On 30 Jun, 2015 With
Rossetti did not have the natural technical talent that is seen in the small detail and brilliant color of a typical Pre-Raphaelite painting, and his early oil paintings, the Girlhood of Mary Virgin (1849) and the Ecce Ancilla Domini (1850), were produced only at the expense of great technical effort. In the less demanding technique of watercolor, however, Rossetti clearly revealed his imaginative power. The series of small watercolors of the 1850s produced such masterpieces as Dante’s Dream (1856) and the Wedding of St. George and the Princess Sabra (1857). In almost all of Rossetti’s paintings of the 1850s he used Elizabeth Siddal as his model. Discovered in a hat shop in 1850, she was adopted by the Brotherhood as their ideal of feminine beauty. In 1852 she…
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On 22 Aug, 2011 With
Anders Zorn is the famous Swedish painter. He is famous for his paintings of the people of Dalarna, the part of Sweden where he was born, and his nudes in the open space. He earned a world-wide reputation as a portraitist. He made seven journeys to the USA. His models included three different American presidents. His art made him wealthy and he was thus able to build up a considerable collection of art. The objects were not only bought in his native country but also during the many travels he made abroad. In their joint will, Anders and Emma Zorn donated their entire holdings to the Swedish State. Some of his most important works can be seen at the National…
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On 17 Aug, 2011 With
The Famous Fine Artist and his Muse Emma Zorn. Emma Zorn (née Lamm, 1860-1942) came from a well-to-do middle class Stockholm family. Her father, Martin Lamm, was a wholesale textile merchant and her mother, Henriette, had the maiden name of Meyerson. They had three children Herman, Anna and Emma. The family, which was of Jewish descent, had very pronounced cultural interests and conducted an intense social life. There were many artists in their circle of friends and it was also through such an acquaintance that Emma met Anders Zorn who was of the same age. She happened to be babysitting for her nephew Nils when he was to be painted by Zorn in the winter of 1881. It turned out to…
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On 26 Feb, 2011 With
The Death of Marat by Jacques-Louis David The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat ) is a 1793 painting in the Neoclassic style by Jacques-Louis David, it is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work refers to the assassination of radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat, killed on the 13th of July 1793 by Charlotte Corday, a French Revolutionary figure from a minor aristocratic family. Corday, who blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed “I killed one man to save 100,000.” La Mort de Marat Jacques – Louis David and a quote by fashion photographer Eugenio Recuenco Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793), was a…
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On 24 Feb, 2011 With
Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress of King Henry IV of France and quotes by different artistes The painting Gabrielle d’Estrées et une de ses soeurs by an unknown artist (c.1594), is of Gabrielle d’Estrées, mistress of King Henry IV of France, sitting up nude in a bath, holding (assumedly) Henry’s coronation ring, whilst her sister sits nude beside her and pinches her right nipple. Henry gave Gabrielle the ring as a token of his love shortly before she died. The painting is a symbolic announcement anticipating the birth of Gabrielle’s first child with Henry IV, César de Bourbon. Her maternity is expressed in three ways: her sister pinches the source of the new mother’s milk, the servant in the background knits in…
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On 18 Feb, 2011 With
Girl reading a letter by an open window by Johannes Vermeer
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On 11 Jan, 2011 With
In 1943 Picasso (age 62) then kept company with young art student Françoise Gilot (born in 1921). Their two children were Claude (1947) and Paloma (1949) who was named for the dove of peace that Picasso painted in support of the peace movement post World War II. Gilot, frustrated with Picasso’s relationships with other woman and his abusive nature left him in 1953. Gilot’s book “Life with Picasso” was published 11 years after their separation. In 1970 she married American physician-researcher Jonas Salk (who later died in 1995).
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On 26 Dec, 2010 With
A Picasso painting of one of his mistresses today sold for £70.3million ($106.5million) — a world record price for any artwork sold at auction. The 1932 Nude, Green Leaves And Bust, which had a pre-sale estimate of £46 million-£59million, was sold to an undisclosed telephone bidder at a Christie’s impressionist and modern art auction in New York. The sale — equivalent to £21,537 for each square inch of the artwork — surpassed the £65million paid for Giacometti’s L’Homme Qui Marche at Sotheby’s in February. The previous highest price for a Picasso was $104.2 million for Boy With A Pipe (The Young Apprentice) sold at Sotheby’s in New York in 2004. The painting, a large-scale depiction of Pablo Picasso’s mistress Marie-Thérèse…
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On 23 Dec, 2010 With
In 1927 Picasso met Marie-Thérèse Walter (1909-1977), a 17 year old who Picasso then lived with in a flat across the street from his marital home (while still married to Olga). Marie-Thérèse and Picasso had a daughter, Maya (Maria de la Concepcion) on October 5, 1935. (Picasso and Olga later separated although they remained married so Olga would not receive half of Picasso’s wealth — until she died in 1955.) Picasso’s relation with Marie was kept from Olga until Olga was told of Marie’s pregnancy. Marie understandably became jealous when Picasso started to fall in love with Dora Maar in 1936, a year after Maya was born. It was Marie-Thérèse who was the inspiration for many of Picasso’s famous Vollard…
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On 27 Oct, 2010 With
Odd Nerdrum (born April 8, 1944, Sweden), is a Norwegian figurative painter. The themes and style in Nerdrum’s work, based onanecdote and narrative, and the major influence of the painters Rembrandt and Caravaggio place him in direct conflict with the abstractionand conceptual art considered acceptable in much of his native Norway. Nerdrum creates six to eight paintings per year that have been categorized as: Still life paintings of small objects like bricks, portraits and self portraits whose subjects are dressed as if from some other time and place, and large paintings, allegorical in nature that present a sense of the apocalyptic, and again reference another time. Nerdrum claims that his art should be understood as kitsch rather than art as such. “On Kitsch“, a manifesto composed by Nerdrum describes…
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