Winslow Homer

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.

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 Jr.

date_of_death: July 27, 1926

age:

cause_of_death:

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: George Inness Jr. was one of America's foremost figure and landscape artists and the son of George Inness, an important American landscape painter. He studied with his father and Léon Bonnat in the 1870s in Europe, where he was made an officer of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Like his father, he was considered a member of the Barbizon School and resisted impressionism. Later he returned to the United States and became known for his paintings of animals and illustration of hunting scenes. In 1899 he was elected to the National Academy of Design. He lived and worked in Boston, New York City and New Jersey and finally in Tarpon Springs, Florida where he produced most of his life's work. The Unitarian Universalist Church in Tarpon Springs contains a collection of eleven of his works, several of which are murals painted directly to the walls of the church sanctuary.