Late medieval
edit- Cimabue (c. 1240–1302) Greatly influenced by Byzantine art, Cimabue departed from it. Medieval art forms were relatively flat and highly stylized, and Cimabue painted figures with more lifelike proportions and shading. Giorgio Vasari says he was the master of Giotto, but earlier sources suggest otherwise.
- Duccio da Buoninsegna (c.1255/60– 1318/19) While Giotto was changing the history of painting in Florence, Duccio was an innovator who the important Sienese School. He is one of the greatest painters of the Middle Ages and is credited with creating the Trecento style and contributing to Gothic art.
- Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337) has been called the first real painter, although he was also an architect. He continued the Byzantine style of Cimabue and others, but broke away from it and added a new quality, emotion. His masterpiece is a fresco cycle in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua.
- Simone Martini (1284–1344) A great painter of the Trecento, he helped to expand its progress, culminating in the International Gothic style.
- (-) Lippo Memmi (c. 1291–1356) From Siena, he was the brother-in-law and leading follower of Martini. In 1333, they painted the Annunciation with St Margaret and St Ansanus. He worked at Orvieto Cathedral, for which he finished the Virgin of Mercy, and later followed Martini to the Papal court in Avignon.
Renaissance
edit- Fra Angelico (1387–1455) One of the great colourists of the early Renaissance. Trained as an illuminator, his masterpieces include "The Annunciation" in the Prado.
- Paolo Uccello (1397–1475) One of the most audacious geniuses of the early Florentine Renaissance, Giorgio Vasari called him “Solitary, eccentric, melancholic and poor”.
- Jan van Eyck (1390–1441) The colossal pillar on which Flemish painting of later centuries rests, with the genius of accuracy, thoroughness, and perspective, well above any other artist of his time.
- Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture (1399–1464) After van Eyck, the leading Flemish painter of the fifteenth century, a master of perspective and composition.
- Tommaso Masaccio (1401–1428) One of the first old masters to use the laws of scientific perspective. A great innovative painter of the Early Renaissance.
- Piero della Francesca (1416–1492) Although he was one of the most important figures of the quattrocento, his work has been described as “cold”, “hieratic” or even “impersonal”. But Berenson and others defended his “metaphysical dimension”, and his precise and detailed art finally gained the place it deserves in art history.
- Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) One of the greatest exponents of the Quattrocento, he was interested in the human figure, which he often painted from extreme perspectives, as in "The Dead Christ".
- Hans Memling (1435–1494) May be the most complete and well-balanced of all fifteenth-century Flemish painters, although not as innovative as van Eyck or van der Weyden.
- Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) "If Botticelli were alive now he would be working for Vogue", said Peter Ustinov. Like Raphael, Botticelli has been loved and hated in different eras, but his use of colour is one of the most fascinating among old masters.
- Hieronymous Bosch (1450–1516) Very religious, all his works are moralizing and didactic. He saw in his time the triumph of sin, depravity, and all that had caused the fall of man from an angelic character and warned of the terrible consequences of living impurely.
- Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) The author of the "Gioconda" or "Mona Lisa" is much more. His humanist, almost scientific gaze, entered the art of the quattrocento and revolutionized it with his sfumato that no one could quite reproduce.
- Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) The real Leonardo da Vinci of the Northern European Rennaisance, a restless and innovative genius, master of drawing and colour, one of the first artists to represent nature without artifice, both in his landscapes and his drawings of plants and animals.
- Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) He defined himself as a sculptor, and his painted masterpiece, the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, are often called painted sculptures, but are enough to give him a place of honour in the history of painting.
- Giorgione, or Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco (c. 1477–1510) Like so many other painters who died young, Giorgione makes us wonder what place would his exquisite painting occupy if he had had such a long life as his artistic heir, Titian.
- Titian (c. 1489–1576) After the early death of Giorgione, Titian became the leading Venetian painter. His use of colour and taste for mythological themes became major features of 16th-century Venetian art. He influenced later artists, including Rubens and Velázquez.
- Joachim Patinir (1480–1524) Much less technically gifted than other Flemish painters like Memling or van der Weyden, his major contribution to the history of art was to bring landscape into paintings as a major element.
- Raphael (1483–1520) Equally loved and hated in different eras, Raphael is one of the great geniuses of the Renaissance, with excellent drawing and colour.
- Hans Holbein the Younger (1497– 1543) After Dürer, Holbein is the greatest of the German painters of his time. His fascinating "The Ambassadors" is one of the most enigmatic of all paintings.
