Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (25 January 1832 – 20 March 1898) was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement.

Shishkin was born in Yelabuga of Vyatka Governorate (today Republic of Tatarstan), and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium. Then he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for 4 years, attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856 to 1860,which he graduated with the highest honours and a gold medal. He received the Imperial scholarship for his further studies in Europe. Five years later Shishkin became a member of the Imperial Academy in St. Petersburg and was professor of painting from 1873 to 1898. At the same time, Shishkin headed the landscape painting class at the Highest Art School in St. Petersburg.

For some time, Shishkin lived and worked in Switzerland and Germany on scholarship from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. On his return to Saint Petersburg, he became a member of the Circle of the Itinerants and of the Society of Russian Watercolorists. He also took part in exhibitions at the Academy of Arts, the All Russian Exhibition in Moscow (1882), the Nizhniy Novgorod (1896), and the World Fairs (Paris, 1867 and 1878, and Vienna, 1873). Shishkin's painting method was based on analytical studies of nature. He became famous for his forest landscapes, and was also an outstanding draftsman and a printmaker.

Ivan Shishkin owned a dacha in Vyra, south of St. Petersburg. There he painted some of his finest landscapes. His works are notable for poetic depiction of seasons in the woods, wild nature, animals and birds. He died in 1898, in St. Petersburg, Russia, while working on his new painting.

A minor planet 3558 Shishkin, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 is named after him.

Frits Thaulow

Frits Thaulow (20 October 1847 - 5 November 1906) was a Norwegian impressionist painter, best known for his naturalistic depictions of landscape.

Johan Frederik Thaulow was born in Christiania, the son of the wealthy chemist, Harald Thaulow (1815-1881) and Nicoline ("Nina") Louise Munch (1821-1894). Thaulow was educated at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen in 1870-72, and from 1873-75 he studied with Hans Gude at the Baden School of Art in Karlsruhe.

After a stay in Skagen during the autumn of 1879, Thaulow returned to Norway in 1880. He became one of the leading young figures in the Norwegian art scene, together with Christian Krohg and Erik Werenskiold, and helped established the first National Art Exhibit (also known as Høstutstillingen or Autumn Exhibit) in 1882. Many of Thaulow's best known Norwegian scenes are from Åsgårdstrand, which had become an important center for artists and painters dating from the 1880s.

Thaulow moved to France in 1892, living there until his death in 1906. Thaulow soon discovered that the cityscapes of Paris did not suit him. His best paintings were made in small towns such as Montreuil-sur-Mer (1892-94), Dieppe and surrounding villages from (1894-1898), Quimperle in Brittany in (1901) and Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne in the Corrèze département (1903).

Thaulow received a number of honors for his artistic activity, including his appointment as commander of the 2nd Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1905. He received the French Legion of Honor, Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus from Italy and the Order of Nichan Iftikhar from Tunisia. He died in Volendam, in the Netherlands. The National Gallery of Norway features 37 of his works. Other prominent displays include The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University.

Thaulow was married twice. In 1874 he married Ingeborg Charlotte Gad (1852-1908). The marriage dissolved 1886. In 1886 he married Alexandra Lasson (1862-1955), the daughter of Carl Lasson (1830-1893), a noted Norwegian attorney.

Gentile Bellini

Gentile Bellini (c. 1429 – February 23, 1507) was an Italian painter. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.

Gentile was born into a family of renowned painters: his father Jacopo Bellini, was a Venetian pioneer in the use of oil paint as an artistic medium; his acclaimed brother was Giovanni Bellini, and his brother-in-law Andrea Mantegna. he was christened Gentile after Jacopo's master, Gentile da Fabriano. Gentile was taught painting in the workshop of his father. Although today Gentile is often seen in the shadow of his more famous family members, in his own time he was considered among the greatest living painters in Venice and had no shortage of commissions; his talent as a portraitist revealed itself at an early age.

Gentile earliest signed work is The Blessed Lorenzo Giustinian (1445), one of the oldest surviving oil paintings in Venice (now at the Accademia Museum). During the 1450s Bellini worked on a commission for the Scuola Grande di San Marco and painted in conjunction with his brother, Giovanni Bellini. From 1454 he was also the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.

