Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 - July 29, 1890) was a Dutch painter, generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history. He produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during a period of only 10 years before he succumbed to mental illness (possibly bipolar disorder) and committed suicide. He had little success during his lifetime, but his posthumous fame grew rapidly, especially following a showing of 71 of van Gogh's paintings in Paris on March 17, 1901 (11 years after his death).

(Properly, in Dutch language pronunciation, the name Gogh rhymes with the English language loch, in other languages than Dutch it is also pronounced 'goph', 'go' and 'goe'.)
Vicent van Gogh - Self-portrait (1886)

Van Gogh's influence on expressionism, fauvism and early abstraction was enormous, and can be seen in many other aspects of 20th-century art. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is dedicated to Van Gogh's work and that of his contemporaries. The Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo (also in the Netherlands), has a considerable collection of Vincent van Gogh paintings as well.

Several paintings by Van Gogh rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On March 30, 1987 Van Gogh's painting Irises was sold for a record $53.9 million at Sotheby's, New York. On May 15, 1990 his Portrait of Doctor Gachet was sold for $82.5 million at Christie's, thus establishing a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings).

Life and work

Vincent was born in Zundert, Netherlands. Son of Anna Cornelia Carbentus and Theodorus van Gogh, a Protestant minister, a profession that Vincent found appealing and to which he would be drawn to a certain extent later in his life. His sister described him as a serious and introspective child.

At age 16 Vincent started to work for the art dealer Goupil & Co. in The Hague. His brother Theo, four years his junior and with whom Vincent cherished a lifelong friendship, would join the company later. This friendship is amply documented in the vast amount of letters they sent each other. These letters have been preserved and were published in 1914. They provide a lot of insight into the life of the painter, and show him to be a talented writer with a keen mind. Theo would support Vincent financially throughout his life.

In 1873, his firm transferred him to London, then to Paris. He became increasingly interested in religion; in 1876 Goupil dismissed him for lack of motivation. He became a teaching assistant in Ramsgate near London, then returned to Amsterdam to study theology in 1877.

After dropping out in 1878, he became a lay minister in Belgium in a poor mining region known as the Borinage. He even preached down in the mines and was extremely concerned with the lot of the workers. He was dismissed after 6 months and continued without pay. During this period he started to produce charcoal sketches.

In 1880, Vincent followed the suggestion of his brother Theo and took up painting in earnest. For a brief period Vincent took painting lessons from Anton Mauve at The Hague. Although Vincent and Anton soon split over a divergence of artistic views, influences of the Hague School of painting would remain in Vincent's work, notably in the way he played with light and in the looseness of his brush strokes. However his usage of colours, favouring dark tones, set him apart from his teacher.

In 1881 he declared his love to his widowed cousin Kee Vos, who rejected him. Later he would move in with the prostitute Sien Hoornik and her children and considered marrying her; his father was strictly against this relationship and even his brother Theo advised against it. They later separated.

Impressed and influenced by Jean-François Millet, van Gogh focused on painting peasants and rural scenes. He moved to the Dutch province Drenthe, later to Nuenen, North Brabant, also in The Netherlands. Here he painted in 1885 The Potato Eaters (Dutch Aardappeleters, now in The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam).

In the winter of 1885-1886 Van Gogh attended the art academy of Antwerp, Belgium. This proved a disappointment as he was dismissed after a few months by Professor Eugène Siberdt. Van Gogh did however get in touch with Japanese art during this period, which he started to collect eagerly. He admired its bright colours, use of canvas space and the role lines played in the picture. These impressions would influence him strongly. Van Gogh made some paintings in Japanese style. Also some of the portraits he painted are set against a background which shows Japanese art.

