Daddi The Martyrdom of St Stephen (detail) early 14th c.
Dada. Artistic movement started in Zürich in 1916 by a group, mostly painters and poets, who went to Switzerland to take refuge from World War I and who gathered at the Cabaret Voltaire, a ‘literary nightclub’ organized by Ball. Other members included Emmy Hennings, H. Richter and Richard Huelsenbeck from Germany, Arp from Alsace, Janco and Tzara from Rumania. Under Picabia’s influence, Tzara emerged by 1918 as D.’s chief spokesman and wrote the Dada Manifesto (1918). D. works are nihilistic gestures and provocations. Tzara, encouraged by Breton and other members of the Parisian Littérature group (L. Aragon, Philippe Soupault and others), went to Paris in 1920 to launch the movement which prepared the way for Surrealism. In the meantime, other Dadaists moved to other European centres: Arp joined M. Ernst and Johannes Baargeld in Cologne in 1919, but it was primarily in Berlin, after the war, that D. became identified with political radicalism. The Berlin Club D. included among its members Baader, Grosz, Hausmann, Heartfield, Wieland Herzfelde, Höch and Huelsenbeck. Schwitters, although rejected by the Berlin group, became associated with Arp and Picabia’s branch of Dadaism. D. in Paris collapsed in 1922; most members of the French group formed the Surrealist group in 1924 when Breton published the 1st Surrealist Manifesto.
Daddi Bernardo (c. 1290–c. 1349). Italian painter and leading artist in the generation which followed Giotto in Florence. His much-damaged frescoes, The Martyrdom of St Laurence and The Martyrdom of St Stephen, are very close to Giotto in style. Later D. was greatly influenced by Sienese painting, particularly by that of the Lorenzetti brothers, and by French and Italian sculpture. These influences can be traced in a major work, the polyptych altarpiece of S. Pancrazio. Other important works are The Virgin and Child with Eight Angels and St Paul and Worshippers.
Daddi The Martyrdom of St Stephen (detail) early 14th c.
Dahl Michael (1656/9–1743). Swedish portrait painter who settled in London in 1688, becoming painter to Queen Anne and the rival of Sir G. Kneller. His work is less pretentious than Kneller’s and his colours softer; it is marred by uneasy poses and lack of psychological insight.
Dahomey. W. African republic, formerly a powerful kingdom under the Abomey kings but occupied as a French colony in the 1870s. Outstanding examples of Abomey courtly art include a remarkable wrought-iron, over-life-size figure, thought to be Gu, the god of war and iron. By 19th-c. Fon tribal craftsmen, it was made by assemblage technique. D. non-courtly art was dominated by Yoruba wood carvings.
daibutsu (Jap. great Buddha). Colossal statues of the Buddha. The 8th-c. bronze d. at Nara, frequently restored, is 53 ft (16.2 m.) high. The most famous d., the great mid-13th-c. bronze Buddha at Kamakura, is 37 ft (11.3 m.) high.
Dalem Cornells van (c. 1535–75). Flemish landscape painter; Bartholomeus Spranger was his pupil. Little of his work has survived; it includes Landscape with Farm (1564).
Dalí Salvador (1904–89). Spanish painter, designer of jewellery, etc. and stage-sets, book ill. and writer, notorious for his extravagant and eccentric statements about himself. He joined the Surrealist movement in Paris in 1929 making the Surrealist films Le Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’or (1931) with L. Buñuel and painting such works as The Persistence of Memory (1931) and Premonition of Civil War (1936). His paintings, which he has called ‘hand-painted dream photographs’, are characterized by minute detail, virtuoso technique, ingenuity and showmanship together with elements of Freudian dream symbolism. His religious paintings include Christ of St John of the Cross (1951). Later works include ills for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1969). His publs include Diary of a Genius (trs. 1966) and his Unspeakable Confessions … (trs. 1976).
