Tour, British Conversation Pieces and Portraits of the 1700s
36.
Richard Parkes Bonington
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Becoming, after his very early death, one of the most influential British artists of his time, the facility of his style was inspired by the old masters, yet was entirely modern in its application. His landscapes were mostly of scenes, with a low horizon and large sky, showing a brilliant handling of light. He also painted small cabinet paintings in a freely-handled version of the troubadour style. Richard Parkes Bonington was born in the town of Arnold, four miles from Nottingham and his father also known as Richard was successively a gaoler, a drawing master and lace-maker, and his mother a teacher. Bonington learned watercolour painting from his father and exhibited paintings at the Liverpool Academy at the age of eleven, in 1817, Boningtons family moved to Calais, France, where his father had set up a lace factory. In 1818, the Bonington family moved to Paris to open a lace shop, there he met and became friends with Eugène Delacroix. He worked for a time producing copies of Dutch and Flemish landscapes in the Louvre, in 1820, he started attending the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he studied under Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros. It was around this time that Bonington started going on sketching tours in the suburbs of Paris and his first paintings were exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1822. He also began to work in oils and lithography, illustrating Baron Taylors Voyages pittoresques dans lancienne France and his own architectural series Restes et Fragmens. In 1824, he won a medal at the Paris Salon along with John Constable and Anthony Vandyke Copley Fielding. He also developed a technique mixing watercolour with gouache and gum, in 1826 he visited northern Italy, staying in Venice for a month, and London again in 1827-8. In late 1828 his tuberculosis worsened and his parents sent him back to London for treatment, Bonington died of tuberculosis on 23 September 1828 at 29 Tottenham Street in London, aged 25. Delacroix paid tribute to Boningtons work in a letter to Théophile Thoré in 1861 and it reads, in part, When I met him for the first time, I too was very young and was making studies in the Louvre, this was around 1816 or 1817. Already in this genre, which was an English novelty at that time, to Laurence Binyon however, Boningtons extraordinary technical gift was also his enemy. There is none of the interest of struggle in his painting, Bonington had a number of close followers, such as Roqueplan and Isabey in France, and Thomas Shotter Boys, James Holland, William Callow and John Scarlett Davis in England. In addition, there were copies and forgeries of his work made in the period immediately after his death. A statue to him was erected outside the Nottingham School of Art by Watson Fothergill, in addition, the house in which he was born is now named ‘Bonington House’ and is Grade II listed. The Wallace Collection has a large group of 35 works
37.
John Wootton
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John Wootton was an English painter of sporting subjects, battle scenes and landscapes, and illustrator. As such, his paintings were very fashionable and were sought after by those among the highest strata of the British society and these included figures such as George II of Great Britain, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the Duke of Marlborough. He is now somewhat eclipsed in the field of paintings by the later George Stubbs. John Wootton died in London on 13 November 1764, examples of his animal painting can be found in the Tate Gallery, London, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, the Yale Center for British Art, and in the Elizabethan Great Hall at Longleat. British art English school of painting List of British artists Lee, Sidney, ed. Wootton, London, Smith, Elder & Co. p.440. British Artists and War, The Face of Battle in Paintings and Prints, penguin Books, Yale History of Art series. John Wootton, Landscape and Sporting Art in Early Georgian England, kenwood House, London, the Iveagh Bequest
38.
Benjamin Marshall
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Benjamin Marshall was an English sporting and animal painter. He was a follower of George Stubbs and studied under Lemuel Abbott for a period of time. He was born in Seagrave, Leicestershire to Charles and Elizabeth Marshall, after 1792, he began painting animals, settling at Newmarket in 1812 near the racetrack. He exhibited thirteen pictures, chiefly portraits of racehorses and their owners, at the Royal Academy, 1801–12 and his portraits of sporting characters included those of J. G. Shaddick,1806, and Daniel Lambert,1807. Two pictures of fighting cocks, exhibited in 1812, were engraved in mezzotint by Charles Turner in the year with the titles of The Cock in Feather. Marshalls exhibited and engraved works represent but a proportion of the commissions which he carried out for patrons of the turf. A number of his pictures of horses are in the collection of Sir Walter Gilbey, about 1800–10, Marshall was living at 23 Beaumont Street, Marylebone. He had various addresses in London, but was often described as Marshall of Newmarket. He died on 29 January 1835, dictionary of National Biography,1901 supplement
39.