In spring 1886 Van Gogh went to Paris, where he moved in with his brother Theo; they shared a house on Montmartre. Here he met the painters Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Emile Bernard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. He discovered impressionism and liked its use of light and colour, more than its lack of social engagement (as he saw it). Especially the technique known as pointillism (where many small dots are applied to the canvas that blend into rich colors only in the eye of the beholder, seeing it from a distance) made its mark on Van Goghs own style. It should be noted that Van Gogh is regarded as a post-impressionist, rather than an impressionist. Van Gogh also used complementary colors, especially blue and orange, in close proximity in order to enhance the brilliance of each (see color).
In 1888, when city life and living with his brother proved too much, Van Gogh left Paris and went to Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. He was impressed with the local landscape and hoped to found an art colony. He decorated a "yellow house" and created a celebrated series of yellow sunflower paintings for this purpose. Only Paul Gauguin, whose simplified colour schemes and forms (known as synthetism) attracted van Gogh, followed his invitation. The admiration was mutual, and Gauguin painted van Gogh painting sunflowers. However their encounter ended in a quarrel. Van Gogh suffered a mental breakdown and cut off part of his left ear, which he gave to a startled prostitute friend. Gauguin left in December 1888. Cafe Terrace at Night (1888)
One of Vincent's famous paintings, the Bedroom in Arles of 1888, uses bright yellow and unusual perspective effects in depicting the interior of his bedroom. The boldly vanishing lines are sometimes attributed to his changing mental condition. The only painting he sold during his lifetime, The Red Vineyard, was created in 1888. It is now on display in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, Russia.

Van Gogh now exchanged painting dots for small stripes. He suffered from depression, and in 1889 on his own request Van Gogh was admitted to the psychiatric center at Monastery Saint-Paul de Mausole in Saint Remy de Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. During his stay here the clinic and its garden became his main subject. Pencil strokes changed again, now into swirls.

In May 1890 Vincent left the clinic and went to the physician Paul Gachet, in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, where he was closer to his brother Theo, who had recently married. Gachet had been recommended to him by Pissarro; he had treated several artists before. Here van Gogh created his only etching: a portrait of the melancholic doctor Gachet. His depression aggravated, and on July 27 of the same year, at the age of 37, after a fit of painting activity, van Gogh shot himself in the chest. He died two days later, with Theo at his side, who reported his last words as "La tristesse durera toujours" (French: "The sadness will last forever"). He was buried at the cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise; Theo, unable to come to terms with his brother's death, died 6 months later and, at his wife's request, was buried next to Vincent.

It would not take long before Vincent's fame grew higher and higher. Large exhibitions were organised soon: Paris 1901, Amsterdam 1905, Cologne 1912, New York 1913 and Berlin 1914.

Van Gogh's life forms the basis for Irving Stone's biographical novel Lust for Life.

Notable Works

(1885) The Potato Eaters
(1888) Bedroom in Arles
(1888) Cafe Terrace at Night
(1888) The Red Vinyard
(1889) The Starry Night
(1889) Irises †
(1889) Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers
(1889) Portrait de l'artiste sans barbe †
(1890) Portrait of Doctor Gachet †
† Denotes paintings which are recent recordholders for the highest price paid for a painting at an auction.

Influences on van Gogh
(see also above)

The Hague School.
Painter Jean-François Millet (1814-1875), who also focused on peasant life.
Writer Emile Zola (1840-1902) whose novels Van Gogh admired very much.
Japanese woodblock prints.
Impressionism, notably pointillists Georges Seurat (1859-1891) and Paul Signac (1836-1935).
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903).

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, formally Pablo Ruiz Picasso, (October 25, 1881 - April 8, 1973) was one of the recognized masters of 20th century art.

Overview

His name in full was Pablo (or Pablito) Diego José Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Blasco y Picasso López. His father was José Ruiz y Blasco; his mother, María Picasso y López. In his early years he signed his name Ruiz Blasco after his father but, from about 1901 on, switched to using his mother's name.

Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain, and is probably most famous as the founder, along with Georges Braque, of Cubism. However in a long life he produced a wide and varied body of work, the best-known being the Blue Period works which feature moving depictions of acrobats, harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and artists.

While Picasso was primarily a painter (in fact he believed that an artist must paint in order to be considered a true artist), he also worked with small ceramic and bronze sculptures, collage and even produced some poetry. "Je suis aussi un poète," as he quipped to his friends.

Several paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On May 4, 2004 Picasso's painting Garcon à la Pipe was sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's, thus establishing a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings). Pablo Picasso
Picasso hated to be alone when he wasn't working. In Paris, in addition to having a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude Stein and others, he usually maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner.

In the 1915 photograph seen here is friends (left to right): Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Henri-Pierre Roché (in uniform), Marie Vassilieff, Max Jacob and Pablo Picasso.