Dalmau Luis (d. 1460). Spanish painter who worked at the court of Aragon and helped to extend the influence of Flemish painting in Spain. In 1431 D. was sent on a mission to Bruges and probably there learnt to follow Van Eyck’s style, evident in his great work Virgin and Councillors (1445).
Dalou Jules (1838–1902). French sculptor. Such works as French Peasant Woman (1873) showed a Realism similar to that of Courbet’s paintings. For his monumental Triumph of the Republic (1879–99) D. adopted a style approaching the Baroque. He worked (1871–80) in Britain.
Dalwood Hubert (1924–76). British sculptor at first of modelled and cast works, then of constructions in metals and fibreglass. He held important academic positions and was awarded 1st prize for sculpture, Venice Biennale, 1962.
Danby Francis (1793–1861). Irish painter who worked in England and Geneva. His early work, small landscapes, e.g. Blaise Castle Woods (c. 1822), has a charming verity but Turner’s influence encouraged him to an aerial romanticism of sunsets and seascapes. For a while he painted dramatic apocalyptic subjects, e.g. The Opening of the Sixth Seal (1826).
Daniell William (1769–1837). British landscape painter and engraver. With his uncle Thomas (1749–1840), also a landscape painter, he travelled to India (1784) and together they produced Oriental Scenery (1808), 6 vols of aquatints. William D.’s most remarkable plates illustrate A Voyage around Great Britain (1814–25) – text by Richard Ayton – a monumental coll. of Romantic landscape themes.
Dan(c)kerts or Dankers Hendrik (1630?–1680?). Dutch landscape painter and portrait engraver; he visited Italy (1653) and lived in Britain from 1668 to 1679. He painted views of famous places for Charles II and some large classical landscapes in the style of Claude Lorrain.
Danti Vincenzo (1530–76). Perugian sculptor strongly influenced by Michelangelo. He executed a statue of Pope Julius III (1555) in the cathedral, Perugia, but later worked in the Baptistery, Florence, where he completed Sansovino’s Baptism of Christ and produced his greatest work, The Decollation of St John the Baptist.
Danube school. Name used to describe the developments in landscape painting which took place in the Danube region in the early 16th c. The artists working there, who included Altdorfer, Huber and Lucas Cranach (as a young man), introduced a romantic awareness of landscape as an expressive adjunct to human action. They also produced a large number of pure landscape drawings.
D’Arcangelo Allan (1930–98). U.S. artist, noted in the mid-1960s for his Pop art paintings of highways.
Daret Jacques (c. 1403–c. 1468). Early Netherlands painter trained by the Master of Flémalle. Rogier van der Weyden was probably a fellow-pupil. 2 parts of an altarpiece, the Nativity with the Annunciation to the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Kings, are fine and typical examples of his work.
Daubigny Charles-François (1817–78). French landscape painter associated with the Barbizon school. D. painted chiefly in the Île-de-France, but travelled in Italy, Spain, Britain and Holland. Typical of his work are The Lock at Optevoz and River Scene with Ducks.
Daumier Honoré (-Victorin) (1808–79). French painter, caricaturist, graphic artist and sculptor. Trained in Paris and attracted to lithography. D. made his living from 1830 with cartoons in the satirical journals La Caricature and Le Charivari. He lampooned the government (being imprisoned in 1832 for his attack on King Louis-Philippe), the bourgeoisie in the Robert Macaire series and the legal profession. From about 1848 D. attempted to establish himself as a serious painter in oils, but he was hampered by his fame as a left-wing cartoonist, his dependence on his fellow-painters for most of his subjects and his refusal to give his works the finish then considered necessary. A brief period of success under the Third Republic was followed by neglect, poverty and near-blindness. Since his death he has been recognized as a pioneer, chiefly of Expressionism, e.g. The Painter before his Easel, a master draughtsman, e.g. We want Barabbas!, a major graphic artist and a sculptor of vigour and expressiveness. In his sketches and oil paintings of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza D. created a great modern reinterpretation of Cervantes’s characters, e.g. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Daumier For the Defence (detail)
Davey Grenville (1961– ). British sculptor whose work is distinguished by its being paradoxically neither abstract nor representational – although in his sculptures (on the wall or on the floor) there, are references to everyday, readymade objects and they have their look, they are not representations of them, e.g. Grey Seal (1987).
