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Henri Matisse | Notes of a Painter, 1908

Quotes from: 'Notes d'un Peintre' (Notes of a Painter), Henri Matisse, in 'La Grande Revue', Paris, 25 December 1908; as quoted in Artists on Art - from the 14th - 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London


"What I am after, above all, is expression. Sometimes it has been conceded that I have a certain technical ability but that, my ambition being limited, I am unable to proceed beyond a purely visual satisfaction such as can be procured from the mere sight of a picture.
But the purpose of a painter must not be conceived as separate from his pictorial means, and these pictorial means must be the more complete (I do not mean complicated) the deeper is his thought. I am unable to distinguish between the feeling I have for life and my way of expressing it".

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Frank-Benson--Summer-1909

Ten American Painters, 1897-1918

The Ten American Painters (also known as The Ten) was an artists' group formed in 1898 to exhibit their work as a unified group.
John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir and Childe Hassam were the driving forces behind the organization. Dissatisfied with the conservatism of the American art establishment, the three artists recruited seven others from Boston, New York City, and elsewhere on the East Coast, with the intention of creating an exhibition society that valued their view of originality, imagination, and exhibition quality.
The Ten achieved popular and critical success, and lasted two decades before dissolving.

Foundation

In America, popular painting styles usually originated on the east coast in cities like New York and Boston.
The Ten continued a tradition of artists forming new groups in reaction to a lack of support from existing artists' groups. Thus, the National Academy of Design (founded in 1825 by students dissatisfied by the conservatism of the older American Academy of the Fine Arts) eventually became too conservative to suit the artists who in 1877 initiated the Society of American Artists so they could meet and exhibit their work as a collective.

Frank-Benson--Summer-1909
Frank W. Benson | Summer, 1909

Frank-Benson-Summer

Frank Weston Benson | Impressionist painter

Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, (March 24, 1862 - November 15, 1951) was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors and etchings.
He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best known paintings (Eleanor, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Summer, Rhode Island School of Design Museum) depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine.
He also produced numerous oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes.

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Claude-Monet-The-Walk-Argenteuil-1875-Pushkin-Museum-Moscow

Claude Monet | Vita ed Opere

Claude-Oscar Monet (Parigi, 14 novembre 1840 - Giverny, 5 dicembre 1926) è stato un pittore Francese, considerato il padre dell'Impressionismo.

La formazione artistica

Claude Monet nacque nel 1840 a Parigi in rue Laffitte, secondogenito di Claude Adolphe e di Louise Justine Aubrée, una giovane vedova al suo secondo matrimonio. Nel 1845 i Monet si trasferirono a Sainte-Adresse, un sobborgo di Le Havre, dove il padre iniziò a gestire un negozio di drogheria e di forniture marittime insieme con il cognato Jacques Lecadre. A quindici anni l'adolescente Claude cominciò a disegnare a matita e a carboncino, e a vendere bonarie caricature di personaggi della città alla buona somma di una decina di franchi l'una, acquistando così una certa fama nella città insieme ad un modesto gruzzolo

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Eric Bowman, 1960 | Jazz music

Eric Bowman è nato a Pasadena ed è cresciuto a Orange County, in California. Essenzialmente un artista autodidatta, ha avuto un talento per il disegno fin da quando riesce a ricordare, sempre l'artista della scuola durante i suoi anni di scuola elementare e superiore.
Per vocazione, però, l'arte non è stata guidata da un percorso ben definito, ed è diventata un esercizio di apertura di porte che implicano opportunità artistiche.
Mentre il freelance a tempo pieno come artista commerciale lo ha tenuto lavoratore autonomo per molti anni, è stato solo un incontro casuale con due importanti pittori californiani alla fine degli anni '90 che Eric ha sperimentato un importante cambiamento nella sua visione del mondo dell'arte che lo ha portato a un nuovo viaggio nella pittura d'arte.

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Abbott-Handerson-Thayer-Angel-1887-Smithsonian-American-Art-Museum

Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921)

Painter, best known for his idealistic and allegorical paintings of women as angels and madonnas. His interest in color and nature led to his writing Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909), the basis for camouflage techniques in World War I.

Abbott Thayer: The Nature of Art

Abbott Handerson Thayer, is recognized today for his ethereal angels, portraits of women and children, landscapes, and delicate flower paintings. A New Englander who expressed the spiritual in much of his work, he was known as a “soul painter”. In his own time, his work was praised by critics even as it was popular with the public and sought after by collectors.

Thayer’s World

Thayer was born into a distinguished Boston family. In the 1880s and 1890s he was a leader in the New York art world. While he carried on a lively trade in portraits, he also began to paint allegorical figures, which had gained popularity among collectors with a taste for subjects from classical antiquity and the European Renaissance.
In 1891, his first wife Kate Bloede Thayer died; her loss changed Thayer’s art and his outlook on life in virtually every respect. Her family, intellectually and artistically distinguished German émigrés, had introduced Thayer to the romantic world of literature, music, and philosophy.

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Edward-Simmons-Le-printemps-1883

Edward Simmons (1852-1931)

Edward Emerson Simmons was an American Impressionist painter, remembered for his mural work.

Biography

His father was a Unitarian minister. He graduated from Harvard College in 1874, and was a pupil of Lefebvre and Boulanger in Paris, where he took a gold medal.
In 1894, Simmons was awarded the first commission of the Municipal Art Society, a series of murals - Justice, The Fates, and The Rights of Man - for the interior of the Criminal Courthouse at 100 Centre Street in Manhattan.
This court is the criminal branch of New York Supreme Court (the trial court in New York), where many New Yorkers serve on jury duty.
Later Simmons decorated the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel, the Library of Congress in Washington, and the mural series "Civilization of the Northwest" in the Minnesota State Capitol rotunda in Saint Paul.

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Claude-Monet-A-bouquet-of-gladioli-lilies-and-daisies-1878

Claude Monet | Life and artworks

Claude Monet - in full Oscar-Claude Monet (born November 14, 1840, Paris, France-died December 5, 1926, Giverny), French painter who was the initiator, leader and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist style.
In his mature works, Monet developed his method of producing repeated studies of the same motif in series, changing canvases with the light or as his interest shifted.
These series were frequently exhibited in groups-for example, his images of haystacks (1891) and the Rouen Cathedral, 1894.

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