Posts in Category: 20th Century
Albert Marquet
Albert Marquet, March 27, 1875–June 14, 1947, was a French painter born in Bordeaux. He studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and later at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he studied with Gustave Moreau and Paul Sérusier.
Marquet formed a close friendship with Henri Matisse and exhibited with artists associated with Fauvism. He showed at the Salon des Indépendants from 1901 and the Salon d’Automne from 1904.
His works are held in major public collections including the Musée d’Orsay and Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tate in London.
Juan Gris
Juan Gris, March 23, 1887–May 11, 1927, was a Spanish painter born in Madrid. He studied engineering at the Madrid School of Arts and Manufactures from 1902 to 1904, then studied painting with José Moreno Carbonero.
He moved to Paris in 1906 and began painting seriously around 1910. He developed a personal Cubist style, exhibited in 1912, and signed an exclusive agreement with art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler that year.
Gris became a major practitioner of Synthetic Cubism, using collage and clearly organized compositions. His style became freer and more lyrical after 1921; he died in Boulogne-sur-Seine in 1927. His works are held by collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
William H Johnson
William H. Johnson, March 18, 1901–April 13, 1970, was born in Florence, South Carolina. He moved to New York in 1918 and studied at the National Academy of Design from 1921 to 1926 with Charles Hawthorne. He also attended Hawthorne’s summer school in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
After traveling and studying in Europe, Johnson returned to the United States with his wife, Danish artist Holcha Krake, in 1938. His later work drew on African American subjects and folk art. He worked in painting and printmaking, and taught at the Harlem Community Art Center. The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds more than a thousand of his works.
After Krake died in 1944, Johnson’s health declined. He spent the final 23 years of his life at Central Islip State Hospital in New York, where he died in 1970. After his death, friends intervened to prevent the disposal of his work; a large portion of his estate was acquired by the Harmon Foundation and later transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts, March 8, 1856–September 14, 1931, was an English-born Australian painter. Born in Dorchester, Dorset, he emigrated to Melbourne with his family in 1869. He studied at the National Gallery School under Thomas Clark and at the Royal Academy Schools in London from 1881 to 1884.
Returning to Melbourne in 1885, Roberts painted landscapes, portraits, and scenes of rural work. He worked with Frederick McCubbin, Arthur Streeton, and Charles Conder in the group known as the Heidelberg School, and helped organize the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in 1889. He later painted the opening of Australia’s first Commonwealth Parliament.
Roberts spent much of 1903–1923 in England before settling permanently at Kallista, Victoria, where he continued painting landscapes until his final years. He died there in 1931. His works are held by the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Augustus Saint-Gaudens, March 1, 1848–August 3, 1907, was an Irish- and American-born sculptor who became one of the leading figures in late nineteenth-century American art. Born in Dublin and raised in New York, he trained as a cameo cutter before studying art in Paris and Rome, where he absorbed both classical and Renaissance models that shaped his mature style.
After returning to the United States, Saint-Gaudens built a distinguished career as a sculptor of public monuments, portrait reliefs, and ideal figures. His major works include the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston, Standing Lincoln in Chicago, the Adams Memorial in Washington, and the Sherman Monument in New York, and he also designed the celebrated 1907 twenty-dollar gold piece.
In his later years Saint-Gaudens worked from Cornish, New Hampshire, while continuing to supervise important public and private commissions. His art combined technical refinement, historical seriousness, and a strong sense of form, and his monuments and reliefs helped define the highest ambitions of American sculpture at the turn of the twentieth century.
William Degouve de Nuncques
William Degouve de Nuncques, February 28, 1867–March 1, 1935, was a Belgian painter born in Monthermé, France. His family settled in Brussels in 1874. After briefly attending the art academy in Ixelles, he developed largely through independent study. Jan Toorop and Henry de Groux were important early associates, and he shared a studio with de Groux.
He exhibited as a guest at the final Les XX exhibition in 1893 and subsequently at La Libre Esthétique. In 1894 he married the painter Juliette Massin, whose sister was married to Émile Verhaeren. His work included Symbolist nocturnes in oil and pastel, Mediterranean landscapes painted during his stay in Mallorca from 1899 to 1902, and Belgian winter landscapes.
After living in the Netherlands during the First World War, he returned to Belgium in 1919. Following Massin’s death that year, he stopped painting for several years. He later settled in Stavelot, where he died. His works are held by the Kröller-Müller Museum, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Musée d’Orsay, and Centraal Museum.
Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer, February 24, 1836–September 29, 1910, was an American painter, watercolorist, and illustrator born in Boston and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He apprenticed with the lithographer John H. Bufford, later studied briefly at the National Academy of Design, and took painting lessons from Frédéric Rondel. He moved to New York in 1859 and worked as an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, reporting on the Civil War.
Homer painted scenes of military life, rural communities, children, fishing, and the coast. He visited France in 1866–1867, began working extensively in watercolor in 1873, and ended his magazine illustration work in 1875. He lived in Cullercoats, England, in 1881–1882, where he depicted the local fishing community.
In 1883 Homer settled at Prouts Neck, Maine, continuing to make painting trips to the Adirondacks, Canada, Bermuda, Florida, and the Caribbean. He worked there until his death in 1910. His paintings and watercolors are held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Clark Art Institute.
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich
Kazimir Severinovich Malevich, February 23, 1879–May 15, 1935, was a painter and art theorist born in Kyiv to Polish parents. He studied in Fyodor Rerberg’s private studio in Moscow after an unsuccessful application to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture.
Malevich exhibited with the Jack of Diamonds, The Donkey’s Tail, and the Union of Youth, and worked with Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, and Mikhail Matyushin. He developed Suprematism in 1915 and later taught at the art school in Vitebsk, where his students included El Lissitzky.
His works are held by the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, and The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Elie Nadelman
Elie Nadelman, February 20, 1882–December 28, 1946, was a Polish-American sculptor, draughtsman, and collector born in Warsaw. He studied briefly in Warsaw and continued his artistic development in Munich.
He lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914 and held his first solo exhibition at Galerie Druet in 1909. He immigrated to the United States in 1914 and exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery in 1915.
His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Gabriele Münter
Gabriele Münter, February 19, 1877–May 19, 1962, was a German painter born in Berlin. She attended the Ladies’ Academy in Munich before enrolling at the Phalanx art school, where she studied with Wassily Kandinsky. She travelled with Kandinsky in Europe and North Africa between 1904 and 1908.
Münter painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and interiors, using simplified forms, strong outlines and contrasting colours. She participated in the New Artists’ Association of Munich and the exhibitions of Der Blaue Reiter. During the First World War she lived in Switzerland and Scandinavia; she returned to Germany in 1920.
In 1931 Münter settled permanently in Murnau, where she continued working until her death. In 1957 she donated a substantial part of her collection to the Lenbachhaus, Munich. Her paintings are held by the Lenbachhaus, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum, Madrid, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC.