Much of Gentile Bellini’s surviving work consists of very large paintings for public buildings, including those for the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista. Along with Lazzaro Bastiani, Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Mansueti and Benedetto Rusconi, Bellini was one of the artists of hired to paint the 10-painting narrative cycle known as The Miracles of the Relic of the Cross. The commission was intended to celebrate the relic of the Holy Cross which the confraternity had received in 1379. Gentile's contributions are among his best known works today, especially the Procession of the True Cross in Piazza San Marco (now in the Accademia, Venice), which dates from 1496.

The canvas shows an event that took place about 50 years earlier, in 1444: while the members of the Scuola were processing the fragment through the Piazza San Marco (the square of St. Mark’s), a man from Brescia knelt before the relic in prayer that his dying son might recover. When he returned home, he discovered that the boy was completely well again. In the foreground, Gentile has painted the confraternity in its white robes, processing at the head of the parade, the large golden reliquary suspended between them, carried beneath a canopy held by four more Scuola members. Although the subject of the picture is ostensibly the miracle itself, the Brescian merchant is hardly visible in the crowd: he kneels in sumptuous red robes, immediately to the right of the last two canopy-bearers. Rather, the subject of the picture might be more accurately described as the procession, with an especial focus on the space of St. Mark’s square and on St Mark's Basilica itself, with its Byzantine domes and glittering mosaics.

Another very well known Gentile canvas is also from this cycle: The Recovery of the Relic of the True Cross at the Bridge of S. Lorenzo, which dates from c.1500. The Recovery offers a similar snapshot of Venetian life at the time, concentrating as much on human individuality and aspects of daily life, as on the event of the miracle.

Venice was, at that time, a very important point in which cultures and trade bordered on the eastern Mediterranean Sea and provided gateways to Asia, Africa, and beyond. As noted, in his lifetime, Gentile was the most prestigious painter in Venice. Therefore in 1511, he was chosen by the government of Venice to work for Sultan Mehmed II in Constantinople. However in addition to his work at the Ottoman Court, Gentile's work also responded to other aspects of the East, including the Byzantine Empire.

In September 1479 Gentile was sent by the Venetian Senate to the new Ottoman capital Constantinople as part of the peace settlement between Venice and the Turks. His role was not only as a visiting painter in an exotic locale, but also as a cultural ambassador for Venice. This was important to Mehmed II, as he was particularly interested in the art and culture of Italy, and he attempted on several occasions to have himself portrayed by Italian artists. He finally reached his goal with Gentile, who is believed to have painted the portrait of Mehmed II now in the National Gallery, London, (but largely overpainted). It has been noticed that the portrait is like one of the figures in a painting by Marco Palmezzano, Jesus among the Doctors in the Temple (Brisighella, near Forlì and Ravenna). So the dating and authorship of the portrait by Bellini have been placed in question.

Subsequently an Oriental flavour appears in several of his paintings, including the portrait of a Turkish artist and St. Mark Preaching at Alexandria (above). The last was completed by his brother, Giovanni Bellini.

Gentile responded to other aspects of the East, including the Byzantine Greek Empire, as well as Venice’s other trading partners in North Africa and Levant. Venice had a long-established relationship with the Eastern Mediterranean. Saint Mark, Venice’s patron, was from the Egyptian city of Alexandria, and Venice’s cultural and spiritual centre – the basilica of San Marco – was built in his honor (and as his mausoleum) in the Greek Byzantine style. Although Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Greek Byzantine world had a continuing impact upon Venetian art and culture as a number of Greek Christians fled Muslim rule. It was here that Gentile painted the portrait of Queen Caterina Cornaro of Cyprus (at right). This is counted as the second known portrait including the queen, which is now in the collection of the Szepmuveszeti Museum in Budapest.

Bellini's most important paintings, the monumental canvases in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, were destroyed by fire in 1577. Only a few of his other works remain, namely the large narrative paintings The Procession in Piazza San Marco (above left) and The Preaching of Saint Mark in Alexandria (above right), produced in his final years. Little remains of Gentile’s art from the 1470s and 1480s, except for the works made in Constantinople. Moreover, many workshop paintings and drawings have been assigned to Gentile Bellini. This has had the unfortunate consequence of confirming his reputation as an awkward artist, especially in comparison with his beloved brother Giovanni.

