Friday, September 2, 2011

Alexey Bogolyubov Biography




Alexey Bogolyubov Biography


Article from Wikipedia
Alexey Petrovich Bogolyubov (Russian: Алексей Петрович Боголюбов; 16 March 1824 – 3 February 1896) was a Russian landscape painter.

Bogolyubov was born in the Pomeranian village of Novgorod Gubernia. His father was retired colonel Pyotr Gavriilovich Bogolyubov. Bogolyubov's maternal grandfather was the well-known philosopher and social critic Alexander Radishchev.

In 1841, Alexey graduated from military school, serving in the Russian Navy and travelling with the fleet to many countries. In 1849, he started to attend classes of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, where he studied under Maxim Vorobiev. The young painter was greatly influenced by Ivan Ayvazovsky. In 1853, he finished the Academy with a major Gold medal. He retired as a navy officer and was appointed an artist to the Navy headquarters.

From 1854 to 1860, he travelled around Europe and worked prolifically. In Rome, he was acquainted with Alexander Ivanov, who convinced Bogolyubov to focus more on drawing. In Düsseldorf, Bogolyubov took classes from the painter Andreas Achenbach. In Paris, he admired the artists of the Barbizon School. French painters Camille Corot and Charles François Daubigny were good friends and collaborators with Bogolyubov.

Bogolyubov returned to Russia in 1860. He exhibited his works in the Academy and received the title of professor. For some time, he taught in the Academy. In the 1860s, he traveled along the Volga. His paintings lost all traces of Romanticism, replacing that element with staunch realism of the natural. In 1871 he was elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts.
Sailing ships, 1860

From 1870, he became close to the The Wanderers art movement, participated in all their exhibitions. He became a member of their board. Much older than most of the other members of the movement, he had reservations on their social ideas. In 1873, Bogolyubov left the ? in solidarity with his fellow Itinerants. He even tried to create an alternative Russian Academy of Arts in Rome.

After 1873, Bogolyubov lived primarily in Paris, because of his heart condition. His house was like a Russian colony: frequent visitors included Ivan Turgenev, Ilya Yefimovich Repin, Vasily Polenov, Mark Antokolski, Vasili Vasilyevich Vereshchagin.

In 1885, Bogolyubov opened an art museum in Saratov, the Radischev Art Museum, named after his grandfather. It was opened to the general public seven years earlier than the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and fifteen years earlier than the Russian Museum in Saint Petersburg. The naming of the museum after the "first Russian revolutionary", Alexander Radishchev, was a direct challenge to the authorities: Bogolyubov had to endure a legal battle to get permission.

Bogolyubov died on 3 February 1896 in Paris. After his death, Bogolyubov left all his money and capital (around 200 thousand Russian rubles (approximately US$6 million) to the museum and its painting school. The school was opened after Bogolyubov's death and named Bogolyubov's Painting School (Боголюбовское Рисовал

Art of Alexey Bogolyubov: View of the St.-Michael Palace in St.-Petersburg from the Swan Canal




Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery
View of the St.-Michael Palace in St.-Petersburg from the Swan Canal (1870-80s)

Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery: Seaside of Constantinople




Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery
Painting: Seaside of Constantinople

Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery: Monastery




Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery
Monastery

Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery: Battle of Gangut on 27 July 1714




Alexey Bogolyubov Art
 Battle of Gangut on 27 July 1714 (1876)

Barge. Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery.




Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery
Painting: Barge

Alexey Bogolyubov Art Gallery





Karl Bodmer Biography




Karl Bodmer Biography

Article from Wikipedia

Karl Bodmer (6 February 1809 – 30 October 1893) was a Swiss painter of the American West. He accompanied German explorer Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied from 1832 through 1834 on his Missouri River expedition. He was hired as an artist by Maximilian with the specific intent of traveling through the American West and recording images of the different tribes they saw along the way.

Early life

Karl Bodmer was born on 6 February 1809 in Zürich, Switzerland. When he was thirteen years old, his mother’s brother, Johann Jakob Meier, became Bodmer's teacher. Meier was an artist, having studied under the well-known artists Heinrich Füssli and Gabriel Lory. Young Bodmer and his older brother, Rudolf, joined their uncle on artistic travels throughout their home country.