Alfred Munnings
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Sir Alfred James Munnings, KCVO, PRA was known as one of Englands finest painters of horses, and as an outspoken critic of Modernism. Engaged by Lord Beaverbrooks Canadian War Memorials Fund, he earned several prestigious commissions after the Great War that made him wealthy, Alfred Munnings was born on 8 October 1878 at Mendham Mill, Mendham, Suffolk, across the River Waveney from Harleston in Norfolk. His father was the miller and Alfred grew up surrounded by the activity of a working mill with horses. At fourteen he was apprenticed to a Norwich printer, designing and drawing advertising posters for the six years. When his apprenticeship ended, he became a full-time painter, the loss of sight in his right eye in an accident in 1898 did not deflect his determination to paint, and in 1899 two of his pictures were shown at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. He painted rural scenes, frequently of subjects such as Gypsies and horses and he was associated with the Newlyn School of painters, and while there met Florence Carter-Wood, a young horsewoman and painter. They married on 19 January 1912 but she tried to kill herself on their honeymoon, Munnings bought Castle House, Dedham, in 1919, describing it as the house of my dreams. He used the house and adjoining studio extensively throughout the rest of his career, Munnings remarried in 1920, his second wife was another horsewoman, Violet McBride. There were no children from either marriage, although his second wife encouraged him to accept commissions from society figures, Munnings became best known for his equine painting, he often depicted horses participating in hunting and racing. Although he volunteered to join the Army, he was assessed as unfit to fight, in 1917, his participation in the war was limited to a civilian job outside Reading, processing tens of thousands of Canadian horses en route to France — and often to death. Later, he was assigned to one of the horse remount depots on the Western Front, Munnings talent was employed in his position as war artist to the Canadian Cavalry Brigade, under the patronage of Max Aitken in the latter part of the war. During the war he painted scenes, including a mounted portrait of General Jack Seely Warrior in 1918. Munnings worked on canvas a few thousand yards from the German front lines. When General Seelys unit was forced into a hasty withdrawal, the artist discovered what it was like to come under shellfire, Munnings also painted Charge of Flowerdews Squadron in 1918. This role of horses was critical and under-reported, and in fact, the Canadian War Records Exhibition at the Royal Academy after wars end included forty-five of Munnings canvasses. Munnings was elected president of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1944 and he was made a Knight Bachelor in 1944, and appointed a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order in the 1947 New Year Honours. His presidency is best known for the speech he gave in 1949. The broadcast was heard by millions of listeners to BBC radio, an evidently inebriated Munnings claimed that the work of Cézanne, Matisse and Picasso had corrupted art
40.
