The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (16 page)

Angry Penguins
.

An Australian avant-garde journal (1940–6) devoted to arts and letters, published first in Adelaide and then in Melbourne. It encouraged and provided a focus for a group of young painters who worked in an
Expressionist
vein and attempted to create an authentic Australian art free from European influences; among them were Arthur
Boyd
and Sidney
Nolan
. They were opposed by a group of
Social Realist
painters, among them Noel Counihan (1913– ), and the debate between the two factions in the pages of
Angry Penguins
helped to make Melbourne a lively artistic centre in the early 1940s. In 1944 the journal was the victim of a celebrated hoax when it devoted an issue to the poems of the non-existent ‘Ern Malley’, whose works were concocted from arbitrarily selected quotations.

 
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Anguier , François
(
c.
1604–69) and
Michel

(
c.
1613–86).
French sculptors, brothers, who stood apart from the mainstream which in the middle of the 17th cent. was dominated by
Sarrazin
. They went to Rome about 1641 and joined the studio of
Algardi
. On their return to France (François in 1643, Michel in 1651), the brothers collaborated on the tomb of Henry de Montmorency in the chapel of the Lycée at Moulins (1648–52), which reveals the new Roman influence they introduced into France. Later the two brothers worked mainly apart, Michel having the more interesting career. His work includes the decoration of the interior of the church of the Val-de-Grâce, Paris (1662–7), and the Nativity group in St Roch, Paris (1665).

 
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(
c.
1530–1625).
Italian portrait painter, one of six painter sisters from Cremona. She was the first woman artist to achieve international renown, being called to Spain by Philip II and visited by van
Dyck
in Genoa in 1623, when she was in her nineties. Her self-portraits and portraits of her family are considered her finest works; they are somewhat stiff, but can have great charm.

 
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(1908–70).
New Zealand painter, mainly of portraits and landscapes. She was considered one of the leading figures in New Zealand art, particularly in the 1940s. Working in both oils and watercolours, she painted in a forthright, brightly coloured style. She also painted under her married name, Rita Cook.

 
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(1910–88). Italian painter (and occasional sculptor)
, the only artist of his time to become internationally famous as a society and state portraitist. The turning-point in his career was a commission from the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers to paint a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (1954–5); it was reproduced endlessly, notably on the postage stamps and banknotes of various countries, and the jacket blurb of Annigoni's autobiography (
An Artist's Life
, 1977) claims that it made him ‘the most famous artist in the world—not excluding even
Picasso
’. Subsequently he painted many other celebrity sitters, including several other members of the British royal family, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson , and Pope John XXIII. In style and technique he based himself on the masters of the Italian Renaissance, placing great stress on draughtsmanship and often working in
tempera
. Characteristically his work was very smoothly finished and detailed, melodramatic in lighting, and often rather melancholy in mood. Annigoni also painted religious works (including frescos in Italian churches) and ambitious allegorical scenes, and he regarded these as more important than his portraits. Critics often dismissed his work as portentously inflated and tasteless, but his royal portraits particularly were highly popular with the general public: more than 200,000 people went to see his second portrait of the Queen (NPG, London) during the fortnight when it was first exhibited in 1970.

 
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