Georges Seurat Bio

Born : 2 December 1859(1859-12-02)Paris, France
Died : 29 March 1891 (aged 31)
Nationality : French
Field : painting
Movement : Neo-impressionism, modern art
Works : Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

detail :
During the 19th century, scientist-writers such as Michel Eugène Chevreul, Ogden Rood and David Sutter wrote treatises on color, optical effects and perception. They were able to translate the scientific research of Helmholtz and Newton into a written form that was understandable by non-scientists. Chevreul was perhaps the most important influence on artists at the time; his great contribution was producing the color wheel of primary and intermediary hues.

Chevreul was a French chemist who restored old tapestries. During his restorations of tapestries he noticed that the only way to restore a section properly was to take into account the influence of the colors around the missing wool; he could not produce the right hue unless he recognized the surrounding dyes. Chevreul discovered that two colors juxtaposed, slightly overlapping or very close together, would have the effect of another color when seen from a distance. The discovery of this phenomenon became the basis for the Pointillist technique of the Neoimpressionist painters.

Chevreul also realized that the 'halo' that one sees after looking at a color is actually the opposing, or complementary, color. For example: After looking at a red object, one may see a cyan echo/halo of the original object. This complementary color (as an example, cyan for red) is due to retinal persistence. Neoimpressionist painters interested in the interplay of colors made extensive use of complementary colors in their paintings. In his works Chevreul advised artists that they should not just paint the color of the object being depicted, but rather they should add colors and make appropriate adjustments to achieve a harmony. It seems that the harmony Chevreul wrote about is what Seurat came to call 'emotion

Honoré Victorin Daumier bio

Birth name : Honoré Victorin Daumier
Born : February 26, 1808(1808-02-26) Marseille
Died : February 10, 1879 (aged 70) Valmondois
Nationality :French
Field : Printmaking, Painting, Sculpture

detail :
his prodigious activity in the field of caricature — the list of Daumier's lithographed plates compiled in 1904 numbers no fewer than 3,958 — he also painted. Except for the searching truthfulness of his vision and the powerful directness of his brushwork, it would be difficult to recognize the creator of Robert Macaire, of Les Bas bleus, Les Bohémiens de Paris, and the Masques, in the paintings of Christ and His Apostles (Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam), or in his Good Samaritan, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Christ Mocked, or even in the sketches in the Ionides Collection at South Kensington

Jan Vermeer bio

Johannes or Jan Vermeer (baptized in Delft with the name Joannis on October 31, 1632, and buried in the same city under the name Jan on December 16, 1675) was a Dutch Baroque painter who specialized in exquisite, domestic interior scenes of ordinary life. Vermeer was a moderately successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He seems never to have been particularly wealthy, perhaps because he produced relatively few paintings, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death.

Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, using bright colours, sometimes expensive pigments, with a preference for cornflower blue and yellow. He is particularly renowned for his masterly treatment and use of light in his work. What strikes in most of his paintings is a certain love, which easily could be called a love sickness, for the people and the objects in his paintings. He created a world more perfect than any he had witnessed.

After having been virtually forgotten for nearly one hundred years, Vermeer was rediscovered in 1866 when the art critic Thoré Bürger published an essay attributing 66 pictures to him (only 35 paintings are firmly attributed to him today). Since that time Vermeer's reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age.

Andrea del Verrocchio bio

Birth name : Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni
Born : c. 1435
Florence, Italy
Died : c. 1488
Venice, Italy
Nationality : Italian
Field : Painting, Sculpture
Movement : Italian Renaissance
Works : The Baptism of Christ
Christ and St. Thomas

detail :
In 1465 he worked at the lavabo of the Old Sacristy in San Lorenzo, Florence. Between 1465 and 1467 he executed the funerary monument to Cosimo de' Medici for the crypt under the altar of the same church, and in 1472 he completed the monument to Piero and Giovanni de' Medici in the Old Sacristy

leonardo da vici bio

Birth name : Leonardo di Ser Piero
Born : April 15, 1452(1452-04-15)
Vinci, Florence, in present-day Italy
Died : May 2, 1519 (aged 67)
Amboise, Touraine (in present-day Indre-et-Loire, France)
Nationality: Italian
Field : Many and diverse fields of arts and sciences
Movement : High Renaissance
Works : Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Vitruvian Man

Rogier van der Weyden bio

Rogier van der Weyden, also known as Rogier de le Pasture (1399/1400 – June 18, 1464) is, with Jan van Eyck, considered one of the greatest exponents of the school of Early Netherlandish Rogier van der Weyden was born in Tournai as 'Rogier de le Pasture' (Roger of the Pasture) in 1399 or 1400. His parents were Henri de le Pasture and Agnes de Watrélos. The family had settled before in the city of Tournai where Rogiers father worked as a 'maître-coutelier' (knife manufacturer). In 1426 Rogier married to Elisabeth, the daughter of the Brussels shoemaker Jan Goffaert and his wife Cathelyne van Stockem. Rogier and Elisabeth had four children: Cornelius who became a carthusian monk was born in 1427, a daughter Margaretha in 1432. Before 21 October 1435 the family settled in Brussels where the two younger children were born: Pieter in 1437 and Jan the next year. From the second of March 1436 onwards held the title of 'painter to the town of Brussels' (stadsschilder) a very prestigious post because Brussels was at that time the most important residence of the splendid court of the Dukes of Burgundy. It was at the occasion of his move to the Dutch-speaking town of Brussels that Rogier began using the Dutch version of his name: 'Rogier van der Weyde

Francis Bacon bio

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban KC (22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne (Cooke) Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution. Indeed, his dedication may have brought him into a rare historical group of scientists who were killed by their own experiments. His works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. Bacon was knighted in 1603, created Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St Alban in 1621; without heirs, both peerages became extinct upon his death.