Shakespeare
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William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the worlds pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called Englands national poet, and the Bard of Avon and his extant works, including collaborations, consist of approximately 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children, Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a career in London as an actor, writer. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, in his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights. Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and it was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as not of an age, but for all time. In the 20th and 21st centuries, his works have been adapted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship. His plays remain highly popular and are studied, performed. William Shakespeare was the son of John Shakespeare, an alderman and a successful glover originally from Snitterfield, and Mary Arden and he was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptised there on 26 April 1564. His actual date of birth unknown, but is traditionally observed on 23 April. This date, which can be traced back to an 18th-century scholars mistake, has proved appealing to biographers because Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 and he was the third child of eight and the eldest surviving son. At the age of 18, Shakespeare married 26-year-old Anne Hathaway, the consistory court of the Diocese of Worcester issued a marriage licence on 27 November 1582. The next day, two of Hathaways neighbours posted bonds guaranteeing that no lawful claims impeded the marriage, twins, son Hamnet and daughter Judith, followed almost two years later and were baptised 2 February 1585. Hamnet died of unknown causes at the age of 11 and was buried 11 August 1596, after the birth of the twins, Shakespeare left few historical traces until he is mentioned as part of the London theatre scene in 1592. The exception is the appearance of his name in the bill of a law case before the Queens Bench court at Westminster dated Michaelmas Term 1588 and 9 October 1589
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Joseph Nollekens
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Joseph Nollekens R. A. was a sculptor from London generally considered to be the finest British sculptor of the late 18th century. Nollekens was born on 11 August 1737 at 28 Dean Street, Soho, London and he studied first under another Flemish immigrant in London, the sculptor Peter Scheemakers, before studying and working as an antiques dealer, restorer and copier in Rome from 1760 or 1762. On his return to London in 1770 he set up as a maker of busts and monuments at 9, Mortimer Street, although he preferred working on mythological subjects, it was through his portrait busts that he became famous and one of the most fashionable portrait sculptors in Britain. He also made busts of figures from the arts such as Benjamin West, most of his subjects were represented in classical costume. Faith, a commissioned by Henry Howard, following the death of his wife Maria in 1788 in childbirth at Corby Castle, is said to be Nollekens finest work. The sculpture can be seen in the Howard Chapel at the Parish Church of Wetheral, some subjects were produced in large numbers, more than 70 replicas of Nollekens bust of Pitt are known. Nollekens became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1771 and an academician the following year. He died in London in 1823, having made a fortune from his work. He is buried in Paddington Parish Church with a monument by William Behnes, a biography Nollekens and his Times by his executor John Thomas Smith was published in 1828, portraying him as a grotesque miser. It has been described as perhaps the most candid biography ever published in the English language, no.44 Mortimer Street in Fitzrovia stands on the site of the house where Nollekens died and has a blue plaque commemorating him. American poet Randall Jarrell commemorated Nollekens in his poem entitled Nollekens, joseph Nollekens Three goddesses, Nollekens Europe in the age of enlightenment and revolution, a catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Nollekens
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Francis Leggatt Chantrey
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Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey RA was an English sculptor. He became the leading sculptor in Regency era Britain, producing busts. He left the Chantrey Bequest or Chantrey Fund for the purchase of works of art for the nation, Chantrey was born at Jordanthorpe near Norton, where his father had a small farm. His father, who dabbled in carpentry and wood-carving, died when Francis was twelve. In 1802 Chantrey paid £50 to buy out of his apprenticeship with Ramsay and immediately set up a studio as a portrait artist in Sheffield. For several years he divided his time between Sheffield and London, studying intermittently at the Royal Academy Schools, in the summer of 1802 he travelled to Dublin, where he fell very ill, losing all his hair. He exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy for a few years from 1804, but from 1807 onwards devoted himself mainly to sculpture. Asked later in life, as a witness in a case, whether he had ever worked for any other sculptors, he replied, No. His first recorded marble bust was one of the Rev. James Wilkinson and his first imaginative sculpture, a head of Satan was shown at the Royal Academy in 1808. Three of them were shown at the Royal Academy that year, on 23 November 1809 he married his cousin, Mary Ann Wale at St Marys Church, Twickenham. He also bought land to two more houses, a