The Self-Taught Artist

Sir Henry Raeburn - Young Girl Holding Flowers - 1798-1800 - Oil on canvas, 92 x 71 cm - Musée du Louvre, Paris (click photo for larger image)Sir Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) was the leading Scottish portrait painter during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Although he had some early training, for the most part Raeburn was self-taught, progressing from miniature painting to full-scale portraiture. A man of many interests and a good conversationalist, Raeburn became a popular member of the new cultured Edinburgh society. In some of his works, the artist experimented with unusual lighting from behind the sitters' heads. and later his tonalities became darker and the lighting more contrasted. In 1812 he was elected president of the Edinburgh Society of Artists, becoming a Royal Academician in 1815. He was knighted in 1822 and shortly thereafter was appointed His Majesty's Limner for Scotland. Not bad for a fellow who taught himself how to paint! The sitter for the portrait featured here is Nancy Graham of Cromarty, Scotland.

“Other-Wordly Beauty”

Samuel Palmer - Harvesting - c. 1851 - Oil on canvas - Private collection (click photo for larger image)English artist Samuel Palmer (1805-1881) was primarily a landscape painter and etcher. Early on, he showed a precocious talent and exhibited landscape drawings at the Royal Academy when he was only 14-years old. In 1826 he moved to Kent, where he was the central figure of a group of artists known as “the Ancients.” This is where he created his most famous works, landscapes charged with “a sense of pantheistic fecundity and other-worldly beauty.”

The Cats’ Meow!

Six studies of a cat - 1765-70 - Black and white chalk on grey paper, 310 x 447 mm - Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (click photo for larger image)Here we see we see extremely lifelike images of a cat in typically feline poses—masterfully rendered by the great English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788). Considered the most versatile painter of the 18th century—and best known for his portraits and landscapes, this chalk drawing is unusual for the artist. He seldom portrayed animals. Tradition holds that the artist produced this drawing as a gift to his hostess while staying at her home. Gainsborough did not typically sign his drawings, but he signed this one, which probably confirms it as a gift.

Théodore Géricault: The Romantic Realist

Thé Géricault, Madwoman, 1822, oil on canvas, Musée du Louvre, ParisFrench Romantic painter Théodore Géricault (1791-1824) had a temperament and lifestyle archetypal of the Romantic artists. His tempestuous career lasted only a little more than ten years, but in that short time frame he displayed a “meteoric and many-sided genius.” A brilliant draftsman and painter—he created truly penetrating portraits of the insane—for one of the first doctors interested in treating them humanely.

Austrian Painter Joseph Rebell

Joseph Rebell - The Mole at Portici - 1818 - Oil on canvas, 38 x 55 cm - Neue Pinakothek, Munich (click photo for larger image)Joseph Rebell (1787-1828) studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna. His early work is heavily influenced by classicism and by heroic depictions of landscape in the manner of Claude Lorrain. Of decisive importance was Rebell’s long stay in Italy: in Milan (1810-11), Naples (1813-15) and Rome (1816-24). This small painting depicts the harbor of a tiny fishing village near Naples. Rebell's landscape works show the strong influence of English and French landscape painters - artists who Rebell met while in Italy - and their penchant for realism. Although his landscapes have a rather understated emotionality, they nevertheless demonstrate a certain atmospheric quality that places Rebell in the company of the early landscape realists. In Rebell's work, idealistic composition and heroic human or animal groupings are replaced by scenes filled with serenity and sensitive light plays.