He was interred in the Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, a traditional burial place of the doges.

In recent years, Gentile has once again generated interest, especially in a recent spate of scholarly publications and exhibitions on the subject of cross-cultural exchange between Europe and the Levant.

George Caleb Bingham

George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 – July 7, 1879) was an American artist whose paintings of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River exemplify the Luminist style. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s. He is now widely considered one of the greatest American painters of the 19th century and his centennial is being celebrated in 2011. That year the George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings announced the authentication of ten recently discovered paintings by Bingham; like all but about 5% of his works, they are unsigned.

Born in Augusta County, Virginia, George Caleb Bingham was the second of seven children of Mary Amend and Henry Vest Bingham. Upon their marriage, Mary's father Matthias Amend gave Bingham ownership of the family mill, 1,180 acres (4.8 km2) land, and several slaves with the agreement that Matthias could live with the family for the rest of his life. Henry Bingham offered the land and mill as surety for a friend's debt and, when the friend died in 1818, all was lost. The Bingham family soon moved to Franklin, Missouri "where the land was said to be bountiful, fertile and cheap."

George Bingham was a self-taught artist. His sole childhood exposure to the field was as a nine-year-old boy, when famed American portraitist Chester Harding visited Franklin looking for business, having recently sketched Daniel Boone in Warren County, Missouri. George assisted Harding during his brief stay, an experience that left a powerful impression.

In 1823, Bingham's father Henry, then judge of Howard County Court, died of malaria on December 26 at the age of thirty-eight. To keep the family going, Mary Bingham opened a school for girls; George, then twelve, worked as school janitor to help keep the family afloat. At age sixteen, the young Bingham apprenticed with the cabinet maker Jesse Green. After Green moved away, Bingham apprenticed with another cabinet maker, Justinian Williams. Both tradesmen were Methodist ministers. While under their tutelage, Bingham studied religious texts, preached at camp meetings and thought about becoming a minister. He also considered becoming a lawyer.

By age nineteen, Bingham was painting portraits for $20.00 apiece, often completing the works in a single day. He drummed up work in both Franklin and Arrow Rock and, while his painting abilities were still developing, succeeded in impressing his patrons with his strong draftsmanship and ability to capture the likeness of his subject. Soon Bingham was ready to travel to St. Louis to ply his trade but contracted measles. The illness left him weak and permanently bald.

In 1836, Bingham married Sarah Elizabeth Hutchison, who bore him four children over the next twelve years. From 1837-1845 they lived in Arrow Rock, Saline County, where their house has been designated a National Historic Landmark. She died in 1848 at the age of twenty-nine. Bingham's mother Mary helped him rear his children before she died in 1851.

Bingham married twice more, first to Eliza K. Thomas. After several years, she had to be institutionalized and died in a mental asylum in 1876. He next married the widow Martha Lykins, who lived until 1890.

By 1838, Bingham was already beginning to make a name as a portrait artist in St. Louis, the major city of the territory; his studio was visited by several prominent local citizens and statesmen, including the lawyer James S. Rollins, who was to become a life-long friend. While he frequently worked in the city, Bingham kept his principal residence in Arrow Rock for years. To further his education, Bingham spent three months in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania before continuing on to New York City to visit the National Academy of Design exhibition.

After moving his family to St. Louis permanently, in 1848 Bingham was elected to the Missouri General Assembly, one of the few artists to serve in elected political office. His interest in politics was reflected in his paintings of the vivid political life on the frontier. Bingham later took several state political appointments as well.

