The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (138 page)

(1807–76).
French painter, born at Bordeaux of Spanish parents. He began his career as a porcelain painter, and then painted
Romantic
historical subjects, but after meeting Théodore
Rousseau
in 1837 he became a member of the
Barbizon
group of landscape painters. His style is distinct from that of his Barbizon colleagues, however, for his work lacks the sense of quiet communion with nature that was a characteristic feature of the school and his brushwork is heavy and restless (his detractors call it turgid). He never lost the Romantic leanings of his youth, and continued to paint mythological pictures (typically featuring nymphs) throughout his career. He was helpful to the
Impressionists
, and
Renoir
stated that his meeting with Diaz led him to lighten his palette.

 
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(1891–1978).
American painter. He often treated enigmatic or disquieting subject-matter and he has been described as ‘perhaps the first American artist about whom some knowledge of dream theory is essential for decoding his works’ (Matthew Baigell ,
A Concise History of American Painting and Sculpture
, 1984). His personal symbolism is seen at its most disturbing and provocative in his self-portraits, in which he sometimes depicted himself as dead. He is best known, however, for large compositions such as
The Fossil Hunters
(Whitney Museum, New York, 1926–8). Dickinson often worked on his big pictures for a number of years and said that they were never ‘really finished’. He has been called a
Surrealist
and also seen as a sophisticated culmination of the 19th-cent.
Romantic
tradition.

 
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(1891–1930).
American painter. He spent five years in Europe, 1910–15, and in Paris he was influenced particularly by the structural features of
Cézanne's
work and the highkeyed colour of the
Fauves
. In the 1920s, however, his work became less experimental as he became associated with the
Precisionists
. Like others of the school, he favoured subjects which were adapted to representation in terms of semi-geometrical abstract design, in particular the machine.

 
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(1713–84).
French philosopher and critic, mainly remembered in England as the chief editor of the
Encyclopédie
(1751–72), a work of fundamental importance in shaping the rationalist and humanitarian ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. His views on art appear in articles in the
Encyclopédie
and elsewhere, notably his reviews of the
Salons
between 1759 and 1781, which are written in a lively conversational style and formed the model for the later criticism of
Baudelaire
. Against the intellectualist bias of
Neoclassicism
he maintained that our ideas of beauty arise from practical everyday experience of beautiful things. His views on the relation between poetry and painting provided a basis for
Lessing's
famous book
Laokoon
.

 
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(1906–65).
American painter and sculptor. After passing through phases of
Impressionism
and
Cubism
, he became interested in
Neo-Plasticism
and by the mid 1930s had become one of the earliest and most committed American followers of
Mondrian
. He was a member of
American Abstract Artists
and from 1935 to 1940 Head of the Mural Division of the
Federal Art Project
. His sculpture, restricted to rectangular elements and primary colours, was—like his painting—deeply influenced by Mondrian.

 
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