Biography Essay Essay Examples Page 5

Johannes Vermeer (or Jan) (1632–1675) Dutch painter, born in Delft. He spent all his life in his birthplace where, in 1653 he joined the Guild of St Luke as a master painter. Except for a famous View of Delft (1658–60) and a very few portraits and other pictures, he painted mainly interiors, where a single wall…

Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885) French poet, novelist and dramatist, born in Besançon. Son of an officer in Napoléon’s army, his childhood was a series of moves from one military station to another in Italy, Spain and France. He won prizes for poetry from the age of 17, married Adèle Foucher at 20, published his first…

Richard Wilbur was a leading American poet of the 20th century and literary translator. Not only is he known for being a Pulitzer prizewinner and the national poet laureate but also for his ability to touch unsettling truths beneath the surface in his work. Richard Purdy Wilbur was born in New York City March 1,…

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669) Dutch painter, born at Leyden. Son of a miller, he left university early (1621) to study painting. After three years’ apprenticeship to a local artist he spent six months in Amsterdam with Pieter Lastman who had been to Italy and had become familiar with the work of *Carracci and others. Rembrandt…

Raphael Santi (Raffaello Sanzio) (1483–1520) Italian Renaissance painter, born at Urbino. Son of a court painter, his mother died in 1491 and his father in 1494. Influenced by the works of Uccello, Mantegna, Piero and Signorelli, he was apprenticed to Perugino. The Crucifixion (1503) in the National Gallery, London, is an early masterpiece. He left…

Pierre Auguste Renoir  (1841–1919) French painter, born in Limoges. One of the most important of the Impressionists, as a boy he was employed as a painter on porcelain. At Gleyre’s studio in Paris (1861) he met and became friends with *Monet and Sisley. With them he worked in the open air concentrating on the problems of…

Biography Paul Klee (1879–1940) German-Swiss painter, born in Berne. Undecided at first whether to pursue art or music, he eventually went to Munich to study and joined the Blaue Reiter group (Kandinsky). His eyes were opened to the use of colour during a visit to Tunis (1914), and henceforth his colour harmonies and contrasts were…

Paul (Eugène-Henri) Gauguin (1848–1903) French painter, born in Paris. He grew up in Orléans, with his father, and in Lima, Peru, with his mother’s family, became a sailor and joined a stockbroking firm in 1871. He began painting with his friends Pissarro and Cézanne, abandoned the stock market in 1883, sent his wife with their five children…

Biography Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) French post impressionist painter, born in Aix-en-Provence. Son of a rich banker, he wrote poetry, and had as one of his boyhood friends Emile Zola, who persuaded him, against his father’s wishes, to take up art in Paris. From 1863 he joined the group round Manet, and his earliest works, influenced by Delacroix,…

Henry Matisse biography Henry Matisse (1869–1954) French painter, born in Picardy. He studied art in Paris, copied pictures in the Louvre and was influenced by the Impressionists, Cézanne and Gauguin. In 1905 he became the leader of a revolutionary group of artists, labelled ‘Les Fauves’ (‘wild beasts’). To them colour was end in itself and its…