studio and offices. In 1811 he showed six busts in the Royal Academy, the subjects included Horne Tooke and Sir Francis Burdett, two political figures he greatly admired, his early mentor John Raphael Smith, and Benjamin West. Joseph Nollekens placed the bust of Tooke between two of his own, and the given to it is said to have had a significant influence on Chantreys career. In the wake of the exhibition he received commissions amounting to £2,000, in 1813 he was able to raise his price for a bust to a hundred and fifty guineas, and in 1822 to two hundred. He visited Paris in 1814, and again in 1815, this time with his wife, Thomas Stothard, in 1819 he went to Italy, accompanied by the painter John Jackson, and an old friend named Read. In Rome he met Thorvaldsen and Canova, getting to know the latter especially well, in 1828 Chantrey set up his own foundry in Eccleston Place, not far from his house and studio, where large-scale works in bronze, including equestrian statues, could be cast. His assistants would make a clay model based on the drawings. A plaster cast would be made of the model
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Jacob Epstein
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Sir Jacob Epstein KBE was a British sculptor who helped pioneer modern sculpture. He was born in the United States, and moved to Europe in 1902 and he often produced controversial works which challenged taboos on what was appropriate subject matter for public artworks. He also made paintings and drawings, and often exhibited his work, Epsteins parents were Polish Jewish refugees, living on New Yorks Lower East Side. His family was middle-class, and he was the third of five children and his interest in drawing came from long periods of illness, as a child he suffered from pleurisy. He studied art in his native New York as a teenager, sketching the city, for his livelihood, he worked in a bronze foundry by day, studying drawing and sculptural modelling at night. Epsteins first major commission was to illustrate Hutchins Hapgoods Spirit of the Ghetto, the money from the commission was used by Epstein to move to Paris. Moving to Europe in 1902, he studied in Paris at the Académie Julian and he settled in London in 1905 and married Margaret Dunlop in 1906. In 1911 he became a British subject, many of Epsteins works were sculpted at his two cottages in Loughton, Essex, where he lived first at number 49 then 50, Baldwins Hill. He served briefly in the 38th Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers, in London, Epstein involved himself with a bohemian and artistic crowd. Revolting against ornate, pretty art, he made bold, often harsh and his sculpture is distinguished by its vigorous rough-hewn realism. Avant-garde in concept and style, his works often shocked his audience, people in Liverpool, however, nicknamed his nude male sculpture over the door of Lewiss department store Dickie Lewis. The female figures in particular may be seen deliberately to incorporate the posture and hand gestures of Buddhist, Jain, between 1913 and 1915, Epstein was associated with the short-lived Vorticism movement and produced one of his best known sculptures The Rock Drill. In 1915, John Quinn, wealthy American collector and patron to the modernists, in 1916, Epstein was commissioned by Viscount Tredegar to produce a bronze head of Newport poet W. H. Davies. A commission from Holden for the new building of the London Electric Railway generated another controversy in 1929. Eventually a compromise was reached to modify the smaller of the two represented on Day. But the controversy affected his commissions for work which dried up until World War II. Between the late 1930s and the mid-1950s, numerous works by Epstein were exhibited in Blackpool, adam, Consummatum Est, Jacob and the Angel and Genesis, and other works, were initially displayed in an old drapery shop surrounded by red velvet curtains. The crowds were ushered in at the cost of a shilling by a barker on the street, after a small tour of American fun fairs, the works were returned to Blackpool and were exhibited in the anatomical curiosities section of Louis Tussauds waxworks
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Henry Moore
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Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English artist. He is best known for his monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War and his forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moores works are usually suggestive of the body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces, many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire. Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner and he became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy, despite this, he lived frugally, most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. Henry Moore was born in Castleford, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Mary Baker and his father was of Irish origin and became pit deputy and then under-manager of the Wheldale colliery in Castleford. He was an autodidact with an interest in music and literature, determined that his sons would not work in the mines, he saw formal education as the route to their advancement. Henry was the seventh of eight children in a family often struggled with poverty. He attended infant and elementary schools in Castleford, where he began modelling in clay and he professed to have decided to become a sculptor when he was eleven after hearing of Michelangelos achievements at a Sunday School reading. On his second attempt he was accepted at Castleford Grammar School, which several of his siblings had attended, where his headmaster soon noticed his talent and interest in medieval sculpture. His art