The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (207 page)

BOOK: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
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grisaille
.
A painting done entirely in shades of grey or another neutral greyish colour. Grisaille is sometimes used for underpainting or for sketches (notably in the work of
Rubens
), and particularly in the
Renaissance
it was used for finished works imitating the effects of sculpture. See also
CAMAIEU
.
Gromaire , Marcel
.
Gropius , Walter
(1883–1969).
German architect, designer, and teacher. In 1918 he founded the
Bauhaus
, of which he was Principal, first in Weimar and from 1925 in Dessau, until 1928, when he resumed his architectural practice in Berlin. In 1934, after the National Socialists had come to power, he left Germany for England, where he practised in partnership with the British architect Maxwell Fry . In 1937 he went to the USA, where he taught at Harvard until 1951. He remained active until the end of his life and had an exceptional list of notable buildings to his credit. Although Gropius's practical work was in the field of architecture, his influence upon modernist trends in all the visual arts has probably not been exceeded by that of any other man. Nowhere else have so many major artists of outstanding originality been brought into collaboration as those whom Gropius induced to teach at the Bauhaus.
Gros , Antoine-Jean
(1771–1835).
French painter. He trained with his father, a
miniaturist
and then with J.-L.
David
. Although he revered David and became one of his favourite pupils, Gros had a passionate nature and he was drawn more to the colour and vibrancy of
Rubens
and the great Venetian painters than to the
Neoclassical
purity of his master. In 1793 Gros went to Italy, where he met Napoleon and was appointed his official battle painter. He followed Napoleon on his campaigns, and his huge paintings such as
The Battle of Eylau
(Louvre, Paris, 1808) are among the most stirring images of the Napoleonic era. Compared to the contemporary war scenes of
Goya
, they are glamorous lies, but they are painted with such dramatic skill and panache that they cannot but be admired on their own terms. When David went into exile after the fall of Napoleon , Gros took over his studio, and tried to work in the more consciously Neoclassical style. He never again approached the quality of his Napoleonic pictures, however (although he painted excellent portraits), and haunted by a sense of failure he drowned himself in the Seine. Gros is regarded as one of the leading figures in the development of
Romanticism
; the colour and drama of his work influenced
Géricault
,
Delacroix
, and his pupil
Bonington
amongst others.
Grosvenor Gallery
, London.
A commercial gallery founded in 1877 by the wealthy dilettante painter Sir Coutts Lindsay and Charles E. Hallé , son of the famous musician Sir Charles Hallé .
Whistler
showed eight paintings at the opening exhibition, and
Ruskin's
notorious outburst against one of them led to the libel trial that caused the painter's financial ruin. The other artists who showed at the gallery included such distinguished academics as
Leighton
and
Poynter
, but it became particularly associated with the Aesthetic Movement (see
AESTHETICISM
) and was memorably satirized in Gilbert and Sullivan's
Patience
(1881): ‘A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, | Foot-in-the-grave young man’ (an allusion to the deathly pallor possessed by many of the figures in works by painters such as
Burne-Jones
). In 1888 the Grosvenor Gallery was taken over by the New Gallery; by this time it ‘had become little more than an overflow from the
Royal Academy
’ (Dennis Farr,
English Art
1870–1940, 1978).

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