The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (109 page)

(1908–87).
British painter, mainly of portraits, but also of landscape and still life. He studied at the
Slade
School, 1926–9, and worked on documentary films for the GPO, 1934–7. In 1937 he was one of the founders of the
Euston Road School
, which helped to establish a tradition of sober figurative painting of which he was one of the main representatives. In 1939 he joined the Royal Artillery and in 1943–5 he was an
Official War Artist
, working in the Near East and then Italy. After the war he taught at Camberwell School of Art, 1945–9, then was Professor at the Slade School, 1945–75. He exerted an important influence not only through his teaching but also through his appointment as Chairman of the National Advisory Council on Art Education in 1959. The Coldstream Report of 1960 helped to change the structure of art school teaching in Britain, introducing the compulsory study of art history for art students and eventually leading to degree status being awarded to recognized art school courses. Coldstream's own work was typically austerely naturalistic: ‘I find I lose interest unless I let myself be ruled by what I see.’ Kenneth
Clark
described his attitude to art as one of ‘dismal rectitude’.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1801–48).
American
Romantic
landscape painter, a founder of the
Hudson River School
. His family migrated to America from England in 1819 and he became passionately devoted to the natural scenery of his new country. He spent two years at the Academy of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania and made his living as a portrait painter and engraver there and in New York until some of his landscapes attracted the attention of
Dunlap
,
Durand
, and
Trumbull
, in 1825, assuring his success. In the following year he moved to Catskill on the Hudson River, journeying into the mountains, often on foot, to make sketches of the scenery and working his studies up into finished paintings in the studio. He had two stays in Europe, 1829–32 and 1841–2, living mainly in Florence with
Greenough
. These European visits, during which he came under the influence of
Turner
and John
Martin
, turned him increasingly from the depiction of natural scenery towards grandiose historical and allegorical themes, notably the two great series
The Course of Empire
(New-York Hist. Society, 1836) and
The Voyage of Life
(Munson-Williams-Proctor Inst., Utica, 1840).

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

collage
.

A pictorial technique in which photographs, news cuttings, and other suitable objects are pasted on to a flat surface, often in combination with painted passages (
coller
is French for ‘to gum’). Long popular as a leisure-time occupation for children and amateurs, it first became a recognized artistic technique in the 20th cent., when it drew its main material from the proliferation of mass-produced images in newspapers, advertisements, etc. The
Cubists
were the first to incorporate real objects such as pieces of newspaper into their pictures, often deliberately giving them a dual function both as the real things they were and as contributing to the picture image (see
PAPIER COLLÉ
). Collage was given a social and ideological direction by the
Futurists
and was used by the
Dadaists
for their own anarchical purposes. It was adopted by the
Surrealists
, who emphasized the juxtaposition of disparate and incongruous imagery. See also
MONTAGE
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1788–1847).
English painter. He was initially taught by
Morland
(of whom his father wrote a biography) and specialized in sentimental rustic landscapes and
genre
scenes that won him great popularity. As with Morland, his work became very repetitive. He was a life-long friend of
Wilkie
, after whom he named his elder son, the novelist Wilkie Collins , who published a biography of his father in 1848. His second son was
Charles Allston Collins
(1828–73), a friend of
Millais
and painter of the well-known
Convent Thoughts
(Ashmolean, Oxford, 1851), which
Ruskin
rated highly because of its botanical detail, done in a fastidious
Pre-Raphaelite
manner. He married one of the daughters of Charles Dickens in 1860 and abandoned painting for writing.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1825–81).
English painter. He was one of the original members of the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
in 1848, but left it in 1850 and trained to be a Roman Catholic priest. Another change of heart followed, and in 1854 he returned to painting, specializing in pretty and sentimental
genre
scenes, the best known of which is
The Empty Purse
of 1857 (versions in the Tate, London, and Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield). He is probably the least known of the PRB and the most remarkable talent he showed at their meetings was his ability to fall asleep at any time.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search