Picasso's most famous work is probably his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica, Spain; the Guernica (painting). This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. The painting of the picture was captured in a series of photographs by Picasso's most famous lover, Dora Maar, a distinguished artist in her own right. A Nazi officer is supposed to have come to his door brandishing a postcard and demanding, "Did you do this?" "No," Picasso is supposed to have replied, "you did." The Guernica hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years; Picasso stipulated that the painting should not return to Spain until democracy was restored in that country. In 1981 the Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting became one of the main attractions in Madrid's Museo de La Reina Sofía (Queen Sofía's Museum) when it opened.

As certain works, for example the Cubist pieces, tend to be associated in the public mind with Picasso, it is important to realize how talented Picasso was as a painter and draughtsman. He was capable of working with oils, watercolours, pastels, charcoal, pencil, ink, or indeed any medium with equally high facility. With his most extreme cubist works he came close to deconstructing a complex scene into just a few geometric shapes while at the same time being capable of photo-realistic pen and ink sketches of his friends. Picasso had a massive talent for almost any artistic endeavor he turned his mind to, despite limited formal academic training (he finished only one year of his course of study at the Royal Academy in Madrid), and a ferocious work-ethic.

Early life

Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco, was himself a painter and for most of his life was a professor of art at Spanish colleges. It is from Don José that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training – figure drawing, and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools thoughout his childhood, often those his father taught at, he never finished his college level course of study at the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.

The Picasso Museum in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days, and for many years, Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage that clearly demonstrate his firm grounding in classical techniques, as well as rarely seen works from his old age.

Picasso and pacifism

Picasso remained neutral during the Spanish Civil War, World War I and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Picasso never commented on this but encouraged the idea that it was because he was a pacifist. Some of his contemporaries though (including Braque) felt that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice than principle.

As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Franco and the Fascists through his art he did not take up arms against them.

He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. No political movement seemed to compel his support to any great degree.

After the Second World War, Picasso joined the French Communist party, and even attended an international peace conference in Poland. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Communist politics.

Personal life

Picasso had a long string of lovers, four children by three women, and two wives. In the early years of the 20th century, Picasso, still a struggling youth, began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who appears in many of the Blue and Rose period paintings. After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso left Fernande for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. When it became clear that Eva was dying, Picasso left her as well. Picasso frequented brothels throughout his life, and also had numerous affairs.

In 1918 Picasso married Olga Koklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe. Olga introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a sometime motorcycle racer, sometime chauffeur to his father, and dissolute.

Olga's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies, and the two lived in a state of near constant conflict. In 1927 Picasso met the then underage (17) Marie Thérèse Walter, and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Olga soon ended in separation, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Olga to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Olga's death in 1955.

Picasso carried on a long standing affair with Marie Thérèse, and fathered a daughter, Maya, with her. Marie Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and eventually hanged herself after Picasso's death.

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 30s and early 40s, and it was Dora who documented the painting of Guernica. Like all the women in his life, Dora was cruelly abused emotionally by the narcissistic Picasso.

After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso's women, Françoise eventually left Picasso in 1953 because of his abusive treatment, and infidelities. This came as a severe blow to Picasso, who was used to submissive women who lived for whatever scraps of affection or attention he deigned to give them.

He went through a difficult period after Françoise's departure, coming to terms with his advancing age, and his perception that he was an old man, now in his seventies, who was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Jacqueline worked at the Madoura Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picasso's life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Françoise. Françoise had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso's encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children's rights. Picasso then secretly married Jacqueline after Françoise had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.

Later works

In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo he had been in his youth, became more, and more reclusive. His second wife, Jacqueline Roque, screened all but the most important visitors, and closest friends, even excluding Picasso's two children, Claude and Paloma, both by his former partner, the painter Françoise Gilot.

This reclusive existence intensified after Picasso underwent surgery for a prostate condition in 1965. This surgery is rumored to have left Picasso largely impotent. To a man for whom sexual adventure was such an important part of life, this was a serious life change, and Picasso seems to have dealt with it by redoubling his already prolific artistic output.

Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colorful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate engravings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man, or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper called them "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man in the antechamber of death". Only a decade later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism, and was, as usual, ahead of his time.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at Mougins, France, and was interred at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône. Jacqueline prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral.

