Norman Rockwell

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: Théodore Géricault

date_of_death: January 26, 1824

age: 32

cause_of_death: Complications from a spinal tumor

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Théodore Géricault was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement and his expressive works include portraits and military themes. His best-known painting is The Raft of Medusa which is a dramatic interpretation of the aftermath of a French shipwreck, a contemporary tragedy. born in Rouen, France to an upper middle-class family, Géricault's family moved to Paris in 1797 when he was 5 years old. Though he had shown an early promise in art, his father did not want him to pursue it as a career. After his mother died in 1808, he received an annuity which gave him some form of financial independence. At 17 years old, Géricault started secretly studying art under Carle Vernet. Vernet specialized in military paintings, genre paintings, and equestrian paintings. In 1810, wanting a more formal training, he studied classical figure art under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. After 11 months, he opted instead to just paint the masters at the Louvre (only to be banned for getting into a heated argument with another artist). In 1819, Géricault completed what would become his most famous painting, “The Raft of the Medusa”. It depicted the harrowing last hours of a recent shipwreck that became a national disaster. In 1819, the painting was exhibited at the annual Paris Salon and, though it was awarded a gold medal, received conflicted reviews for the political undertones. In 1820, Géricault toured the painting through England, where it was a success. Later in his life he traveled to England where visions of the poor and downtrodden greatly impacted his art. Plagued by ill health all his life, Géricault died in 1824 at just 32 years old. Months later, the Louvre purchased “The Raft of Medusa”. He was interred at Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, France.

popular name: George Inness

date_of_death: August 3, 1894

age: 69

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Often called "the father of American landscape painting", George Inness was a prominent American landscape painter during the late 1800s. Although Inness's style evolved through distinct stages over a prolific career that spanned more than forty years and 1,000 paintings, his works consistently earned acclaim for their powerful, coordinated efforts to elicit depth of mood, atmosphere, and emotion. Neither pure realist nor impressionist, Inness was a transitional figure who intended for his works to combine both the earthly and the ethereal in order to capture the complete essence of a locale. A master of light, color, and shadow, he became noted for creating highly ordered and complex scenes that often juxtaposed hazy or blurred elements with sharp and refined details to evoke an interweaving of both the physical and the spiritual nature of experience.