Edgar Degas | Artistic career

Upon his return to France in 1859, Degas moved into a Paris studio large enough to permit him to begin painting The Bellelli Family—an imposing canvas he intended for exhibition in the Salon, although it remained unfinished until 1867.

He also began work on several history paintings: Alexander and Bucephalus and The Daughter of Jephthah in 1859–60; Sémiramis Building Babylon in 1860; and Young Spartans around 1860.

In 1861 Degas visited his childhood friend Paul Valpinçon in Normandy, and made the earliest of his many studies of horses.

He exhibited at the Salon for the first time in 1865, when the jury accepted his painting Scene of War in the Middle Ages, which attracted little attention.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Impressionist painter

Famed for his sensual charming scenes of pretty women, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was a far more complex and thoughtful painter than generally assumed.

He was a founding member of the Impressionist movement, nevertheless he ceased to exhibit with the group after 1877.

From the 1880s until well into the twentieth century, he developed a monumental, classically inspired style that influenced such avant-garde giants as Pablo Picasso.

Arthur Hacker | Pre-Raphaelite painter

Arthur Hacker (25 September 1858 - 12 November 1919) was an British classicist painter.

Born in London in 1858, Hacker was the son of Edward Hacker, a line engraver specialising in animal and sporting prints (who was also for many years the official Registrar of Births, Marriages and Deaths for Kentish Town in the St Pancras registration district, north London).

In his art he was most known for painting religious scenes and portraits, and his art was also influenced by his extensive travels in Spain and North Africa.

Pauline Palmer (1867-1938)

Pauline Lennards Palmer was an American artist based in Chicago. She is counted among Impressionism.

Early life

Pauline Lennards was born in McHenry, Illinois, the daughter of Nicholas Lennards, a merchant, and Frances Spanganacher Lennards. Her parents were both immigrants from Prussia; she grew up speaking German as her first language.

She studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago, under William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck and Kenneth Hayes Miller.

She pursued further training in Paris at Académie Colarossi, the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and with Paris-based American painter Richard E. Miller.

Leonardo da Vinci | Perché il bianco non è colore..

Trattato della Pittura - Parte seconda | Capitoli 235-258

Il Testo Integrale

Indice

235. Del colore dell'ombra di qualunque corpo.

236. Della prospettiva de' colori ne' luoghi oscuri.

237. Prospettiva de' colori.

238. De' colori.

239. Da che nasce l'azzurro dell'aria.

240. De' colori.

241. De' colori.

242. De' campi delle figure de' corpi dipinti.

243. Perché il bianco non è colore.

244. De' colori.

Ralph Hedley | Genre painter

Ralph Hedley (1848-1913) was a realist painter, woodcarver and illustrator, best known for his paintings portraying scenes of everyday life in the North East of England.

Biography

Born in Gilling West near Richmond, North Yorkshire, Ralph and his parents Richard and Anne Hedley moved to Newcastle upon Tyne around 1850, on the wave of industrial opportunity.

Aged about 13, he was apprenticed to Thomas Tweedy in his carving workshops, simultaneously studying art and design at the 'Government school' in Newcastle, and attending evening classes at the Life School under William Bell Scott. At the age of 14 he was awarded a bronze medal by government's Department of Art and Science.

After concluding his apprenticeship, Hedley established a successful woodcarving business, whilst also producing lithographs for the local press and taking every opportunity to work as an artist. He had the first of many paintings, The Newsboy, accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1879.

Reading / Lettura | Quotes and painting

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book".

Édouard Manet - Woman Reading, 1880

"La macchina tecnologicamente più efficiente che l’uomo abbia mai inventato è il libro" 

- Herman Northrop Frye CC FRSC (1912-1991) - Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.

Theodore Earl Butler | Impressionist painter

Theodore Earl Butler (1861–1936) was an American impressionist painter. He was born in Columbus, Ohio, and moved to Paris to study art. He befriended Claude Monet in Giverny, and married his stepdaughter, Suzanne Hoschedé. After her death he married her sister, Marthe Hoschedé. Butler was a founding member of the Society of Independent Artists.

Butler's chosen subjects were domestic scenes of family and friends and the French landscape. Although his Impressionistic approach to painting sometimes reflected the influence of his father-in-law, his work also suggests Post-Impressionist tendencies.

Biography

Butler studied at Marietta College in Ohio and graduated in 1882. He studied at the Art Students League with James Carroll Beckwith, Kenyon Cox and J. Alden Weir, and under William Merritt Chase from 1884-1886. One of Butler's first paintings is a copy of Menippus by Diego Velázquez (1639–1641) Standing Bearded Man, 1885. Butler then moved to study in Paris.

In Paris, Butler enrolled at La Grande-Chaumière, Académie Colarossi and at Académie Julian. Butler studied under Emile Carolus Duran. Carolus opened an art studio in 1873 on Boulevard Montparnasse, called the "81". Carolus, who was also known to have given free private lessons to some painters, introduced his students to the work of Claude Monet.