At the time of his death, Picasso, by now a multi-millionaire, owned a vast quantity of his own work, consisting of personal favorites which he had kept off the art market, or which he had not needed to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, like Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties, or estate tax to the French state were paid in the form of his works, and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense, and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. And recently in 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him, in his hometown of Malaga, Spain, called the Museo Picasso Málaga.

In 1999, Picasso's Les Noces de Pierrette (The Marriage of Pierrette) sold for more than USD $51 million.

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci (April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519) was a celebrated Italian Renaissance architect, musician, inventor, engineer, sculptor and painter.

He has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" and as a universal genius. Leonardo is well known for his masterly paintings, such as The Last Supper and Mona Lisa. He is also known for his many inventions that were conceived well before their time but of which few were constructed in his lifetime. In addition, he helped advance the study of anatomy, astronomy, and civil engineering.
Leonardo da Vinci

Life

His life was described in Giorgio Vasari's biography Vite.

Leonardo was born in Anchiano, near Vinci, Italy. He was an illegitimate child. His father Ser Piero da Vinci was a young lawyer and his mother, Caterina, was a peasant girl. It has been suggested that Caterina was a Middle Eastern slave owned by Piero, but the evidence is scant.

This was before modern naming conventions developed in Europe. Therefore, his full name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", which means "Leonardo, son of Piero, from Vinci". Leonardo himself simply signed his works "Leonardo" or "Io, Leonardo" ("I, Leonardo"). Most authorities therefore refer to his works as "Leonardos", not "da Vincis". Presumably he did not use his father's name because of his illegitimate status.

Leonardo grew up with his father in Florence. He was a vegetarian throughout his life. He became an apprentice to painter Andrea del Verrocchio about 1466. Later, he became an independent painter in Florence.

In 1476 he was anonymously accused of homosexual contact with a 17-year-old model, Jacopo Saltarelli, a notorious prostitute. He was charged, along with three other young men, with homosexual conduct. However, he was acquitted because of lack of evidence. For a time Leonardo and the others were under the watchful eye of Florence's "Officers of the Night" — a kind of Renaissance vice squad.

That Leonardo was homosexual is generally accepted. His longest-running relationship was with a beautiful delinquent Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, whom he nicknamed Salai (Little Devil), who entered his household at the age of 10. Leonardo supported Salai for twenty five years, and he left Salai half his vineyard in his will.

From 1478 to 1499 Leonardo worked for Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan and maintained his own workshop with apprentices there. Seventy tons of bronze that had been set aside for Leonardo's "Gran Cavallo" horse statue were cast into weapons for the Duke in an attempt save Milan from the French under Charles VIII in 1495 — see also Italian Wars.

When the French returned under Louis XII in 1498, Milan fell without a fight, overthrowing Sforza. Leonardo stayed in Milan for a time, until one morning he found French archers using his life-size clay model for the "Gran Cavallo" for target practice. He left with his servant and assistant Salai (a.k.a. Gian Giacomo Caprotti) and his friend (and inventor of double-entry bookkeeping) Luca Pacioli for Mantua, moving on after 2 months for Venice, then moving again to Florence at the end of April 1500.

In Florence he entered the services of Cesare Borgia (also called "Duca Valentino" and son of Pope Alexander VI) as a military architect and engineer. In 1506 he returned to Milan, now in the hands of Maximilian Sforza after Swiss mercenaries drove out the French.

In 1507 Leonardo met a 15 year old aristocrat of great personal beauty, Count Francesco Melzi. Melzi became his pupil, life companion, and heir.

From 1513 to 1516 he lived in Rome, where painters like Raphael and Michelangelo were active at the time; he did not have much contact with these artists, however.

In 1515 Francis I of France retook Milan, and Leonardo was commissioned to make a centrepiece (of a mechanical lion) for the peace talks in Bologna between the French king and Pope Leo X, where he must have first met the king. In 1516, he entered Francis' service, being given the use of the manor house Clos Lucé next to the king's residence at the Royal Chateau at Amboise, and receiving a generous pension. The king became a close friend.

He died in Cloux, France in 1519. According to his wish, 60 beggars followed his casket. He was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert in the castle of Amboise.

