Sandra Forty
1) El Greco
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El Greco, or Doménikos Theotokópoulos, was born to Greek parents on the island of Crete. He is considered by many art historians to be the last great Mannerist painter. El Greco, or "The Greek," left Crete for Venice, Italy, in his mid-twenties. Following the Venetian Renaissance tradition, he began to elongate his figures, a style that would come to be associated with his most famous works. But like all artists of the time, El Greco needed a patron...
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Painter of languid, elegant, Edwardian beauties and sharply dressed gentlemen, John Singer Sargent was the ultimate society painter. He knew everyone who was anyone and was on personal terms with many of them, including Edward VII and the U.S. presidents Roosevelt and Wilson. This social standing was justified. Sargent was one of the greatest portrait painters ever, able to convey the personality and style of his sitters-comparable to the great Velázquez...
3) Caravaggio
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Caravaggio is variously labeled a uniquely gifted artist and an arrogant, rebellious, and dangerously violent murderer. But for all his wild behavior, he was a profoundly religious man. Caravaggio, the first artist to bring realism to painting, is considered by many to be the greatest Baroque painter of all. The Old and New Testaments are brought vividly to light by Caravaggio's talent. Many of his paintings depict the grace of God as a shaft of light...
4) Whistler
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Although American by birth and heritage, James McNeill Whistler spent most of his life in western Europe, particularly in Paris and London, where he lived his life in a swirl of controversy over his art and his often self-aggrandizing behavior, which tainted his associations with fellow artists and the public. His guiding principle was "art for art's sake" meaning that the artist should only work to please himself. Whistler's tonally disciplined palette...
5) Paul Gaugin
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Gauguin's paintings are redolent of the South Sea islands, full of exotic women, vibrant flora, and brilliant color. In addition, his scenes range from normal life in France's Brittany, to Provence where he painted and lived briefly with Vincent van Gogh, to French Polynesia. Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was born in Paris on June 7, 1848. After Napoléon III became the president of France, Gauguin's family left for Peru in December 1849. They remained...
6) Vermeer
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Jan Vermeer is acknowledged as one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Yet in his lifetime he was largely unregarded and struggled to make a living for himself and his family. He lived and worked all his life in the prosperous Dutch town of Delft painting perfectly beautiful pictures of the inhabitants and their homes. Vermeer's technique was faultlessly meticulous and consequently painstakingly slow. Fewer than forty of his paintings have survived,...
7) Mary Cassatt
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Although an American, Mary Cassatt spent the majority of her life in France and gained most of her fame and success in Europe. Not until after her death on June 14, 1926, at Chateau de Beaufresne, near Paris, did she become a truly celebrated American artist. Cassatt is known most for her paintings and pastels of mothers and their children. Never having been a mother herself, perhaps Cassatt was mesmerized by the familial bond so evident to observers...
8) Bruegel
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The Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel-sometimes called Peasant Bruegel-was the first great artist to paint scenes of ordinary peasant life and show the common man and woman as they went about their daily tasks and amusements. He is credited with bringing a humanizing spirit to painting- something that was lacking in medieval works and entirely absent from contemporary Renaissance paintings. His compositions are full of rich details and reward close examination;...
9) Egon Schiele
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Egon Schiele is considered by many to be the greatest draftsman of the 20th century. The undeniable fact, however that a considerable share of his work is of an explicitly erotic nature has blinded many people to his remarkable ability, so much so that he is primarily known as an Austrian Expressionist artist of the erotic. Schiele's full artistic flowering lasted only a little over 10 years. He was cut down at the cruelly early age of 28, just as...
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The first modern postal stamp, the Penny Black, appeared in England in 1840 and marked a decisive step in the democratization and modernization of telecommunications. The hobby of stamp collecting and the study of philately are pursuits that draw on this fascinating history. Rowland Hill, the inventor of the Penny Black, was essentially a reformer. His intent was to provide the impetus and the means to make communication across distances available...
11) Paul Klee
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Paul Klee's philosophy of art is perhaps best summed up by his own statement: "A drawing is simply a line going for a walk." As one of the great avant garde artists of the 20th century, Swiss-born Klee was swept along with the changing moods and philosophies of the time. Klee did not readily fit into a particular artistic category. He used many styles and techniques, always exploring the different variations that each media opened up to him. An important...
12) Botanical Prints
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The earliest botanical illustrations are found in ancient herbals-practical works of knowledge, written to pass on crucial information about how to heal the sick. Around the time of the Renaissance, however, flowers began to be more generally appreciated for their beauty, so talented artists set about capturing their magic. Botanical illustration developed into a high art form during the golden era of the 18th and early 19th centuries. From that era,...
14) Hiroshige
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Ando Hiroshige is considered by many as the last of the great creative masters of the traditional Japanese woodblock print. His skill has won him worldwide fame and artistic influence, along with his contemporary, Katsushika Hokusai. Both artists widened the range of subjects they covered to encompass every aspect of life in Japan's Edo period. Although famous primarily for his landscapes and the studies of his home city of Edo, Hiroshige produced...
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The greatest artist of the 18th century, Francisco de Goya began his career as an apprentice to a local artist where one of his jobs was adding draperies and modesty items to nude figures in religious paintings; for this he was titled "Reviser of Indecent Paintings." But by the age of 40, Goya had established himself as a leading Spanish artist. Goya simultaneously pursued a number of disparate projects, commissions he received from prestigious churches...
16) Modigliani
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Modigliani's human subjects invariably have almond-shaped eyes with long, slightly twisted noses, small pursed mouths, and elongated necks. The majority of his works are semi-formal portraits that radiate a somewhat sculptural quality, suggesting his early roots as a sculptor. Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian Sephardic Jew, born in the port town of Livorno on the northwestern coast of Tuscany on July 12, 1884. He died young, just on the verge of discovery...
17) Hokusai
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Katsushika Hokusai is the most famous of a sequence of names used by a versatile and long-lived Japanese artist who worked in many genres and schools, evolving a unique style that made him known then as well as now as a true master. He was an unusual and restless man who slipped boundaries and made fresh connections, yet never sought great wealth or position. Hokusai produced over 30,000 different designs, prints, illustrations, paintings, and sketches....
18) Hans Memling
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Hans Memling was one of the greatest artists working in northern Europe in the late medieval period. He made his home and his name in the city of Bruges, Belgium, where he lived and worked for almost 30 years. Often described as a Flemish Primitive, he almost singlehandedly transformed Bruges into the most prestigious location for northern European artists and craftsmen working at that time. Memling developed what became known as the Bruges Style,...
19) Monet
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Monet's gift was to show the world a different way of seeing and interpreting everything around us. He brought his canvases to life with dabs and swoops of color put together to give an impression of the scene. He is the ultimate Impressionist: not only did one of his paintings inspire the label "Impressionist" and so name one of the greatest art movements of all time, but he was its leader, whose work changed the way that artists represented nature,...
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Comics entered their "golden age" in 1938, when a new idea revolutionized the industry: the creation of the first and archetypal superhero. Superman, pioneered by Detective Comics, better known as DC, was quickly followed by Batman, another brainchild of DC, in 1939. An explosion of acrobatic superheroes, such as Captain America, Wonder Woman, and The Green Lantern, quickly made the previous heroes of the crime, cowboy, and romance genres look dated....



