Artists - Period And Style Flashcards
Claude Monet
1840 - 1926
Impressionist
The term ‘Impressionism’ derived from his painting ‘Impression, soleil levant’ (Impression, Sunrise), exhibited in 1874 independent alternative to the Salon de Paris.
After moving to Giverny at 50, spent last 27 years of his life painting lilies
James (Abbott McNeill) Whistler
1834 - 1903
Tonalist & Aestheticist
American artist active during American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting.
His signature for his paintings took the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail, reflecting that: his art is marked by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative.
He found a parallel between painting and music, and entitled many of his paintings “arrangements”, “harmonies”, and “nocturnes”, emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony. His most famous painting, completed at the age of 36, is ‘Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1’, commonly known as Whistler’s Mother - a revered and often parodied portrait of motherhood.
(Eugène Henri) Paul Gaugin
1848 – 1903
Post-Impressionist
Recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinct from Impressionism. Toward the end of his life, he spent ten years in French Polynesia.
His work was influential on the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, and he is well known for his relationship with Vincent and Theo van Gogh. Gauguin’s art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of dealer Ambroise Vollard.
Important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way for Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
Marc Chagall
1887 – 1985
Expressionist
Early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.
Franz von Stuck
1863-1928
Symbolist
A founder of the Munich Secession, known in the late 19th century as Munich’s ‘painter prince’.
Subject matter primarily from mythology, inspired by work of Arnold Böcklin. Large forms dominate most of his paintings and indicate his proclivities for sculpture. His seductive female nudes are a prime example of popular Symbolist content.
Stuck paid much attention to the frames for his paintings and generally designed them himself with such careful use of panels, gilt carving and inscriptions that frames must be considered an integral part of the overall piece
Emile Claus
1849 - 1924
Stimulated by his friend, the author Camille Lemonnier, and influenced by the French impressionists, like Claude Monet whose works he got to know during his trips to Paris in the 1890s, Claus gradually shifted from naturalistic realism to a very personal style of impressionism called ‘luminism’, because of the luminous palette he used.
His paintings The Beet Harvest (1890) and The Ice Birds (1891) represent important turning points in this evolution.
Claus is considered to be the pioneer of Belgian luminism. In 1904, he founded the society Vie et Lumière (‘life and light’) and became known as the ‘sun painter’ and the ‘painter of the Lys’. A magnificent example is his painting Cows crossing the Lys (1899), which shows a group of motley cows being herded across a small river, with sunlights reflecting off the moving water. The painting hangs in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels (Belgium).
During the First World War, while in exile in London, he painted a series of views on the river Thames, known as “reflections on the Thames”, in the style of Monet. They are his most traditional impressionist works. On 14 June 1924, Claus died in Astene. His last words were: “Bloemen, bloemen, bloemen …” (‘Flowers, flowers, flowers’). The day before his death, he had painted a pastel of a bouquet of flowers, sent to him by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium. Claus is buried in his own garden in Astene and a street is named after him in Brussels.
Ellsworth Kelly
1923-2015
American painter, sculptor, and printmaker associated with hard-edge painting, Color Field painting and minimalism. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques emphasizing line, color and form, similar to the work of John McLaughlin and Kenneth Noland. Kelly often employed bright colors. He lived and worked in Spencertown, New York.
Timarete (Thamyris, Tamaris, Thamar)
5th century BC
Ancient Greek painter and daughter of the Micon the Younger of Athens, best known for a panel painting of the goddess of Diana that was kept at Ephesus at the time of Archelaus I of Macedon (though this is no longer extant).
According to Pliny the Elder, she “scorned the duties of women and practised her father’s art.”
Eirene (Irene)
1st Century BC
Greek daughter of a painter, reported by Pliny the Elder to have created an image of a girl that was housed at Eleusis.
the Greek author Clement of Alexandria also mentions her father Cratinus, a painter of whom we have no other record. Pliny’s direct statement that she learned her skill at her father’s feet, repeated in the case of Aristarete , is worthy of notice. Pliny mentions just one of her works, saying that she painted “a maiden” (puellam) at Eleusis. That this portrait might have had some significance in the rites of the mystery cult of Demeter, an Olympian who may be characterized broadly as an Earth Mother or goddess of corn, seems to be supported by two considerations. First, Eleusis was the ancient center of Demeter worship. Second, the Latin puella translates directly from the Greek koré, which was the cultic name of Persephone, Demeter’s daughter and a major figure in her myth, found in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
Iaia of Cyzicus, sometimes (incorrectly) called Lala or Lalla
a Roman painter, alive during the time of Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BC).
Born in Cyzicus,[3] she was a famous painter and ivory engraver. Iaia likely came to Rome to meet the demand for art there in the late Republic.[4] Most of her paintings are said to be of women. Pliny attributes to her a large panel painting of an old woman and a self-portrait. She was said to have worked faster and painted better than her male competitors, Sopolis and Dionysius, which enabled her to earn more than them. Iaia remained unmarried all her life.
Iaia is one of the six female artists of antiquity mentioned in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History
Iaia is one of three women artists mentioned in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris.
Aristarete
Ancient Greek painter. Little is known about her, including where and when she lived.[1] Although none of her works are known to be extant, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History contains mention of hers depicting Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine.[2] Pliny includes Aristarete in a list of six ancient Greek female artists. He also writes that Aristarete was trained by her father, Nearchos
Kalypso
Both an imperfect text and the fact that this name was usually reserved for immortals has led some to suggest that Calypso (the sea nymph who imprisoned Odysseus on her island for 11 years) is actually the mythical subject of another painting by Irene. If this is true, the three portraits that follow the name Calypso are actually Irene’s, making her the author of “An Old Man,” “The Juggler Theodorus,” and “The Dancer Alcisthenes”—five paintings in all. Further, if this Alcisthenes is identical with a man of the same name mentioned in an extant inscription at Delphi, then we may date Irene’s working career to the years around 200 bce.
Olympias
One Olympias painted also, but nothing is known relative to her, except that she had Autobulus for a pupil
Leon Batista Alberti
1404-1472
Renaissance architect who recognised and named among his florentine contemporaries: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia and Masaccio as ‘not to be ranked below any who was ancient’
Filippo Brunelleschi
1377-1446
Florentine Renaissance architect celebrated for his design of ‘the first Renaissance building’, the Foundling hospital in Florence in 1419, and the invention of linear perspective. He was praised for his engineering skill and revival of antique architectural forms, and was possibly the first architect or artist since ancient times thitherto, to visit Rome to study its ancient monuments.
Other attributions include the dome of the Florence Cathedral (working with sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti, innovating an engineering system that did away with centering), the designs of the Pazzi Chapel (commissioned 1429) and St Lorenz chapel sacristy (began 1421).
A ‘new type’ of architect who had not served an apprenticeship in a masons’ lodge; son of a well off Florentine notary, benefiting from a liberal education.
