Co-Founder of the Baroque

Ludovico Carracci, Emilian school ca.1600's

It is hard to underestimate the importance of the Carracci family on the Baroque, and the eldest member, Ludovico who was born today in 1555 formed a historic art school along with his cousins Agostino and Annibale, Accademia dei Desiderosi which later became Accademia degli Incamminati to symbolize the arduous path artists must undergo in developing their craft. Ludovico was the first to resist the Mannerist tendency of the late 1500's and return to an appreciation of nature, teaching such innovations as life drawing from the nude model as a regular curriculum, anatomy, and with help from Agostino and Annibale, the return to Humanism with the blending of Florentine and Venetian art. Ludovico wasn't the most talented of the three, but was a highly influential teacher and ran the school alone when Agostino and Annibale headed to work in Rome. Tingere non leccare, tint don't lick literally, meaning paint don't polish, was one of his many precepts.

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Isaac Levitan, Russian Poet of Nature

Before the Storm, 1890 Born August 30, 1860, Isaac Ilyich Levitan was a Russian landscape painter. Born in Congress Poland to a Jewish family, Levitan would study art in Moscow where he would become friends with Anton Chekov and his brother, Nikolay who was also an artist. Levitan's work has a unique mood that is very distinct from the Impressionism of France and the Classicism of Russia...sometimes compared to Monet but still different. Levitan has a rare presence with astute attention to detail and a fascination with light at different times of day. At times highly accurate, while in his more personal work deeply Impressionistic and imbued with rich tone and color. There is something about Levitan that lingers in your mind long after seeing his work...in a way that is individual and personal, not attached to a specific genre or movement, but to the world around him. In Before the Storm , Levitan captures a moment so stunning it seems to defy words...of sunlight piercing ...

Guercino il Magnifico

Self-Portrait of the Artist holding a Palette, ca.1635 Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , known as Guercino was born on February 8, 1591 in Cento, a small city near Ferrara. He is one of the great masters of the Italian Baroque and poet of painters. Noted for his speed and efficiency, Guercino also worked in a number of mediums with equal passion whether ink, chalk, charcoal, or oils. His nickname, which means 'little cross-eyes' in Italian, derives in part from an apocryphal childhood accident where he supposedly awoke from a deep sleep as a child from a loud scream that caused his eyes to cross. Another story says something was thrown into his eyes. At any rate, he was self-taught as an artist from as early as nine years old and by his early teens was discovered by the eldest of the Carracci where he would spend some time at the Accademia Degli Incamminati before venturing out on his own. Despite his apparent 'handicap', his vision and talent would make him a giant t...

Bouguereau

Nymphs and Satyr, 1873 If there is one artist today that hardly needs an introduction, it would be William-Adolphe Bouguereau , supreme giant of 19th century Academic art. Born on November 30, 1825 in La Rochelle on the southwest of France, his talent would define the era he lived in only to fall into obscurity for decades after his death in 1905 until as recent as the early 1980's, shockingly. Today he has the distinction of being lionized by the Art Renewal Center as one of the greatest artists of all time while at the other end of the spectrum vilified by modernists as artificially perfect and sentimental. In fact it is quite rare to see such polarization over an artist of a calibre like Bouguereau, whose bravura is difficult to equal yet at the same time thematically his work admittedly tends toward women and children, a subject matter that sold well and he had endless patience for. Over the vast array of his oeuvre, some 820 paintings, I have tried to find some of his v...

beside the easel

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