The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (134 page)

(1797–1856).
French painter, one of the leading pupils of
Gros
. He achieved great popularity with his melodramatic history scenes, engravings of his work hanging in thousands of homes. Often he chose subjects from English history, as with two of his most famous works,
The Little Princes in the Tower
(Louvre, Paris, 1831) and
The Execution of Lady Jane Grey
(NG, London, 1833). They are
Romantic
in flavour, but academically impeccable in their draughtsmanship and detailing. After a period when such pictures were totally out of favour, his work is once again being treated seriously.

 
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(1885–1941).
French painter, who from about 1906 devoted most of his career to experiments with the abstract qualities of colour. He began his researches from the
Neo-Impressionist
theories of
Seurat
, but instead of using the
pointillist technique
he investigated the interaction of large areas of juxtaposed and contrasting colour. He was particularly interested in the interconnections between colour and movement. By 1910 he was making an individual contribution to
Cubism
, notably with his series of paintings of the Eiffel Tower, which combine fragmented forms with vibrant colour.
Apollinaire
gave the name
Orphism
to Delaunay's work, which by 1912 had moved on to become completely abstract, as in his lyrically beautiful
Circular Forms
series (an example is in the Kunsthaus in Zurich). In 1913 Delaunay exhibited at the galleries of Der
Sturm
in Berlin, and his work was a major influence on German
Expressionists
such as
Klee
,
Macke
, and
Marc
. It also powerfully affected the
Futurists
in Italy and the American
Synchromists
. Delaunay was notoriously competitive and fully aware of the importance of his work; at about this time he drew up a list of all the artists, however minor, he thought he had influenced. The period of his greatest achievements was, however, fairly short-lived; he lived in Spain and Portugal during the First World War and after his return to Paris in 1920 his work lost its inspirational quality and became rather repetitive. His home became a meeting place for
Dada
artists, but he continued with work related to colour theories.

 
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(1885–1979).
Russian painter and textile designer, the wife of Robert
Delaunay
. She came to Paris in 1905, married Delaunay in 1910 (after a short-lived marriage to Wilhelm
Uhde
) and became associated with him in the development of
Orphism
. During the 1920s she worked mostly on hand-printed fabrics and tapestries; as a designer she made a strong impact on the international world of fashion, designing creations for such famous women as Nancy Cunard and Gloria Swanson . The Depression affected her business, however, and in the 1930s she returned primarily to painting and became a member of the
Abstraction-Création
association. After the death of her husband in 1941 she continued to work as a painter and designer.

 
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(1740–1812).
French painter who settled in England in 1771. He became a designer of stage sets for David Garrick at Drury Lane (maquettes in the V&A, London) and is best known for his invention of the
Eidophusikon
, a theatrical presentation of scenic pictures. Although a foreigner, de Loutherbourg is said to have declared that ‘no English landscape painter needed foreign travel to collect grand prototypes for his study’ and in his landscapes, which are indeed very varied in character, he exalted the English scenery as material for the
Picturesque
and the
Sublime
. He also painted battle scenes, and literary and biblical subjects in a lively style.

 
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(1897–1994).
Belgian painter. After working in
Neo-Impressionist
and
Expressionist manners
, he discovered
Surrealism
in 1934 and became an instant convert, destroying much of his earlier work. He was never formally a member of the movement, and was not in sympathy with its political aims, but he became regarded as one of the foremost upholders of its tradition. Most of his paintings show nude or semi-nude women in incongruous settings. The women are always of the same type—beautiful, statuesque, unattainable dream figures, lost in thought or reverie or even in a state of suspended animation. These dream beauties are often placed in elaborate architectural settings, reflecting both
de Chirico's
strange perspectives and Delvaux's interest in the buildings of ancient Rome (he visited Italy in 1938 and 1939). Sometimes he included skeletons in his pictures (influenced by
Ensor
) and trains were another recurrent motif. A large retrospective of Delvaux's work was held at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, in 1944, and this marked the beginning of his international reputation.

 
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