In 1856 Bingham moved to Europe with his second wife Eliza and youngest daughter. First they stayed in Paris for several months, where Bingham fulfilled a long-cherished desire and studied the Old Masters at the Louvre Museum, likely his chief reason for going abroad. They went on to Düsseldorf, Germany, where they lived until 1859, taking part in the Düsseldorf school of painting. Bingham lived and worked among the American and German artists of the art colony, among whom was the German-American Emanuel Leutze, the most prominent historical painter in the United States. (Washington Crossing the Delaware was then his most famous work.) Leutze was unusual for living in both countries and had an open studio in Düsseldorf, where he welcomed Bingham as a friend and already successful artist. While in Germany, Bingham worked on important commissions from the Missouri State Legislature, as well as independent paintings.

Upon his return to America, Bingham began painting more portraits, which had always been his "bread and butter" work. He also returned to politics. During the American Civil War, Bingham was appointed State Treasurer of Missouri.

He continued to stay involved in politics in the post-Civil War years through political appointments. In 1874, he was appointed president of Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, and appointed the first chief of police there. In 1875, the governor appointed Bingham as Adjutant-General of Missouri, and thereafter he was often referred to as General Bingham.

Toward the end of his life, although quite ill, Bingham was appointed the first Professor of Art at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. He met with only a few students before his death.

"Fur Traders Descending the Missouri" - One of Bingham's most famous paintings, this work is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Painted around 1845 in the style called luminism by some historians of American art, it was originally entitled, French Trader, Half-breed Son. The American Art Union thought the title potentially controversial and renamed it when it was first exhibited. It reflected the reality of fur trappers and traders frequently marrying Native American women in their territories; in Canada the ethnic Métis people have been recognized by the government as a distinct group with status similar to First Nations. The painting is haunting for its evocation of an era in American history—note, in particular, the liberty cap worn by the older man. The animal in the boat is widely accepted as a bear cub and not a cat.

The George Caleb Bingham Catalogue Raisonné Supplement Of Paintings & Drawings, directed and edited by Fred R. Kline with advisory board members Paul Nagel and William Kloss, has announced the addition of ten recently discovered paintings by George Caleb Bingham, whose Bicentennial is being celebrated in 2011. The paintings exhibited, catalogued, and illustrated online at www.GeorgeCalebBingham.org include: Horse Thief (a narrative landscape), and portraits of Lewis Allen Dicken Crenshaw, Fanny Smith Crenshaw, Frederick Moss Prewitt, Civil War Lt. Col. Levi Pritchard, Charles Chilton, Samuel Chilton, Thomas B. Hudson, Missouri Steamboat Capt. Joseph Kinney, and a currently unidentified woman.

The GCBCRS continues E. Maurice Bloch’s Bingham Catalogue Raisonné of paintings, begun in the 1940s, which includes Bingham’s known paintings up to 1986. Nearly all Bingham’s over 500 recorded paintings (460 are portraits) are unsigned, including famous ones such as Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, The Emigration of Daniel Boone, and The County Election. Bingham neglected record keeping and signing, allowing scores of paintings to remain unidentified, more than any other American master. Eight of the ten paintings recently authenticated by the GCBCRS Committee were unknown to Bloch; the other two were unsolved mysteries; all ten were unsigned.

Georg Ehrenfried Groß

Georg Ehrenfried Groß (July 26, 1893 – July 6, 1959) was a German artist known especially for his savagely caricatural drawings of Berlin life in the 1920s. He was a prominent member of the Berlin Dada and New Objectivity group during the Weimar Republic before he emigrated to the United States in 1933.

George Grosz was born Georg Ehrenfried Groß in Berlin, Germany, the son of a pub owner. His parents were devoutly Lutheran. Grosz grew up in the Pomeranian town of Stolp, where his mother became the keeper of the local Hussar's Officers' mess after his father died in 1901. At the urging of his cousin, the young Grosz began attending a weekly drawing class taught by a local painter named Grot. Grosz developed his skills further by drawing meticulous copies of the drinking scenes of Eduard Grutzner, and by drawing imaginary battle scenes. From 1909–1911, he studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, where his teachers were Richard Müller, Robert Sterl, Raphael Wehle, and Oskar Schindler. He subsequently studied at the Berlin College of Arts and Crafts under Emil Orlik.

