Winslow Homer Famous American Artist

Winslow Homer the famous American artist was born on 24th February 1836 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. He died 29 th September, 1910 in Prouts Neck, Maine. Was an American painter and illustrator well known for his paintings of marine subjects, which are among the most expressive of the 19th century American art.
His paintings are often deceptively simple at first glance but often have deeper meanings hidden in them when you’re familiar the the time they were made.

Early life and work of Winslow Homer American Artist

Homer was the second born of three sons or Charles Homer and Henrietta Homer who were both from long established New England families. The family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts when Winslow was six where he enjoyed the outdoor country life. Henrietta (Winslow’s mother) was a enthusiastic watercolourist who taught and encouraged Winslow’s drawing and painting. At school he was an average student with an apparent flare for art. After high school graduation at 19 he became an apprentice to a commercial lithographer John Bufford in Boston. Where he did repetitive commercial work for two years. By 1957 he had his freelance career underway by submitting his own work for publication in such publication including Ballou’s Pictorial and Harper’s Weekly where he turned down an offer to become a staff member. Homer later stated “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master, and never shall have any.”
In 1859 Homer moved from Boston to New York City where opened a studio in the Tenth Street Studio Building in New York City. He went to classes at the National Academy of Design, and studied briefly with Frédéric Rondel until 1863 where he learned the basic skills of painting. When the American Civil War broke out Homer was sent to the front lines by Harpers to be an artist correspondent where he sketched battle scenes and camp life. As the war continued he focussed more on painting including a series of war related paintings which he exhibited every year from 1863 to 1866 at the National Academy Of Design. Where his art received critical acclaim and he was elected an Associate Academician, then a full Academician in 1865.
After the war ended Homer focused back on simpler times of his childhood. Although his studio was in New York the city rarely featured in his art. In the warmer seasons he would travel to New England, Pennsylvania
and the Hudson River valley where he would camp, fish, hunt and make sketches.
In 1867 Homer spent about a year in Paris, France where his most critically acclaimed early painting, “Prisoners from the Front”, was on exhibit at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. Homer painted about twelve small paintings while in France. Even though he was impressed by French naturalism, contemporary fashion illustration and Japanese prints, , his art did not change dramatically after his return to America, except that his work became brighter.
During the 1870s Homer painted mainly rural scenes of farm life, young adults courting and children playing. In 1875 Homer decided to stop working as a commercial illustrator and live off the income he earned from his paintings which led to him struggling financially for a period. With his move to watercolour painting his art became more popular and sold better which improved his financial situation. Homer became more anti-social during the late 1870s deliberately avoiding the company of other people.

Move to England.
In 1881 Homer moved to the coastal village of Cullercoats in Northumberland, a remote fishing port where he lived for about two years. Now aged 45 his paintings became larger with many of the subjects being the working men and women who worked hard to earn their livelihood from the sea. His work in this period were predominately watercolours with a limited palette of colours to reflect the English coastal atmosphere. He wrote “The women are the working bees. Stout hardy creatures”. This period is generally considered to be a growth period for his artistic style which became more epic and heroi c.

Move to Prouts Neck

Homer returned to the U.S in 1883 and lived in Prouts Neck, Maine a remote fishing village. He lived on his families estate in a renovated carriage house seventy five feet from the ocean. Homer preferred solitude so he could focus his mind on his art subjects dealing with humans confronting the natural forces of nature.
In the years 1884-5 Homer ventured to warmer locations including Florida, Cuba, and the Bahamas, resulting in a series of watercolours as part of a commission for Century Magazine.
Homer often visited Key West, Florida between1888 and 1903 where some of his best known works are believed to have been produced including Palms in the Storm, The Gulf Stream, A Norther, Key West and Taking on Wet Provisions.
Homer finally achieved financial stability by 1900 with his paintings fetching good prices from museums as well as receiving rent from some real estate property. During his last decade he continued producing notable work mainly of dramatic seascapes without human figures.
Homer died in 1910 at the age of 74 in his Prouts Neck studio. His body was interred in the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Portland Museum of Art in Maine, purchased Homer’s Prouts Neck studio and restored it. They opened the property to the public in 2012.

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George Barbier Born in Nantes, France on 16 October 1882 in to a family of wealthy bourgeois traders. Died on March 16, 1932 at the age of 49. He was one of the most renowned French illustrators of the early 20^th century whose work was in the Art Nouveau style. He attended the studio of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was a versatile artist who is associated with fashion and design.

Barbier is most known for his fashion illustrations in Journal des dames, Gazette du bon ton and other notable French publications of the Art Deco period. He was a fashion illustrator for the leading fashion stylists (Vionnet Lanvin, Poiret, Paquin). His less well known works include his decorative fan designs that were published in the Journal des dames in 1912.

Barbier mounted his first exhibition in 1911 when he was 29 years old. This significantly advanced his career leading to commissions to design theatre and ballet costumes, to produce haute couture fashion illustrations and to illustrate multiple books.