- (-) Sir Anthonis Mor, or Anthonis Mor van Dashorst, or Antonio Moro (c. 1517 – 1577), was a Dutch portrait painter in demand by the courts of Europe. He developed a formal style for portraits, largely based on Titian, that was extremely influential on court painters across Europe, especially in Iberia, where it created a tradition that led to Diego Velázquez.
- Tintoretto (1518–1594) Not the best, but the most flamboyant of all Venetian masters, and his remarkable work closed the Venetian splendour until the time of Canaletto, making him the last of the Cinquecento masters.
- Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1528–1569) While seeming like the work of Hyeronimus Bosch, with his clearly moralizing message, works by Bruegel are full of irony and a love of the rural life, anticipating the Dutch landscape paintings of the next century.
- El Greco, or Doménikos Theotokópoulos, as he signed his work (1541–1614). From Venetian Crete, original and fascinating, with a very personal technique that was admired by the impressionist painters three centuries later.
- Caravaggio, or Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610) Tough and violent, Caravaggio is considered the father of Baroque painting, with his spectacular use of lights and shadows. His chiaroscuro became famous and many others started to copy him, creating the 'Caravaggisti' style.
17th century
edit- Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Rubens was one of the most prolific painters of all time, partly thanks to the collaboration of his studio. Famous in life, he travelled Europe taking orders from rich and important clients. His female nudes are still amazing.
- Frans Hals (c. 1580–1666) A very important portrait artist, his lively brushwork influenced the early impressionists.
- Georges de la Tour (1593–1652) Caravaggio influenced him, and his use of light and shadow is unique in the Baroque era.
- Nicolas Poussin (1594 –1665) The greatest of the great French Baroque painters, Poussin influenced French painting for centuries. His use of colour is unique in his era.
- Artemisia Gentileschi (1597–1654) – Very gifted, of the early baroque era, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence.
- Francisco de Zurbaran (1598–1664) The closest to Caravaggio of all Spanish Baroque painters, his later work shows a mastery of chiaroscuro unequalled in his time.
- Diego Velazquez (1599–1660) From Seville, and like Rembrandt a great master of the Baroque. But he spent most of his life in the comfortable but rigid courtly society. An innovator, a "painter of atmospheres" long before Turner and the Impressionists, as seen in his colossal royal paintings such as "Las Meninas" and "The Forge of Vulcan"), and in his memorable sketches of the Villa Medici.
- Claude Lorrain (1600–1682) His works influenced landscape painters for centuries, in Europe (especially Corot and Courbet) and in America (the Hudson River School).
- Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) The great master of Dutch painting, and with Velázquez the main figure of 17th century European art, he is the greatest master of the self-portrait of all time, an artist who showEd no mercy in depicting himself. The fascinating use of the light and shade in his works reflects his own life, moving from fame to oblivion.
- Jan Vermeer (1632–1675) The leading figure of the Delft School, one of the greatest landscape painters of all time he was also a fine portrait artist. Works such as his "View of the Delft" are almost impressionist due to his lively brushwork.
18th/19th century
edit- Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) He was interested in colour and movement, in the tradition of Correggio and Rubens, and revitalized the waning Baroque style, moving on to the less severe, more naturalistic, less formally classical, Rococo. He is credited with inventing the genre of fête galantes and died at the height of his powers.
- William Hogarth (1697–1764) A great English portrait painter, engraver, satirist, and cartoonist, his sketches have been called "pre-impressionist". Best known for his series A Harlot's Progress and A Rake's Progress.
- Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) A painter of courts and common people, religious but also mystical, Goya’s work includes the beauty and eroticism of “Maja desnuda” and the horror of “The Third of May, 1808”. He worked in oils, painted frescoes, and was an engraver. A complex enigma, indefinable, and unrivalled in his time, always evolving.
- Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) Grandiloquent leader of neoclassicism, his compositions seem to reflect his hectic and revolutionary life.
- William Blake (1757–1827) – Revolutionary and mystic, poet, engraver, and painter in watercolour and tempera, with a wild imagination unique in his time.
- Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) Leading German Romantic, he painted landscapes in which lonely people meet the magnificence of nature.
- Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) The best landscape painter of Western art. Beginning as an academic painter, he evolved towards a free and atmospheric style which was not liked by critics.
- John Constable (1776–1837) With Turner, the great figure of English romanticism. But he never left England, devoted himself to English life and landscape.
