Norman Rockwell

popular name: Andrew Wyeth

date_of_death: January 16, 2009

age: 91

cause_of_death: Died in his sleep after a brief illness.

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) was a prominent American realist painter, best known for his detailed and emotionally evocative works that captured the rural landscapes and people of Pennsylvania and Maine. Born in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, he was the youngest of five children of famed illustrator N.C. Wyeth, who served as both his teacher and greatest influence. Wyeth gained national recognition in 1948 with his painting Christina’s World, which became one of the most iconic images in American art. Throughout his career, he worked primarily in watercolor and tempera, developing a muted, meticulous style that reflected his introspective nature and deep attachment to his surroundings. Despite his popularity with the public, Wyeth’s work often sparked debate among critics, some praising his technical mastery and emotional depth, while others viewed him as overly nostalgic.

popular name: Camille Claudel

date_of_death: October 19, 1943

age: 78

cause_of_death: Stroke due to starvation

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Camille Claudel was an immensely talented yet grossly underappreciated French sculptor known for her figurative works in bronze and marble. She died in relative obscurity in a mental hospital, but later gained recognition for the originality and quality of her work. The subject of several biographies and films, Claudel is well known for her sculptures including The Waltz and The Mature Age. The national Camille Claudel Museum in Nogent-sur-Seine opened in 2017 and she was a longtime associate (and lover) of sculptor Auguste Rodin and the Musée Rodin in Paris has a room dedicated to her works. Sculptures created by Claudel are also held in the collections of several major museums including the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Upon her death, she was interred at Cimetiere de Montfavet par Avignon.

popular name: Andy Warhol

date_of_death: February 22, 1987

age: 58

cause_of_death: Post-operative cardiac arrhythmia

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Andy Warhol was an American artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol wryly responded to the mass media of the 1960s. His silkscreen-printed paintings of cultural and consumer icons, featuring Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Campbell's Soup cans and Brillo boxes, would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation. Before becoming a pop icon, Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration. Warhol's illustrations for editorials like Vogue and Glamour during the 1950s led him to financial success. In 1964, Warhol rented a studio loft on East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan, which was later known as the Factory. Quick to realize the cult of celebrity, the Factory acted as a hub for fashionable movie stars, models, and artists who became fodder for his prints and films, as well as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. The prolific artist worked across painting, sculpture, and new media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.