Missouri River expedition

A major turning point in Bodmer's life was his being contracted to the Prinz Maximilian zu Wied-Neuwied. Known popularly to naturalists then and even now as Prince Max, this German aristocrat, having successfully led a scientific expedition to Brazil in 1815–1817, decided to embark on another such venture, this time to North America.

By 1828, Bodmer had left his native Switzerland for the German city of Koblenz. It was there that he came to Prince Max's attention. After delays, Bodmer, in the company of Prince Max and a huntsman and taxidermist, David Dreidoppel, set out for America on 17 May 1832. In a letter bearing that date, Prince Max wrote to his brother that Bodmer "is a lively, very good man and companion, seems well educated, and is very pleasant and very suitable for me; I am glad I picked him. He makes no demands, and in diligence he is never lacking."

Arriving in Boston on 4 July, the three encountered hardships and delays caused largely by a cholera epidemic in the eastern states that swept across the north to Michigan. It was not until 8 October that the three began their journey down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh, arriving in Mt. Vernon, Indiana about midnight on 18 October. The next morning, the party made their way to New Harmony, Indiana.

In his famous book chronicling the expedition, Maximilian Prince of Wied's Travels in the Interior of North America, the Prince wrote, "I had been indisposed, as well as my huntsman, since I left Louisville, and was not in a mood properly to appreciate the fine, lofty forests of Indiana, the road through which was very bad and rough."

Prince Max had planned to spend only a few days in New Harmony, but his stay "was prolonged by serious indisposition, nearly resembling cholera, to a four months' winter residence." The Prince devotes a whole chapter of his book to New Harmony, its environs, and to the work and personalities of two leading American naturalists who lived there, Thomas Say and Charles-Alexandre Lesueur. Lesueur was also a prolific artist.

Unlike the Prince and the huntsman, Bodmer was not ill-disposed. Alone, he left New Harmony at the end of December, and on 3 January 1833 caught a steamboat at Mt. Vernon. He traveled to New Orleans and spent a week with Joseph Barrabino, an Italian-American naturalist and friend of Say and Lesueur. A fine pencil portrait of Barrabino, drawn by Lesueur, is preserved at the New Harmony Workingmen's Institute.

Later life

When the expedition was complete, he returned to Germany with Prince Maximilian, then traveled to France. In Paris he had many scenes from the expedition (81 in total) reproduced as aquatints. The Prince had these images incorporated into his book, which was published in London in 1839. After returning to Europe, Bodmer lived in Barbizon, France, where he became a French citizen. At that point he changed his name to "Charles Bodmer". Today the majority of his original watercolours are located in three collections in the United States, with the majority of them located at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska. They are recognised as among the most painstakingly accurate painted images ever made of Native Americans, their culture and artefacts, and of the scenery of the pristine "Old West".


The Interior of the Hut of a Mandan Chief. Karl Bodmer Art Gallery.




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
The Interior of the Hut of a Mandan Chief

Karl Bodmer Art Gallery: The Delaware Water Gap




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
The Delaware Water Gap

Karl Bodmer Art Gallery: Susquehanna near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
Susquehanna near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Art of Karl Bodmer: Dacota Woman and Assiniboin Girl




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
Dacota Woman and Assiniboin Girl-1838

Karl Bodmer Online Art Gallery: Confluence of the Fox River and the Wabash in Indiana




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
 Confluence of the Fox River and the Wabash in Indiana

Karl Bodmer Art Gallery: Assiniboin Indians




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
Assiniboin Indians-1843

Karl Bodmer Art: A Mandan Chief




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
A Mandan Chief

Karl Bodmer Art Gallery: A Family of Wild Boar




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
A Family of Wild Boar

Abdih Hiddisch, A Minatarre Chief. Karl Bodmer Art Gallery.




Karl Bodmer Art Gallery
Abdih Hiddisch, A Minatarre Chief-1839

Karl Bodmer