The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (43 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1753–1827).
English collector, connoisseur, and amateur painter, the friend of numerous artists and men of letters; his most celebrated work,
Peel Castle in a Storm
(Leicestershire Museum and Art Gallery, Leicester), moved Wordsworth to a sonnet. Beaumont had much to do with the foundation of the
National Gallery
, to which he presented the best part of his collection in 1826. His favourite painting was
Claude's
Hagar and the Angel
(NG, London), which he frequently took with him when he travelled and which had a great impact on his friend
Constable
. Constable's famous painting
The Cenotaph
(NG, London) shows the memorial to Sir Joshua
Reynolds
that Beaumont had erected in the grounds of his house at Coleorton, Leicestershire.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(active 1360–1403/13).
French sculptor and
illuminator
from Valenciennes, who worked for the French court, Louis de Mâle , Count of Flanders, and the Duc de Berry. Four of the royal effigies in Saint-Denis came from his workshop (Philip VI; John II, ordered 1364; and Charles V and his queen, both ordered 1367). The only illuminations certainly by him are the Prophets and Apostles of the Duc de Berry's
Psalter
(Bib. Nat., Paris, 1380–5). Beauneveu's style in sculpture and painting looked forward to the general northern European trend towards naturalism in the 15th cent.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Beaux-Arts, École Nationale Supérieure des
.

The chief of the official art schools of France. The origins of the École des Beaux-Arts go back to 1648, the foundation date of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (see
ACADEMY
), but it was not established as a separate institution until 1795, during the administrative reforms of the French Revolution. It controlled the path to traditional success with its awards and state commissions, notably the prestigious
Prix de Rome
, and teaching remained conservative until after the Second World War. Entry was difficult—among the artists who failed were
Rodin
and
Vuillard
—and students often preferred the private academies. Many progressive artists, however, obtained a sound technical grounding there—
Degas
,
Manet
,
Matisse
,
Monet
, and
Renoir
all attended classes. The École, which is housed in a complex of early 19th-cent. buildings in Paris, has a large and varied collection of works of art. Many of them are primarily of historical interest, but the collection of drawings is of high quality.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1855–1942).
American painter, active mainly in her native Philadelphia and in New York. She was a highly successful and much honoured society portraitist, working in a dashing and fluid style similar to that of
Sargent
. Her sitters included celebrities such as Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt . She wrote an autobiography,
Background with Figures
, published in 1930.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(
c.
1486–1551).
Italian painter, generally considered the outstanding Sienese
Mannerist
artist. Beccafumi was alive to the developments of Fra
Bartolommeo
,
Michelangelo
, and
Raphael
and combined the new ideas with the bright and decorative colouring of the Sienese tradition. His work is noteworthy for its sense of fantasy and striking effects of light, as in
The Birth of the Virigin
(
c.
1543), one of several outstanding examples of his work in the Pinacoteca, Siena.