- Samuel Prout (1783–1852), important watercolourist, chiefly an architectural painter.
19th century
edit- Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) The most prominent disciple of Jacques Louis David, Ingres was a master of classic portrait but not an innovator.
- Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) A key figure in romanticism, revolutionary in his life and works but of bourgeois origins. His masterpiece is "The raft of the Medusa", a group of castaways after a shipwreck.
- Camille Corot (1796–1875) A great figure of French realism and a major influence on the impressionists Monet and Renoir, partly thanks to his love of working out of doors.
- Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) The top French painter of romanticism. His famous “Liberty leading the People” led the way in works of art becoming the symbols of an era.
- (–) Samuel Palmer (1805–1881), a landscape artist, etcher and printmaker. He was also a writer. He was a key figure in Romanticism and produced visionary pastoral work.
- Jean Francois Millet (1814–1875) A leader of the Barbizon School, his "Angelus" is one of the most emotive paintings of the 19th century.
- Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) Leading figure of realism, and a forerunner of the impressionists, he was a great revolutionary, both as an artist and as an activist. Like Rembrandt and others, he believed that beauty is arrived at when an artist represents the purest reality without artifice.
- Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900) The culmination of the Hudson River School: he had Cole's love of landscape, Asher Brown Durand's romantic lyricism, and Albert Bierstadt's grandiloquence, but he was braver and more gifted. One of the greatest landscape painters of all time, he is perhaps only bettered by Turner, Monet, and Cézanne.
- Gustave Moreau (1826–1898) A key figure of symbolism, introverted and mysterious, but free and colourful in his work.
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) A key figure in the pre-Raphaelite movement, Rossetti moved on from poetry to focus on painting. His style influenced symbolism.
- Édouard Manet (1832–1883) A revolutionary, the originator of Impressionism. His "Olympia" and "Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" inspired other great figures.
- Edgar Degas (1834–1917) Not purely an impressionist, his works shared the ideals of that movement. His best-known work is his paintings of young dancers, icons of late 19th-century art.
- James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) With Winslow Homer, the great figure of 19th-century American painting. An excellent portraitist, his portrait of his mother is seen as one of the great masterpieces of American painting.
- Paul Cezanne (1839–1906) – "Cezanne is the father of us all" is attributed to both Picasso and Matisse. He exhibited with the Impressionists, but Cézanne left them behind and developed a new style of painting which opened the door for Cubism and other vanguard movements of the twentieth century.
- Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) World famous, despite complete neglect in his lifetime. His strong and personal work became a great influences in the twentieth century, especially in German Expressionism.
19th/20th century
edit- Winslow Homer (1836–1910) He breathed fresh air into American art, which had got stuck in academic painting and the Hudson River School, and became the top American painter of his day. His lively brushstroke is almost impressionistic.
- Claude Monet (1840–1926) The beauty of his work can conceal his complex technique and composition. His experiments include studies on the changes caused by daylight at different times of day. The almost abstract quality of his water lilies is seen as foreshadowing some twentieth-century developments. He said "I do not understand why everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) A key Impressionist, he left the movement for a more personal, academic style.
- Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) His work soon moved firmly away from Impressionism to a colourful and vigorous symbolism, especially in his Polynesian work. He leads on to Matisse and Fauvism.
- Georges Seurat (1859–1891) An important post-impressionist, considered the creator of pointillism, in which small points of primary colours create the impression of secondary colours.
- James Ensor (1860–1949) From his strong, seemingly "unfinished" pictures, he is a forerunner of Expressionism.
- Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) He stands between modernism and symbolism and was devoted to the industrial arts. His nearly abstract landscapes are on the road to geometric abstraction.
- Edvard Munch (1863–1944) – A Modernist, also seen as the first expressionist. His "The Scream" is among the world’s best-known paintings.
- (-) Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923) He painted portraits, landscapes and monumental works, historical and contemporary. His most typical works are of people in a landscape under the bright sun of Spain, with sunlit water.
- (-) Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901), painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist, and illustrator whose immersion in the theatrical life of Paris produced enticing and provocative images of the sometimes decadent life of the times. Among the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period, with Cézanne, van Gogh, and Gauguin. In 2005, Blanchisseuse sold for US$22.4 million.
- (-) Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865–1915) was an Australian impressionist. After the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, in 1886 he migrated to Paris and attended the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1892, he returned to Melbourne and led the second phase of the Heidelberg School, an impressionist art movement which had grown up while he was away. He had another ten or eleven years in Europe in the early 20th century before his final years in Melbourne.
- Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Like Turner and Picasso has been called the "father of abstraction". Painted emotion and changed the way art was understood.
- Henri Matisse (1869-1954) Looked in by some critics as the second greatest twentieth-century artist, after Picasso. His almost pure use of colour in some paintings influenced the avant-gardes.
20th century
edit- Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Along with Kandinsky and Malevich, Mondrian is the leading figure of early abstract painting. He emigrated to New York and painted abstract work with great emotional quality, as in his series of "boogie-woogies" (mid-1940s)
- (-) Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) was a Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, philosopher, and public figure, who in his youth was influenced by Russian Symbolism. He was interested in hypnosis and other spiritual practices and his paintings are said to have hypnotic expression. As well as a painter, he was a costume and set designer for ballets, operas, and plays.
- (-) Raoul Dufy (1877–1953) was a French Fauvist, brother of Jean Dufy. He developed a colorful, decorative style that became fashionable for designs of ceramics and textiles, as well as decorative schemes for public buildings. Known for scenes of open-air social events, he was also a draftsman, printmaker, book illustrator, scene designer, furniture designer, and planner of open spaces.
- (-) Dame Laura Knight (1877–1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, and engraving, in the figurative, realist tradition, embracing English Impressionism. She was among the most successful and popular British painters, and her success in the male-dominated art establishment paved the way for other women artists. In 1929 she was created a Dame and in 1936 became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy of Arts. As well as landscapes, she painted in the worlds of the theatre and ballet, gypsies and circus performers.
- Kazimir Malevich (1878–1935) Creator of Suprematism, Malevich is a controversial figure for the general art lover, some looking on him as an essential renewal, others saying his polygons of pure colours are not art at all.
- Paul Klee (1879–1940) A crucial painter in a period of artistic revolution and innovation. His studies of color, widely taught at the Bauhaus, have a unique character.
- Franz Marc (1880-1916) – After Kandinsky, the second great figure of the Expressionist group The Blue Rider and an important expressionist, he died at the height of his powers when his use of colour was foreseeing later abstraction.
- (-) André Derain (1880–1954) a painter and sculptor, co-founder of Fauvism with Matisse.
- Fernand Léger (1881–1955) Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. Beginning as a cubist, he was drawn to the world of machinery and movement, as in "The Discs" (1918), and created a personal form of cubism known as tubism which evolved into a more figurative style. From his boldly simplified treatment of subjects, he is seen as a forerunner of pop art.
- Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Picasso was giant earthquake in art, creator and destroyer of the avant-garde, with echoes that continue. With the possible exception of Michelangelo, who was a sculptor, no other artist has been so ambitious to place his work at the heart of the history of art. Picasso destroyed the avant-garde. He looked back at the masters and surpassed them all. He faced the whole history of art and single-handedly redefined the tortuous relationship between work and spectator.
- Georges Braque (1882–1963) With Picasso and Juan Gris, the main figure of Cubism, the most important of the avant-gardes of the 20th century Art.
- Edward Hopper (1882–1967) Hopper is called a painter of urban loneliness. His famous work, "Nighthawks" (1942) is a symbol of the solitude of the modern city and is an icon of 20th century art.
- Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) Leading figure of Italian Futurism, fascinated by machines and movement as symbols of a new age.
- Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) One of the most original portrait artists, had a wild life and an early death.
- Marc Chagall (1887–1985) Painter of dreams and fantasies, Chagall was a traveller fascinated by the lights and colours of the places he visited. Of the School of Paris of the early twentieth century, his ideas changed modern art. He defined himself as "impressed by the light".
- 47.(-) Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) A major figure of Dadaism, Duchamp is important and controversial. He contributed to painting snd other arts.
- (-) Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), French-American painter, sculptor, chess player, and writer, whose work is associated with Cubism, Dada, and conceptual art. He was not directly associated with Dada groups and is regarded, with Picasso and Matisse, as one of the three artists who defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the early decades of the 20th century.
- Georgia O'Keefe (1887–1986) She single-handedly redefined Western American painting.
- Giorgio De Chirico (1888–1978), father of metaphysical painting and a major influence on Surrealism.
- El Lissitzky (1890–1941) A leader of the Russian avant-garde, following on from Malevich, a good graphic designer.
- Egon Schiele (1890–1918) His strong and ruthless portraits influenced Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, but he died very young.
