Maurice de Vlaminck was born in 1976 in Paris. He started painting as a teenager but we don’t have much art from his early life as he went and served in the military. He didn’t truly start his artistic career until after he was finished serving in the army.  

Vlaminck was proudly part of the Fauvism age of painting. So much so that he resented painters like Picasso for taking over the genre with cubism, thinking that cubism was driving real painting into the ground. He was heavily influenced by Van Gogh and apparently greatly admired both Van Gogh as a person and his paintings.  his style is insteresting, using bold strokes and colours, not aiming for realism but more of an impression of his subject matter. More refined than cubism but still with abstract qualities.  

William Blake was an amazing painter but he is recognized more for his poetry than his paintings. He was frequently dismissed and did not gain much renown during his lifetime. Now, after his death, he is considered a visionary in poetry and visual art. His pieces are bold and striking, sometimes taking a moment to figure out what you are looking at. He was born in London and after being educated primarily by his mother he apprenticed under James Basire, an engraver. The forms in his paintings are soft around the edges but meticulously detailed if you look closer. I chose to do my blog post on William Blake for selfish reasons. I have been watching a lot of Hannibal and one of William Blakes’s pieces, “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun” is the central focus of season four of the show. The main antagonist of the last season is obsessed with becoming the great red dragon in the work of art.  

Sir Joshua Reynolds specialized in portraiture and apprenticed under Thomas Hudson in 1740. He left his apprenticeship in 1743. in 1749 he joined the ship the HMS centurion on a voyage to the Mediterranean well with the ship he traveled broadly but eventually he settled in London where he became an extremely prolific painter and spent most of his career. 

his detailed style of portraiture didn’t shy away from the reality of his sitters. He left in imperfections and captured the sitter’s likeness with incredible skill. He used natural colors and captured his subject’s human beauty. as someone who enjoys portraiture and appreciates how difficult it is his works amaze me. 

Hugo Van Der Goes

Hugo Van Der Goes is said to be one of the most influential Flemish artists of the early 15^th century. He was often commissioned by the church, so often in fact that one of his most recognizable works of art is a nativity scene. Not much is known about his life before he was a master painter but since gaining his fame, he gained many copycats. Many of the works thought to be his were eventually reassessed and determined to be done by people who worked for him or simply people trying to copy his style. Some of his more well-known pieces are, Portrait of a Man (ca.1475), Adoration of the Shepards (1480), The Portinari Triptych (1475), the adoration of kings (1470), and The Fall and Redemption of Man.