1727-1788 British Thomas Gainsborough Locations English painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was the contemporary and rival of Joshua Reynolds, who honoured him on 10 December 1788 with a valedictory Discourse (pubd London, 1789), in which he stated: If ever this nation should produce genius sufficient to acquire to us the honourable distinction of an English School, the name of Gainsborough will be transmitted to posterity, in the history of Art, among the very first of that rising name. He went on to consider Gainsborough portraits, landscapes and fancy pictures within the Old Master tradition, against which, in his view, modern painting had always to match itself. Reynolds was acknowledging a general opinion that Gainsborough was one of the most significant painters of their generation. Less ambitious than Reynolds in his portraits, he nevertheless painted with elegance and virtuosity. He founded his landscape manner largely on the study of northern European artists and developed a very beautiful and often poignant imagery of the British countryside. By the mid-1760s he was making formal allusions to a wide range of previous art, from Rubens and Watteau to, eventually, Claude and Titian. He was as various in his drawings and was among the first to take up the new printmaking techniques of aquatint and soft-ground etching. Because his friend, the musician and painter William Jackson (1730-1803), claimed that Gainsborough detested reading, there has been a tendency to deny him any literacy. He was, nevertheless, as his surviving letters show, verbally adept, extremely witty and highly cultured. He loved music and performed well. He was a person of rapidly changing moods, humorous, brilliant and witty. At the time of his death he was expanding the range of his art, having lived through one of the more complex and creative phases in the history of British painting. He painted with unmatched skill and bravura; while giving the impression of a kind of holy innocence, he was among the most artistically learned and sophisticated painters of his generation. It has been usual to consider his career in terms of the rivalry with Reynolds that was acknowledged by their contemporaries; while Reynolds maintained an intellectual and academic ideal of art, Gainsborough grounded his imagery on contemporary life, maintaining an aesthetic outlook previously given its most powerful expression by William Hogarth. His portraits, landscapes and subject pictures are only now coming to be studied in all their complexity; having previously been viewed as being isolated from the social, philosophical and ideological currents of their time, they have yet to be fully related to them. It is clear, however, that his landscapes and rural pieces, and some of his portraits, were as significant as Reynolds acknowledged them to be in 1788.  Related Paintings of Thomas Gainsborough :. | Mr and Mrs William Hallett | Cornard wood | Ritratto di Giovane | Saintes | The Painter's Daughters Chasing a Butterfly |
Related Artists:
pehr hillestrom
Pehr Hilleström (1732-1816) var en svensk målare och vävare, professor vid Konstakademiens läroverk från 1794 och dess direktör från 1810. I unga år var han en av Sveriges främsta gobelängvävare men övergick sedan till måleri. Han är mest känd för sina vardagsskildringar av sin tids levnadssätt. Han målade pigor och tjänstefolk som arbetar, överklassen i de fina salarna, enkelt folk i stugorna och bilder från olika bruksmiljöer. Genom det räknas han som den största skildraren av den gustavianska samtiden. Pehr Hilleström är far till konstnären Carl Petter Hilleström och farfars farfars far till Gustaf Hilleström. Pehr Hilleström föddes i 1732 Väddö, Roslagen, troligtvis den 18 november. Han växte upp under fattiga omständigheter på Väddö prästgård vid sin farbror som var kyrkoherde där. Han var son till en militär och äldst i en syskonskara på 12 barn. Hans far råkade redan 1719 i rysk fångenskap men hade 1723 lyckats återvända till Sverige och då tagit sin tillflykt till brodern på Väddö. 1743 flyttade familjen Hilleström från Roslagen till Stockholm, där Pehr, 10 år gammal, sattes i lära hos tapet- och landskapsmålaren Johan Philip Korn (1727-1796) samt mellan åren 1744-1747 även hos den invandrade tyske solfjädermålaren Christian Fehmer. Utöver detta fick han även undervisning vid kungliga ritareakademin där Guillaume Thomas Taraval (1701-1750) och Jean Eric Rehn (1717-1793) var läromästare. Efter inrådan från Carl Hårleman sattes Hilleström 1745 i lära hos Jean Louis Duru (-1753). Duru var hautelissevävare och hade kallats till Sverige för att göra textila utsmyckningen av Stockholms slott. Tanken var att Hilleström skulle utbildas till Durus medhjälpare. 1749 visade Hilleström upp ett första läroprov som visades upp för deputationen som gillade det så mycket så att han fick en belöning på 180 daler kopparmynt. När Duru dog i slutet av 1753 så fick Hilleström fullborda den påbörjade kappan för tronhimmelen i det kungliga audiensrummet. Han var då så skicklig att det knappt kunde märkas någon skillnad mellan hans och hans lärares arbete. Lönen var blygsam men vid 1756 års riksdag fick han samma årslön som Duru hade haft, och han fick en beställning på ett vävt porträtt av Hårleman utfört i hautelisse. Åren 1757-58 var Hilleström på en längre och för tidens konstnärer sedvanlig studieresa till utlandet. Färden gick till Paris, Belgien och Holland, bland annat med en vidareutbildning i gobelängteknikerna som mål. I Paris blir Hilleström erbjuden att studera måleri i François Bouchers atelj??, men störst intryck tog han där av genre- och stillebenmålaren Jean-Baptiste-Sim??on Chardin, som undervisade honom vid franska målarakademien. Väl hemma i Stockholm fortsatte han visserligen att göra tapeter, mattor, stolsöverdrag och dylikt för hovet. Men så småningom fylldes slottet behov av vävnader samtidigt som Hilleström fortsatte studera måleri.
Hippolyte Berteaux
(1843 - 1928)
Ambrosius Bosschaert
(Antwerp, January 18, 1573?CThe Hague, 1621) was a still life painter of the Dutch Golden Age.He started his career in Antwerp, but spend most of it in Middelburg (1593?C1613), where he became dean of the painters' guild. He later worked in Amsterdam (1614), Bergen op Zoom (1615?C1616), Utrecht (1616?C1619), and Breda (1619). He specialised in painting still lifes with flowers. In 1587, Ambrosius Bosschaert moved from Antwerp to Middelburg with his family because of the threat of religious persecution. At the age of twenty-one, he joined the cityes Guild of Saint Luke. Not long after, Bosschaert had established himself as a leading figure in the fashionable floral painting genre.