In November 1914 Grosz volunteered for military service, in the hope that by thus preempting conscription he would avoid being sent to the front. He was given a discharge after hospitalization for sinusitis in 1915. In 1916 he changed the spelling of his name to George Grosz as a protest against German nationalism and out of a romantic enthusiasm for America that originated in his early reading of the books of James Fenimore Cooper, Bret Harte and Karl May, and which he retained for the rest of his life. (His artist friend and collaborator Helmut Herzfeld changed his name to John Heartfield at the same time.) In January 1917 he was drafted for service, but in May he was discharged as permanently unfit.

Grosz was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in January 1919, but escaped using fake identification documents; he joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the same year. In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army, which resulted in a 300 German Mark fine and the destruction of the collection Gott mit uns ("God with us"), a satire on German society. Grosz left the KPD in 1922 after having spent five months in Russia and meeting Lenin and Trotsky, because of his antagonism to any form of dictatorial authority.

Bitterly anti-Nazi, Grosz left Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. In June 1932, he accepted an invitation to teach the summer semester at the Art Students League of New York. In October 1932, Grosz returned to Germany, but on January 12, 1933 he and his family emigrated to America. Grosz became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1938, and made his home in Bayside, New York. He taught at the Art Students League intermittently until 1955.

In America, Grosz determined to make a clean break with his past, and changed his style and subject matter. He continued to exhibit regularly, and in 1946 he published his autobiography, A Little Yes and a Big No. In the 1950s he opened a private art school at his home and also worked as Artist in Residence at the Des Moines Art Center. Grosz was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1954. Though he had US citizenship, he resolved to return to Berlin, where he died on July 6, 1959 from the effects of falling down a flight of stairs after a night of drinking.

In 1960, Grosz was the subject of the Oscar-nominated short film George Grosz' Interregnum. In 2002, actor Kevin McKidd portrayed Grosz in a supporting role as an eager artist seeking exposure in a fictional film entitled Max, regarding Adolf Hitler's youth.

Although Grosz made his first oil paintings in 1912 while still a student, his earliest oils that can be identified today date from 1916. By 1914, Grosz worked in a style influenced by Expressionism and Futurism, as well as by popular illustration, graffiti, and children's drawings. Sharply outlined forms are often treated as if transparent. The City (1916–17) was the first of his many paintings of the modern urban scene. Other examples include the apocalyptic Explosion (1917), Metropolis (1917), and The Funeral, a 1918 painting depicting a mad funeral procession.

In his drawings, usually in pen and ink which he sometimes developed further with watercolor, Grosz did much to create the image most have of Berlin and the Weimar Republic in the 1920s. Corpulent businessmen, wounded soldiers, prostitutes, sex crimes and orgies were his great subjects. His draftsmanship was excellent although the works for which he is best known adopt a deliberately crude form of caricature. His oeuvre includes a few absurdist works, such as Remember Uncle August the Unhappy Inventor which has buttons sewn on it, and also includes a number of erotic artworks.

After his emigration to the USA in 1933, Grosz "sharply rejected previous work, and caricature in general." In place of his earlier corrosive vision of the city, he now painted conventional nudes and many landscape watercolors. More acerbic works, such as Cain, or Hitler in Hell (1944), were the exception. In his autobiography, he wrote: "A great deal that had become frozen within me in Germany melted here in America and I rediscovered my old yearning for painting. I carefully and deliberately destroyed a part of my past." Although a softening of his style had been apparent since the late 1920s, Grosz's work turned toward a sentimental romanticism in America, a change generally seen as a decline.

George Romney

George Romney (26 December 1734 – 15 November 1802) was an English portrait painter. He was the most fashionable artist of his day, painting many leading society figures - including his artistic muse, Emma Hamilton, mistress of Lord Nelson.

Romney was born in Beckside in Dalton-in-Furness, Lancashire (now part of Cumbria), the 3rd son (of 11 children) of John Romney, cabinet maker, and Anne Simpson. He was sent to school at Dendron, but appears to have been an indifferent student and was withdrawn at the age of 11 and apprenticed to his father's business instead.

