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: Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun

date_of_death: March 30, 1842

age: 86

cause_of_death: Ill health due to stroke

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun was one of the great portrait artists in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, easily the equal of Quentin de La Tour or Jean Baptiste Greuze. Born into relatively modest circumstances, she firmly established herself in society’s upper crust. After earning the favours of the king and his family, she became the official artist of Queen Marie Antoinette. One of the most successful women artists (unusually so for her time), particularly noted for her portraits of women, her father and first teacher, Louis Vigée, was a noted portraitist who worked chiefly in pastels. Her great opportunity came in 1779 when she was summoned to Versailles to paint a portrait of Queen Marie-Antoinette. The two women became friends, and in subsequent years Vigée-Lebrun painted more than 20 portraits of Marie-Antoinette in a great variety of poses and costumes. She also painted a great number of self-portraits, in the style of various artists whose work she admired. During her 60+ years as an artist, Le Brun created 660 portraits and 200 landscapes. In addition to many works in private collections, her paintings are owned by major museums such as the Louvre in Paris, Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, National Gallery in London, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and many other collections in Europe and the United States. Since 1999 the record price for an original Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun at auction is $7,185,900 USD for Portrait of Muhammad Dervish Khan (full-length holding his sword in a landscape).

popular name: Amedeo Modigliani

date_of_death: January 24, 1920

age: 35

cause_of_death: Tubercular meningitis

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian-born artist who moved to Paris in 1906, where he became known for his distinctive portraits and nudes, characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and figures — works that were not received well during his lifetime. His style evolved under the influence of various modernist movements, including post-impressionism, cubism, and African art. Modigliani's work often featured an intimate, sensual quality, with a focus on the human figure. Modigliani's life was marked by struggles, including poor health and financial hardship. He battled tuberculosis throughout much of his life, and his bohemian lifestyle in Paris exposed him to both the highs and lows of the city's artistic circles. He was known for his relationships with fellow artists including Pablo Picasso, Maurice Utrillo, Soutine and Constantin Brâncuși, as well as with several prominent women, including Jeanne Hébuterne, who was his muse and companion. Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Modigliani sold most of his works, but never for any great amount of money and often for a meal or rent. Modigliani gained significant recognition after his death at age 35 where he died from complications of  tubercular meningitis. Today, his works—especially his portraits and nudes—have since become highly valued with the sale of Nu couché (1917–18) sold at auction for $170.4 million in 2015 to billionaire Liu Yiqian. Today, he is considered one of the most influential artists of the early 20th century. Upon his death, he was buried in Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in Paris, France.