The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (61 page)

(1883–1970).
French
naïve
painter. He passed his childhood on barges along the canals of France (his father was a boatman) and at the age of 12 he became a farmhand. Later he was a labourer and a wrestler in a travelling circus. From 1907 he worked as a porter on the Paris Métro, as a navvy and a docker, and then took a night job in a printing establishment in order to have more time for painting. In 1922 a pavement exhibition of his pictures attracted the attention of Wilhelm
Uhde
and other critics, and thereafter he was able to devote all his time to painting. His pictures have exceptional strength and vitality, particularly his scenes of circus life; a fine example is
Country Fair Athlete
(Mus. d'Art Moderne, Paris,
c.
1930).

 
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(1876–1953).
British draughtsman and etcher, mainly of architectural subjects. He studied architecture and painting in his native Glasgow, then settled in London in 1901 and became a member of the
New English Art Club
. In 1916 he became the first
Official War Artist
to be appointed and he was also an Official War Artist in the Second World War. His son Stephen (1904–58) was a painter and art critic.

 
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(1822–99).
French animal painter. Trained by her father,
Raymond Bonheur
(d. 1849), she exhibited regularly at the Paris
Salon
from 1841, where her pictures of lions, tigers, wolves, etc., were soon very popular.
The Horse Fair
(1853; Met. Mus., New York, reduced replica in NG, London) gave her an international reputation. She was a colourful and formidable character, outspoken in her feminine independence (she smoked cigarettes and wore trousers), and in 1894 was the first women to be awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. There is a small museum of her work at Fontainebleau.

 
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(1487–1553).
Italian painter. He was born in Verona, but all his recorded activity was in Venice, where he based his style on
Giorgione
,
Titian
, and
Palma Vecchio
. There are few signed, dated, or documented works by him, but he appears to have run a prolific studio. Consequently he has become one of those artists whose names are used as dustbins for dumping difficult attributions. His pupils included Jacopo
Bassano
and possibly
Schiavone
and
Tintoretto
.

 
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(1802–28).
English painter, active mainly in France, where his family moved when he was 15. In 1819 he went to Paris, where he became a pupil of
Gros
and formed a friendship with
Delacroix
. He was influenced by the medievalism and orientalism of the French
Romantics
and produced paintings in their manner. However, he established his reputation as a landscapist, particularly with his works exhibited at the
Salon
of 1822 and the so-called ‘English’ Salon of 1824, at which his own paintings (which won him a gold medal) and those of
Constable
were the star attractions. In 1825 he accompanied Delacroix to England and sought out pictures by Constable, whose influence is apparent in his subsequent work, and in 1826 he visited Italy, producing some of his finest work in Venice. Bonington was overloaded with work and his delicate health suffered; he died of consumption in London a month before his 26th birthday. Although his career was so brief, Bonington was highly influential, the freshness and spontaneity of his fluid style in both oil and watercolours attracting many imitators. Delacroix wrote of him: ‘Other artists were perhaps more powerful or more accurate than Bonington, but no one in the modern school, perhaps no earlier artist, possessed the lightness of execution which makes his works, in a certain sense, diamonds, by which the eye is enticed and charmed independently of the subject or of imitative appeal.’ These qualities are particularly apparent in the
pochades
(oil sketches done rapidly on the spot as records of transitory effects in nature), a fashion which he together with
Turner
and Constable was instrumental in establishing. The best collection of Bonington's work is in the Wallace Collection, London, and he is also well represented in the City Museum and Art Gallery at Nottingham, his home town.

 
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