- (-) {Flagicon|US}} Man Ray, originally Emmanuel Radnitzky (1890–1976), a Jewish-American visual artist who spent most of his adult life in Paris, a contributor to Dada and Surrealism. He produced major works in several media, but considered himself a painter first, and was best known as a fashion and portrait photographer. He called his photograms "rayographs".
- Max Ernst (1891–1976) Ernst falls between Surrealism and Dadaism, important in both. He was a brave artistic explorer, largely thanks to the support of his wife and patron, Peggy Guggenheim.
- Joan Miró (1893–1983) An unclassificable genius, Miro is interested in the world of the unconscious, the depths of the mind, linked with Surrealism, but with a style closer to Fauvism and Expressionism. His most important works are a series of "Constellations", early 1940s.
- René Magritte (1898–1967) A leading figure of surrealism, his work seems simple but comes from deep reflection on reality and dreams.
- Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) In the White Manifesto he said "Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art". His “Concepts Spatiales” were icons by the later twentieth century.
- Mark Rothko (1903–1970) Almost forty years after his death, the influence of Rothko's large, dazzling and emotional masses of colour continues to grow.
- Salvador Dali (1904–1989) Dalí complained "I am Surrealism!" when he was expelled from the movement by André Breton. His paintings are now the most famous images of the surrealist movement.
- Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) After Pollock, the leading figure of abstract expressionism, but he did not to feel limited by abstraction, often resorting to a emotive figurative work, as in his series of "Women". A major influence on Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud.
- Arshile Gorky (1905-1948) An Armenian-born American, Gorky was a surrealist and also a leader of abstract expressionism, and was called "the Ingres of the unconscious".
- Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Her increasing fame may have obscured her importance in Latin American art. In 1925, she was severely injured in a bus accident, including a broken back. After this accident, her self-portraits are quiet but distressing.
- Francis Bacon (1909–1992) Leader, with Lucian Freud, of the School of London, his style ran against all canons of painting, not only in terms of beauty, but also rebelling against the dominance of the Abstract Expressionism in his time.
- Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) Leader of American Abstract Expressionism, Pollock’s best works were his famous drips, 1947 to 1950. His later works was often bold, but less exciting.
- Roy Lichtenstein (1923–1977) With Warhol, leader of American Pop-Art. His style often seems related to comics, but he objected to the comparison.
- Andy Warhol (1928–1987) Brilliant and controversial, Warhol was the leader of Pop Art. His silkscreen series of mass-media icons are an influential milestone of contemporary art.
- Jasper Johns (born 1930) The last living legend of the early Pop Art, although not seeing himself as a "pop artist". His best known works are the series "Flags" and "Targets".
- Gerhard Richter (born 1932) An important artist, Richter is known for his fierce and colorful abstractions, his serene landscapes, and his scenes with candles.
- David Hockney (born 1937) A living myth of Pop Art. Born in England, he migrated to California, where he identified with its light, culture, and urban landscape.
- Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) The most important member of the "graffiti movement" that appeared in the New York scene in the early 1980s.
Periods
edit- Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of a period of European history, emerging as a distinct style in Italy in about 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, science and technology. Renaissance (meaning "rebirth") art, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Renaissance art, with Renaissance humanist philosophy, spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age.
Movements
edit- Post-Impressionism c. 1886–1905
- Fauvism c. 1904–1910 (André Derain, Henri Matisse)
- Proto-Cubism 1906–1910 (Picasso, Braque)
- Cubism 1910s–1930s
- The Blue Rider c. 1911–1914
- German Expressionism 1910s–1920s
- Dada c. 1915–1926
- Surrealism 1920s–1950s
- Socialist realism 1930s–1980s
- Abstract expressionism 1940s–1960s
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (1848)
edit- William Holman Hunt (1827–1910)
- John Everett Millais (1829–1896)
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882)
- William Michael Rossetti (1829–1919)
- James Collinson (1825–1881)
- Frederic George Stephens (1827–1907)
- Thomas Woolner (1825–1892), sculptor and poet
- followed by
List by theartwolf
editNumbers refer to:
- A list of the 101 most important painters in the history of Western Painting, from the 13th century to the 21st century by theartwolf
- some mistakes found in the list
- ”Titian (c. 1476–1576)” should be c. 1489
- ”sfumetto” for sfumato
- “the great historians of his era, like Michel Hérubel”, can’t trace this Hérubel
- “Accademia di Arte del Disegno” should be Accademia delle Arti del Disegno
- The connection between Cimabue and Giotto is now considered doubtful.
- "plen-air"