teacher broadened his knowledge of art and, with her encouragement, he determined to make art his career, despite his early promise, Moores parents had been against him training as a sculptor, a vocation they considered manual labour with few career prospects. After a brief introduction as a student teacher, Moore became a teacher at the school he had attended, upon turning eighteen, Moore volunteered for army service. He was the youngest man in the Prince of Wales Own Civil Service Rifles regiment and was injured in 1917 in a gas attack, on 30 November at Bourlon Wood, during the Battle of Cambrai. After recovering in hospital, he saw out the remainder of the war as a training instructor. He recalled later, for me the war passed in a haze of trying to be a hero. And I still have that feeling, after the Great War Moore received an ex-servicemans grant to continue his education and in 1919 he became a student at the Leeds School of Art, which set up a sculpture studio especially for him
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Paul Sandby
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Paul Sandby RA was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Sandby was born in Nottingham, and baptised there in 1731, in 1745 he moved to London where he followed his brother Thomas in obtaining an appointment in the military drawing department at the Tower of London. He was later appointed draughtsman to the survey and he left his post with the survey in 1751, and spent some time living with his brother, who had been appointed Deputy Ranger of Windsor Great Park. There he assisted his brother, and made a series of drawings of the castle, the town, and its neighbourhood, which were purchased by Sir Joseph Banks. He also etched a number of plates after his own drawings, a hundred of which (including views of Edinburgh. In 1760 he issued twelve etchings of The Cries of London and he also made many plates after other artists, including his brother. In 1753–4 he published, anonymously, several single caricatures satirising William Hogarth and he returned to the attack in 1762, and produced other satirical work sporadically throughout his career. It is not recorded how long Sandby lived with his brother at Windsor, but he is said to have spent part of year in London. On 3 May 1757 he married Anne Stogden, and by 1760 he was settled in London, in 1760 he contributed to the first exhibition of the Society of Artists. He exhibited regularly with the society until the foundation of the Royal Academy eight years later, in 1768, he was appointed chief drawing master to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, a position he retained until 1799. On the formation of the Royal Academy in the year he was one of the 28 founder-members nominated by George III. He often served on its council, and contributed to all, Sandby made extensive journeys around Britain and Ireland, sketching scenery and ancient monuments. He died at his house in Paddington on 7 November 1809 and he was described in his obituaries as the father of modern landscape painting in watercolors. English school of painting Monkhouse, William Cosmo, London, Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 251–254. The Collection in the City of Hamilton Art Gallery, the Great Age of British Watercolours. ISBN 3-7913-1254-5 Anne Lyles & Robin Hamlyn, British watercolours from the Oppé Collection. ISBN 1-85437-240-8 Michael Charlesworth, Landscape and Vision, Chapter One, Michael Charlesworth, Thomas Sandby climbs the Hoober Stand, Art History,19,2, Paul Sandby online. Paul Sandby, Unlikely Founder of Dazzling School of European Art, Souren Melikian, text by Alexander J Finberg & E A Taylor
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William Blake
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William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a figure in the history of the poetry. His so-called prophetic works were said by 20th century critic Northrop Frye to form what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language. His visual artistry led 21st-century critic Jonathan Jones to proclaim him far, in 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBCs poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre and his paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as Pre-Romantic. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French, despite these known influences, the singularity of Blakes work makes him difficult to classify. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street in Soho and he was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blakes father, James, was a hosier and he attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of ten, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake. Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters, William was baptised on 11 December at St Jamess Church, Piccadilly, the Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer. The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school and he read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry, his work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson, Edmund Spenser. On 4 August 1772, Blake was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street, at the sum of £52.10, at the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. This aside, Basires style of line-engraving was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that Blakes instruction in this form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life. After two years, Basire sent his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London and his experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies, ackroyd notes that. the most immediate would have been of faded brightness and colour