He proved to have a natural ability for drawing and making things from wood - including violins (which he played throughout his life). From the age of 15, he was taught art informally by a local watchmaker called John Williamson, but his studies began in earnest in 1755, when he went to Kendal, at the age of 21, for a 4-year apprenticeship with local artist Christopher Steele - a portraitist who had himself studied with distinguished French artist Carlo Vanloo. All costs were to be born by George's father.

In October 1756, Romney married Mary Abbot (a decision he initially regretted), but the couple were immediately separated when he was called away to York on business by his employer. After a year, Steele eventually agreed to cancel the apprenticeship, at George's request, leaving the young artist - now a father of a son - free to pursue his own career as a painter.

In 1757, Romney rejoined his wife and young son in Kendal, working as a portraitist, landscape and historical painter. In this period he became friends with Adam Walker, the inventor and writer, and also pursued musical interests in his spare time. In March 1762, he parted from his wife, son and daughter (the latter dying in 1763), to seek his fortune in London, where he stayed (apart from a few return visits to Cumbria) until 1799. Throughout the separation, he maintained contact with his family and financially supported them, but they never lived with him in the capital.

In 1763, Romney entered his painting, "The Death of General Wolfe", into a Royal Society of Arts competition. According to friends of Romney, he was awarded the second prize of 50 guineas but this was later to reduced to 25 guineas on questionable grounds. It is said that Sir Joshua Reynolds himself was the prime mover behind this decision, a fact which may have accounted for the life-long aversion of the two men for each other.

Despite his later success, Romney was never invited to join the Royal Academy (formed 1768), though he was asked, urged even, to exhibit there - nor did he ever apply to join. This decision certainly cost him valuable royal patronage and support from others connected at court. While there has been much speculation about his actual relationship with the Academy, there is no doubt that he normally remained aloof maintaining that a good artist should succeed without being a member. His own career supported this belief, and it was only towards the end of his life that he expressed the slightest regret for his views.

At any rate, his early years in the capital were something of a struggle financially. In September 1764, he travelled to Paris (with a friend, lawyer Thomas Greene) for a few weeks to study the works of the old masters (travel abroad was seen as a requisite of a developing artist's training as the opportunity to view great art in London was very limited). In 1765 he again won the second prize of 50 guineas in the Royal Society of Arts competition. In 1768, he made the acquaintance of Richard Cumberland, the dramatist, whose portrait he painted, and who was helpful in introducing him to influential patrons. He also became friends with miniature painter Ozias Humphrey.

1769 was a breakthrough year - he exhibited a large portrait of Sir George Warren and family at the Free Society of Artists, which was greatly admired and helped to lay the foundations of his future popularity. In 1770 he started to exhibit his work at the Chartered Society of Artists rather the rival "Free Society of Artists".

By 1772 Romney was financially secure enough to make the journey (with Ozias Humhrey) to Italy to study the great artists of the past, as he had always intended. He set off in March, making his way through Europe (via Paris, Lyon, Marseilles, Nice, Genoa, Livorno, Florence and Pisa) and arriving in Rome in June. A letter of introduction allowed him to meet the Pope, Clement XIV, who allowed him to set up scaffolding in the Vatican to study the frescoes of Raphael. He spent 18 months in Rome making studies and sketches of the great art works on view there. He returned to London in July 1775 (via Florence, Bologna, Venice, Parma and Turin) after an absence of over 2 years.

On his return, in 1775, Romney moved to Cavendish Square, in a house formerly owned by noted portraitist Francis Cotes. He was considerably in debt, not only on his own account but also due to being saddled with the debt of his artistic but dissolute brother Peter. Fortunately, he was offered commissions by the Duke of Richmond and his circle of friends, which helped turn the tide of fortune permanently in the artist's favour. In 1776-77, he made the acquaintance of William Hayley, striking up a lasting friendship with the writer, and painting portraits for him.

1782 was the beginning of an important new chapter in Romney's life, for in that year he was first introduced to Emma Hamilton (then called Emma Hart) who became his muse. He painted over 60 portraits of her in various poses, sometimes playing the part of historical or mythological figures. He also painted many other contemporaries, including fellow artist Mary Moser.

In the summer of 1799, his health broken, and after an absence of almost forty years, Romney returned to his wife, Mary, in Kendal. She nursed him during the remaining 2 years of his life until he died in November 1802. He was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary's Parish Church, Dalton-in-Furness.