Leonardo had a great number of friends, some of whom were:

Fazio Cardano — mathematician, jurist
Giovanni Francesco Melzi — painter, pupil
Girolamo Melzi — Captain in Milanese militia
Giovanni Francesco Rustici
Cesare Borgia — warrior
Niccolo Machiavelli — writer
Andrea da Ferrara
Franchinus Gaffurius — music theorist, composer
Francesco Nani — Brother in the Franciscan Order in Brescia
Iacomo Andrea — architect and author
Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli — Franciscan father
Galeazzo da Sanseverino — Commanded ducal army of Milan, singer
Ginevra dei Benci
Atalante Miglioretti — singer, artist, actor
Tomasso Masini da Peretola a.k.a. Zoroastro — student of alchemy, occultist
Benedetto Dei — writer

Art

Leonardo is well known for the masterful paintings attributed to him, such as Last Supper (Ultima Cena or Cenacolo, in Milan), painted in 1498, and the Mona Lisa (also known as La Gioconda, now at the Louvre in Paris), painted in 1503–1506. There is significant debate however, whether da Vinci himself painted the Mona Lisa, or whether it was primarily the work of his students. Only seventeen of his paintings, and none of his statues survive. Of these paintings, only Ginevra de' Benci is in the Western Hemisphere.

Leonardo often planned grandiose paintings with many drawings and sketches, only to leave the projects unfinished.

In 1481 he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece "The Adoration of the Magi". After extensive, ambitious plans and many drawings, the painting was left unfinished and Leonardo left for Milan.

He there spent many years making plans and models for a monumental seven-metre (24-foot) high horse statue in bronze ("Gran Cavallo"), to be erected in Milan. Because of war with France, the project was never finished. Based on private initiative, a similar statue was completed according to some of his plans in 1999 in New York, given to Milan and erected there. The Hunt Museum in Limerick, Ireland has a small bronze horse, thought to be the work of an apprentice from Leonardo's original design.

Back in Florence, he was commissioned for a large public mural, the "Battle of Anghiari"; his rival Michelangelo was to paint the opposite wall. After producing a fantastic variety of studies in preparation for the work, he left the city, with the mural unfinished due to technical difficulties.

List of paintings
Annunciation (1475-1480) Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Ginevra de' Benci (~1475) National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, U.S.
The Benois Madonna (1478-1480) Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia
The Virgin with Flowers (1478-1481) Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany
Adoration of the Magi (1481) Uffizi, Florence, Italy
Cecilia Gallerani with an Ermine (1488-90) Czartoryski Museum, Krakow, Poland
A Musician (~1490), Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy
Madonna Litta (1490-91) The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia
La Belle Ferronière (1495-1498) Louvre, Paris, France
Last Supper (1498) Convent of Sta. Maria delle Grazie, Milan, Italy
The Madonna of the Rocks (1483-86) Louvre, Paris, France
The Madonna of the Rocks aka The Virgin of the Rocks (1508) National Gallery, London, England
Leda and the Swan (1508) Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy
Mona Lisa or La Gioconda Louvre, Paris, France
The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (~1510) Louvre, Paris, France
St. John the Baptist (~1514) Louvre, Paris, France
Bacchus (1515) Louvre, Paris, France

Science and engineering

Perhaps even more impressive than his artistic work are his studies in science and engineering, recorded in notebooks comprising some 13,000 pages of notes and drawings, which fuse art and science. He was left-handed and used mirror writing throughout his life. Explainable by fact that it is easier to pull a quill pen than to push it; by using mirror-writing, the left-handed writer is able to pull the pen from right to left.

His approach to science was an observatory one: he tried to understand a phenomenon by describing and depicting it in utmost detail, and did not emphasize experiments or theoretical explanations. Throughout his life, he planned a grand encyclopedia based on detailed drawings of everything. Since he lacked formal education in Latin and mathematics, Leonardo the scientist was mostly ignored by contemporary scholars.

He participated in autopsies and produced many extremely detailed anatomical drawings, planning a comprehensive work of human and comparative anatomy. Around the year 1490, he produced a study in his sketchbook of the Canon of Proportions as described in recently rediscovered writings of the Roman architect Vitruvius. The study, called the Vitruvian Man, is one of his most well-known works.

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 - November 3, 1954) was a French artist.

