Harrison - Fisher"The Father of A Thousand Girls", HARRISON FISHER (1875-1934) showed an early interest in drawing and from the age of six was instructed by his father, Hugh Antoine Fisher, a landscape painter. When his family moved from Brooklyn to San Francisco, Harrison studied there at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. At sixteen, Fisher had begun to make drawings for the San Francisco Call and later for the Examiner.
Soon after returning to New York, Fisher sold two sketches to Puck Magazine which also hired him as a staff artist. He became noted for his ability to draw beautiful women, and his Fisher Girls became rivals to those of Gibson and Christy. The American Girl was a favorite theme for the magazine then, and Fisher did cover illustrations for most of them. For many years he was under an exclusive contract to do covers for Cosmopolitan, but eventually he restricted himself to painting portraits including many actresses and theatrical personalities.
Leon Wyczolkowski (1852-1936)Leon Wyczółkowski was one of the top painters of the Young Poland period, representatn of the realism in Polish contemporary art. Born in 1852 in Huta Miastowska near Siedlce, died in 1936 in Warsaw.
Kroyer Peder SeverinPeder Severin Krøyer (July 23, 1851-November 21, 1909), known as P.S. Krøyer, Norwegian-Danish painter, was born in Stavanger, Norway to Ellen Cecilie Gjesdal. He is one of the best known and beloved, and undeniably the most colorful of the Skagen Painters, a community of Danish and Nordic artists who lived, gathered or worked in Skagen, Denmark, especially during the final decades of the 1800s. Krøyer was the unofficial ringleader of the group.
Life
[edit] Growing up and early training
The mother having been judged unfit, he was given to be cared for by Gjesdal's sister and the sister's husband. Along with the foster parents, he moved to Copenhagen soon afterwards. He began his art education at nine years of age under private tutelage, and was enrolled in Copenhagen's Technical Institute the following year.
In 1870 at the age of 19 he completed his studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi), where he studied with Frederik Vermehren. In 1873 he was awarded the gold medal and a scholarship.
[edit] Early career
Hip hip hooray! Artists celebrating at Skagen, 1888
His official debut as a painter was in 1871 at Charlottenborg with a portrait of a friend, painter Frans Schwartz. He exhibited regularly at Charlottenborg throughout his lifetime.
In 1874 Heinrich Hirschsprung bought his first painting from Krøyer, establishing a long-standing patronage. Hirschsprung's collection of art forms the basis of the Hirschsprung Museum in Copenhagen.
[edit] Travels
Between 1877-1881, Krøyer travelled extensively in Europe, meeting artists, studying art, and developing his skills and outlook. He stayed in Paris and studied under Léon Bonnat, and undoubtedly came under the influence of contemporary impressionists -- Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edouard Manet.
He continued travelling extensively throughout his life, constantly drawing inspiration from foreign artists and cultures. Hirschsprung provided financial support during the early travels, and Krøyer continued exhibiting in Denmark throughout this period.
[edit] Krøyer comes to Skagen
"The Benzon daughters", 1897
In 1882 returning to Denmark he spent June-October at Skagen, then a remote fishing village at the northern tip of Denmark, painting themes from the local life, as well as depictions of the other artistic and influential people who lived in and visited Skagen during those times. He would continue to be associated with Skagen, and the developing art and literary scene at Skagen over many years. Others who would be associated with the community of artists in Skagen were writers Holger Drachmann, Georg Brandes, and Henrik Pontoppidan, artists Michael Ancher and Anna Ancher.
He divided his time between rented houses in Skagen during the summer, a winter apartment in Copenhagen where he worked on his large commissioned portraits, and travels outside of the country.
[edit] Krøyer and Marie
On a trip to Paris in 1888 he ran into Marie Martha Mathilde Triepcke, whom he had known in Copenhagen. They fell in love and, after a whirlwind romance, married on July 23, 1889 at her parents' home in Germany. Marie Krøyer, who was also a painter, became associated with the Skagen community, and was often represented in his paintings after their marriage. They separated in 1905.
Krøyer died in 1909 at 58 years of age after several years of declining health from advanced syphilis. He had been in and out of hospitals, having suffered from bouts of mental illness.
His eyesight failed him gradually over the last ten years of his life until he was totally blind. Ever the optimist, he painted almost to the end of his life in spite of all these health obstacles. He painted some of his last masterpieces while half blind. He would joke that the eyesight in the one working eye became better with the loss of the other eye.
Peder Mork Monsted (1859-1941)
Born at the end of the 'golden age' of Danish painting, Monsted can be described as a product of that era. A landscape painter renowned for the clarity of light common to the painters of that age, his naturalistic 'plain air' views made him the leading Danish landscapist of his age.
Monsted was born in Balle near Ganaa in eastern Denmark before moving to Copenhagen. Here he studied at the Academy between 1875 and 1876, under Andries Fritz (1828 1906), a landscape and portrait painter, and was taught figure painting by Julius Exner (1825 1910). Here too he would have come across the work of artists such as Christen Kobke (1810 1848), an outstanding colourist and Pieter Christian Skorgaard (1817 1875), a romantic nationalist painter, a knowledge of whose work is seen in the Danish landscapes and beech forests of Monsted's.
Monsted travailed extensively throughout his long career, being a frequent visitor to Switzerland, Italy and North Africa. As early as 1884, he visited North Africa returning later in the decade. The early years of the twentieth century saw Monsted returning to Switzerland, the south of France and Italy, the latter being the source of inspiration for many Scandinavian artists of the nineteenth century.
The war years curtailed Monsted's travel to Norway and Sweden, however the 1920's and 1930's saw him return to the Mediterranean. Throughout his long career, Monsted continued to paint the Danish landscape and coastline. His is a romantic, poetic view of nature; he was an artist who depicted the grandeur and monumental aspect of the landscape, with a remarkable eye for detail and colour.