Then for the following 20 years Barbier was considered a leader in a group of artists trained at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (School of Fine Arts) given the nickname “The Knights of the Bracelet” by Vogue magazine. This was considered an accolade of respect for their fashionable style of dress and flamboyant mannerisms. This group included Pierre Brissaud and Bernard Boutet de Monvel (who were both first cousins of Barbier), Charles Martin, Georges Lepape and Paul Iribe.

Barbier was also involved in designing wall paper, jewelry for Cartier and glass. He also wrote articles for the esteemed Gazette du bon ton. In the mid 1920’s he worked with Romain de Tirtoff a Russian-born French artist and designer known by the alias Erté. Together they designed costumes and sets for the legendary music hall Folies Bergère. His best known costume designs include a costume for Rudolph Valentino in the film Monsieur Beaucaire.

Barbier’s pochoir (stencil) prints and illustrations made in the 1920’s are considered to exemplify the Art Deco and Jazz Age in Paris with their amalgam of diverse influences including Orientalism, 18th century French paintings and classical Greek vase decorations.

He achieved mainstream recognition through his regular contributions to L’Illustration magazine and in 1929 wrote an introduction for Erté’s lauded art exhibition. Sadly Barbier died in 1932 while at the height of his career. He is buried in Cemetery Miséricorde, in Nantes.

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It’s difficult to find a definitive answer as to whether his surname is Konan or Tanigami. I have come to the conclusion his surname is most likely Tanigami because it is a common surname in Japan. So there has likely been some confusion where surnames are listed first in artist name lists. This has probably led to many people calling him Tanigami Konan.

So I will refer to him as Konan Tanigami unless I can find definitive evidence proving his name is the other way around.

Konan was born in Hyogo Prefecture in1879 and died in 1928. He was a painter and print maker in the nihonga period. He was the first Japanese artist to paint Western flowers and is known for his vivid colours and realistic flower paintings. He is best known for his kacho-e, which in English means “bird-and-flower pictures.” His known work includes five print albums of Western flowers that were published by the Kyoto-based Unsodo around 1917-1918. The albums were titled “A Picture Album of Western Plants and Flowers” (Seiyo Soka Zofu), the series is arranged by season. Two volumes are devoted to the spring flowers, two for summer and the final volume for the fall and winter. His most famous works were a series of 24 peony prints that were selected for exhibition at the Teiten (imperial exhibition) in 1917. More of His floral designs were published in three volumes as A Book of Flower Shapes and Forms in 1923 and 1926. Japanese art was a simple style which consisted of a small number of subjects with little background components. This gives more emphasis to the subjects portrayed in the works. When these prints were published was a time of change in the Japanese printing technology which was changing from traditional wood block prints to the more modern western techniques of lithography and photo mechanical printing. Artists and printers in Japan were losing income due to this new technology so decided to target the western markets by changing their style to be more like the Impressionist movement in France around that time.

So if you want to brighten up your space with some Japanese prints his art would make an excellent choice.

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Kōno Bairei’s life history.

Kōno Bairei’s life history – The key life events that are known about Kōno Bairei the famous Japanese artist include the following:

Kōno Bairei Born 3^rd March, 1844 – Died 20th February, 1895. He was a Japanese painter, art teacher and book illustrator. He was named Yasuda Bairei at birth and lived in Kyoto. He was involved with the Maruyama-Shijo school and was a master of kacho-ga painting (illustration of birds and flowers) in the Meiji period of Japan.

Kōno Bairei went to study with the Maruyama-school painter, Nakajima Raisho (1796–1871) in 1852. Raisho died in 1871 so Kōno Bairei decided to study with the Shijo-school master Shiokawa Bunrin (1808–77). Bairei’s work at that time included bird, flower and landscape prints that were influenced by western realism. Bairei’s published an Album of One Hundred Birds in 1881. Unlike most of the ukiyo-e artists, he trained as a classical Japanese painter.

Bairei went on to open an art school in 1880 and his students included young artists Uemura Shōen, Kawai Gyokudō, Takeuchi Seihō who would all become well known artists later in their lives.

Bairei was invited to show his work at the second Kyoto Exposition In 1873. Then he went on to show at other government sponsored expositions. From these expositions Bairei attracted the attention of the abbot of Higashi Honganji in Kyoto, Ōtani Kōshō, who patronized Bairei and invited him on visits to Kyushu in 1877 and the Kantō in 1885.

Later Bairei joined wih Mochizuki Gyokusen (1834-1913), Kubota Beisen (1852-1906), and other artists to co-found the Kyoto Prefectural Painting School in 1878. The Kyoto University of Arts that still operates today originated from this school. Bairei was in charge of the Northern School for a short peiod, before having a disagreement with another teaching artist Suzuki Hyakunen (1825-1891) which caused both men to leave. He returned in 1888, and left again in 1890 amid a controversy over changes that he proposed.

In 1886 Bairei and Kubota Beisen founded the Kyoto Young Painters Study Group, whose aim was to train and promote young painters based on talent rather than inheritance. The group was briefly successful, but again controversy disrupted the group and it dissolved. So Bairei decided to leave and Kyoto and went Nagoya for most of the remainder of that decade. Subsequently Bairei left Kyoto for Nagoya for much of the remainder of the decade.