He was born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse in Le Cateau, Picardie, France, and grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law. After gaining his qualification he worked as a court administrator in Cateau Cambresis. Following an attack of appendicitis he took up painting during his convalescence. After his recovery, he returned to Paris in 1891 to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau.

Influenced by the works of Edouard Manet, Paul Signac and Paul Cézanne, and also by traditional Japanese art, he painted in the Fauvist manner, becoming known as a leader of that movement. His first exhibition was in 1901 and his first solo exhibition in 1904.
Henri Matisse
His fondess for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he moved southwards in 1905 to work with André Derain and spent time on the French Riviera, his paintings marked by having the colours keyed up into a blaze of intense shades and characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail. The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; he had moved beyond them and many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917 when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse.

In 1941 he was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he soon needed a wheelchair; this did not stop his work however, but as increased weakness made an easel impossible he created cut paper collages called papiers découpés, often of some size, which still demonstrated his eye for colour and geometry.

Matisse lived in Cimiez on the French Riviera, now a suburb of the city of Nice, from 1917 until his death in 1954. He is buried there in the Cimiez Monastery Cemetery.

Working in a number of modes, but principally as a painter, he is considered one of the most significant artists of the early 20th century. Unlike many artists, he achieved international fame and popularity during his own lifetime. From his early shows in Paris, he attracted collectors and critics.

Today, a Matisse painting can sell for as much as US$17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, "Reclining Nude I (Dawn)," sold for US$9.2 million, a record for a sculpture by the artist.

Partial list of works

Notre-Dame, une fin d'après-midi (1902),
Green Stripe (1905),
The Open Window (1905),
Le bonheur de vivre (1906),
Madras Rouge (1907),
The Dessert: Harmony in Red (1908),
The Conversation (1909),
Dance (1910),
L'Atelier Rose (1911),
Zorah on the Terrace (1912),
Le Rifain assis (1912),
La lecon de musique (1917),
The Painter and His Model (1917),
Interior At Nice (1920),
Odalisque with Raised Arms (1923),
Yellow Odalisque (1926),
Robe violette et Anemones (1937),
Le Reve de 1940 (1940),
Deux fillettes, fond jaune et rouge (1947),
Jazz (1947),
Chapelle du Saint-Marie du Rosaire (1948, completed in 1951),
Beasts of the Sea (1950),
L'Escargot (1953).

Claude Monet

Oscar-Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 - December 5, 1926), French impressionist painter.

Monet was born in Paris, France. His family moved to Le Havre in Normandy when he was six. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Oscar Monet wanted to paint. Eugène Boudin, an artist who worked extensively on plein air paintings - quick sketches made in open air - at beaches in Normandy, taught him some painting techniques in 1856.

Monet had to serve in the army in Algeria. His aunt Lecadre agreed to get him out of the army if he took an art course at a university. He left the army, but he did not like the traditional painting styles the university taught.

In 1862 he studied art with Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir with whom he founded the Impressionist movement. They painted together and maintained a lifelong friendship.
Claude Monet

Monet could also use the studio and paint its models for a low cost. He painted Camille Doncieux, and later they were married. He painted Women in the Garden in the late 1860s. They moved to a house in Argenteuil, near the Seine River, after he and his wife had their first child. They lived there for six years until Camille died; he painted her on her death-bed. Monet then moved to a house in Giverny, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie Region where he planted a large garden.

In 1872 (or 1873) Monet painted Impression, soleil levant (French: Impression, sunrise - now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris), a landscape of Le Havre, which was hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. It is said that a hostile critic Louis Leroy used the name "Impressionists" from the title of this picture by commenting that their paints were indeed "impressions" rather than finished works of art. By the third exhibition in 1876 the painters we know as the Impressionists were using the term about themselves.

He married Alice Hoschede in 1892, whom he had an affair with while he was married to Camille.

In the 1880s and 1890s Monet painted a series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral from different points of view and at different times of the day. Twenty views of the cathedral were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1895. He also made series-paintings of haystacks.

Monet was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature - his own garden, his water lilies, his pond, and his bridge. His garden had a meadow with willows and a marsh. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine. In 1914 Monet began a major new large series of the water lily scenes at the suggestion of his friend, the politician Georges Clemenceau.

He is interred in the Giverny Church Cemetery, Giverny, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie, Region of France.

Recent sales of a Monet painting exceeded US$22 million.