George Romney is a kinsman of Mitt Romney, U.S politician.

George Stubbs

George Stubbs (25 August 1724 – 10 July 1806) was an English painter, best known for his paintings of horses.

Stubbs was born in Liverpool, the son of a currier and leather merchant. Information on his life up to age thirty-five is sparse, relying almost entirely on notes made by fellow artist Ozias Humphry towards the end of Stubbs's life. Stubbs worked at his father's trade until he was 15 or 16, and after his father's death in 1741 was briefly apprenticed to a Lancashire painter and engraver named Hamlet Winstanley. He soon left as he objected to the work of copying to which he was set. Thereafter as an artist he was self-taught. In the 1740s he worked as a portrait painter in the North of England and from about 1745 to 1751 he studied human anatomy at York County Hospital. He had had a passion for anatomy from his childhood, and one of his earliest surviving works is a set of illustrations for a textbook on midwifery which was published in 1751.

In 1754 Stubbs visited Italy. Forty years later he told Ozias Humphry that his motive for going to Italy was, "to convince himself that nature was and is always superior to art whether Greek or Roman, and having renewed this conviction he immediately resolved upon returning home". In 1756 he rented a farmhouse in the village of Horkstow, Lincolnshire, and spent 18 months dissecting horses, assisted by his common-law wife, Mary Spencer. He moved to London in about 1759 and in 1766 published The anatomy of the Horse. The original drawings are now in the collection of the Royal Academy.

Even before his book was published, Stubbs's drawings were seen by leading aristocratic patrons, who recognised that his work was more accurate than that of earlier horse painters such as James Seymour, Peter Tillemans and John Wootton. In 1759 the 3rd Duke of Richmond commissioned three large pictures from him, and his career was soon secure. By 1763 he had produced works for several more dukes and other lords and was able to buy a house in Marylebone, a fashionable part of London, where he lived for the rest of his life.
His most famous work is probably Whistlejacket, a painting of a prancing horse commissioned by the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, which is now in the National Gallery in London. This and two other paintings carried out for Rockingham break with convention in having plain backgrounds. Throughout the 1760s he produced a wide range of individual and group portraits of horses, sometimes accompanied by hounds. He often painted horses with their grooms, whom he always painted as individuals. Meanwhile he also continued to accept commissions for portraits of people, including some group portraits. From 1761 to 1776 he exhibited at the Society of Artists, but in 1775 he switched his allegiance to the recently founded but already more prestigious Royal Academy.

Stubbs also painted more exotic animals including lions, tigers, giraffes, monkeys, and rhinoceroses, which he was able to observe in private menageries. He became preoccupied with the theme of a wild horse threatened by a lion and produced several variations on this theme. These and other works became well known at the time through engravings of Stubbs's work, which appeared in increasing numbers in the 1770s and 1780s.

Stubbs also painted historical pictures, but these are much less well regarded. From the late 1760s he produced some work on enamel. In the 1770s Josiah Wedgwood developed a new and larger type of enamel panel at Stubbs's request. Stubbs hoped to achieve commercial success with his paintings in enamel, but the venture left him in debt. Also in the 1770s he painted single portraits of dogs for the first time, while also receiving an increasing number of commissions to paint hunts with their packs of hounds. He remained active into his old age. In the 1780s he produced a pastoral series called Haymakers and Reapers, and in the early 1790s he enjoyed the patronage of the Prince of Wales, whom he painted on horseback in 1791. His last project, begun in 1795, was A comparative anatomical exposition of the structure of the human body with that of a tiger and a common fowl, fifteen engravings from which appeared between 1804 and 1806. The project was left unfinished upon Stubbs's death at the age of 81 on 10 July 1806, in London.

Stubbs's son George Townly Stubbs was an engraver and printmaker.

The record price for a Stubbs painting was set by the sale at auction of Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey (1765) at Christie's International in London on July 5, 2011 for $36 million (22.4 million pounds). It was sold by the U.K.-based Woolavington Collection of sporting art; the buyer was unidentified.