Next in in 1895 Bairei returned to Kyoto and collaborated with his associate Beisen, founding the Kyoto Art Association, which launched one of the city’s first arts journals. They also established the first major competitive painting exhibition in Kyoto, called the “Exhibition of New and Old Art.”

Bairei had become one of the most promiant artists of that time with about 60 apprentices in his studio named Ryōuin-juku (‘the atelier of the transcending cloud’). His apprentises included: Uemura Shoen,Kawai Gyokudō, Kikuchi Hōbun, Takeuchi Seihō (1864-1942) (Bairei’s most well known student) and the recently rediscovered Tsuji Kakō (1871-1931).Bairei has been described as a stern instructor and even being quite harsh at times.

Originally woodblock prints were an afterthought, But Bairei went on to design woodblocks for illustrated books and produced he produced a series of prints, including: Bairei hyakuchō gafu (Bairei’s Album of 100 Birds); Bairei kachō gafu (Bairei’s Album Flowers and Birds) which illustrated birds and flowers over the four seasons of the year, and Bairei Gakan (Mirror of Bairei Paintings) which shows birds, flowers, animals, insects, landscapes, Mt. Fuji and more subjects. Bairei‘s kacho-ga and landscapes are considered to have “a faint touch of Western realism.”

Bairei suddenly announced his retirement from the art world In February 1891, and the following year he sent his “Landscape in Autumn” to the World Fair held in Chicago. Soon afte Bairei travelled with Bishop Kōshō of Higashi Honganji on the latterHonganji ‘s preaching tour. In 1893 Bairei achieved the honoured position of being a member of the Art Committee of the Imperial Household. In 1894 he was commissioned to paint murals in Higashi Honganji Tokyo, and soon after the completion of this work he died.

Here’s Kōno Bairei’s best known artworks

Van Gogh Life Story

Vincent Willem van Gogh – Born – 30 March 1853 – Died – 9 July 1890.

Painting Style

Van Gogh Life Story – He was a Post-Impressionist painter who became one of the most famous and influential artists in western art history. In the last decade of his life he created around 2,100 artworks, including about 860 oil paintings. The last two years of his life were the most productive of his vocation. His work includes landscapes, portraits, self portraits and still life paintings. Van Gogh is generally regarded as the most outstanding Dutch painter since Rembrandt because of the way his he used colour and his distinctive large brush strokes in his paintings towards the end of his phase of his life. His style influenced influenced early abstraction, Expressionism and Fauvism, well into the 20th-century.  His technique is referred to as Impasto. This is the Italian term for “mixture” or “paste”, and refers the painting technique in which the paint (typically oil) is applied thickly so it shows the texture of the palette knife and brush strokes.

No commercial success in his life

He was not commercially successful. He sold only one painting in his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, for 400 francs (approximately US$2,000 in today’s equivalent).

Early Life

Van Gogh was born into an upper-middle class family. As a young man he got a job as an art dealer and was transferred to London, where he became depressed. Next he became a protestant missionary and traveled to southern Belgium. His health deteriorated and he took up painting in 1881. He then moved home and lived with his parents. His younger brother Theo became his financial supporter. His early works were mainly depictions of peasant laborers and still life’s. They were in quite dull dark colors unlike his later works. In 1886 he moved to Paris where he met practitioners of the Avant-garde movement including Paul Gauguin and Emile Bernard. His painting style became brighter and he moved to Arles in the south of France in 1888. During his stay here he subject matter broadened to include sunflowers, wheat fields and olive trees.

Mental Health

Van Gogh suffered from delusions and psychotic episodes. He neglected his physical health and drank heavily and did not have a good diet. Van Gogh is unfortunately well known for allegedly cutting off his own ear. There are various versions of exactly what happened:
1. Most experts allege that he had a fight with his friend Paul Gauguin and cut off his own ear in a rage with a razor.
2. Some historians speculate that Paul Gauguin was responsible for cutting off Van Gogh’s ear. They say Paul Gauguin was an excellent fencer and cut off Van Gogh’s ear with his sword during a fight. The two artists then agreed to keep the truth quiet to avoid problems with the police.
3. There is also evidence that Van Gogh received news from his brother Theo who was going to get married that may have been an additional trigger to the argument with Gauguin. Which may have triggered a fear of abandonment in both an emotional and financial way.
After the incident Van Gogh went to his favourite brothel in Arles and gave his ear to an 18 year old maid named Gabrielle Berlatier.
He then spent time in psychiatric hospitals including at Saint Remy. He then discharged himself and moved to Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris. Where he received the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. This treatment ended with an argument with Paul Gachet. Then his depression deepened from his inability to succeed as a painter and his financial dependence on his brother Theo who was married with a son. On 27 July 1890 feeling in despair of ever being cured of his mental illness and feeling lonely it’s believed he shot himself in the chest with a pistol and died two days later from the injury.

Posthumously

Van Gogh received widespread commercial and critical success over the following decades. Today Van Gogh’s paintings are some of the most expensive art works ever sold. His legacy is honored by a whole museum named the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Where there is the largest collection of his drawings and paintings.

Go here to see some of Van Gogh paintings