Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

Eugène Delacroix ⎆ was a French ⎆ romantic painter regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the french Romantic school.

Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement ⎆.

A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish writer Walter Scott and the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

In contrast to the Neoclassical perfectionism of his chief rival Ingres ⎆, Delacroix took for his inspiration the art of Rubens and painters of the Venetian Renaissance, with an attendant emphasis on colour and movement rather than clarity of outline and carefully modeled form.

Dramatic and romantic content characterized the central themes of his maturity, and led him not to the classical models of greek and roman art, but to travel in North Africa, in search of the exotic.
Friend and spiritual heir to Théodore Géricault, Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action.

However, Delacroix was given neither to sentimentality nor bombast, and his Romanticism was that of an individualist. In the words of Baudelaire:

"Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible".

Domenico Ghirlandaio | Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, 1488

Title: Portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni.

Author: Domenico Ghirlandaio - Italian ⎆ Early Renaissance painter ⎆ (1449-1494).

Date: 1488.

Medium: Mixed media on panel.

Dimensions: 77 x 49 cm.

Current location: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid.

Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA | The Royal Academy’s first president

From Royal Academy of Arts:

The Royal Academy’s first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (1723-1792), was considered the leading portrait painter of his day and a key figure in the Academy. Still in print today, and widely translated, his groundbreaking Discourses in Art were hugely influential on the development of British art.

The son of a Devonshire reverend and schoolmaster, Reynolds received a comprehensive education before being apprenticed to the portrait painter Thomas Hudson aged 17. In 1749, he was invited to join the HMS Centurion on a voyage to the Mediterranean; Reynolds disembarked in Rome and stayed there for two years, studying the Old Masters. While in Rome he suffered from a bad cold which left him partially deaf so that he often carried an ear trumpet round with him, and was often depicted carrying the trumpet.

Soon after his return, Reynolds set up a studio in London and quickly established himself as a sought-after portrait painter, making important aristocratic connections in the process. His circle of friends included 18th-century notables such as the writer Dr Samuel Johnson, actor and playwright David Garrick and statesman Edmund Burke. He painted memorable portraits of all of them.

Juan de Flandes | Northern Renaissance painter

Juan de Flandes (John of Flanders, c. 1460 - 1519) was an Early Netherlandish painter who was active in Spain from 1496-1519; his actual name is unknown, although an inscription Juan Astrat on the back of one work suggests a name such as "Jan van der Straat". Jan Sallaert, who became a master in Ghent in 1480, has also been suggested.