David Gerard (c. 1460–1523). Netherlands painter who succeeded Memlinc as the most important painter of the school. Born in Oudewater, D. was admitted to the painters’ guild in Bruges in 1484. He was influenced by earlier Netherlands masters, in particular Van Eyck and Van der Goes, but his work shows close relationship with the painting of Geertgen tot Sint Jans and the miniaturists of Bruges. He was commissioned by the town of Bruges to paint a number of works, including 2 pictures to warn officials of the stern retribution for corruption and injustice – The Judgement of Cambyses and The Flaying of Sisamnes – a Last Judgement and Virgin with Child and Angels. Other important works are The Baptism of Christ, The Marriage at Cana, 2 landscapes, and The Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor, the most serene and successful sacra conversazione painted in N. Europe.
Gerard David The Baptism of Christ (detail) begun 1502
David Jacques-Louis (1748–1825). French painter, the leading figure of Neoclassical painting. Trained in the Rococo tradition of Boucher by J.-M. Vien, D. repudiated this training with his Oath of the Horatii, shown in Rome and Paris in 1784 and immediately recognized as a landmark in painting. Its colouring was lucid and cool, its drawing strong, simple and severe. In its theme it advocated a return from the diversions of a pleasure-loving aristocracy to the traditionally austere virtues of the early Roman republic. D. became virtual dictator of the arts in France from the outbreak of the Revolution to the fall of Napoleon; few men have exercised such power over the art and taste of their period. His subjects – allegory, history and mythology – and his search for an ideal beauty based on the supposed canons of classical sculpture were to become the hall-marks of academic art during the 19th c. D. celebrated the victories and extolled the martyrs of the Revolution, e.g. The Death of Marat; in Return of the Sons of Brutus the theme of republican virtue recurs. D. was himself a deputy and was briefly imprisoned after the fall of Robespierre (1794); from his cell he painted the View of the Luxembourg Gardens, a small masterpiece of landscape painting, wholly romantic and warmly evocative in feeling. His portraits too, are far from austere, e.g. of M. Seriziat and Mme Seriziat, and of the famous beauty and conversationalist Mme Récamier (1800). Later he became the painter-advocate of Napoleon, e.g. The Coronation of Napoleon and his work was fundamental in the creation of the Empire style.
Jacques-Louis David The Death of Marat 1793
David Pierre-Jean, known as ‘David d’Angers’ (1788–1856). French Neoclassic sculptor. He executed the monument to Condé at Versailles, the Gutenberg monument, Strasbourg, the busts and medallions.
Davie Alan (1920– ). Scottish painter, jewellery designer and jazz musician. The first young British abstractionist to win international reputation after World War II. His large, vigorous abstract paintings, e.g. Seascape Erotic (1955), often have more in common with Pollock and the Cobra group paintings than most British abstract painting of the 1950s.
Davies Arthur Bowen (1862–1928). U.S. painter of romanticized landscapes with whimsical, elongated figures, e.g. Crescendo (1910). He was a member of The Eight. He supported new trends and artistic independence and took a leading part in organizing the Armory Show. After it he worked for a time in a modified Cubist style.
Davis Gene. Washington Color Painters
Davis Stuart (1894–1964). U.S. painter and graphic artist. His early work was in the realist tradition of Robert Henri, under whom he studied in N.Y., however he subsequently submitted to Cubist influences, in particular that of Léger. The turning-point in his career came in 1927, when he began to experiment with still-life abstractions in his Eggbeater series. Since the late 1930s, he reduced subjects to a flat, brightly coloured, abstract pattern, often incorporating a descriptive or evocative word.
Deacon Richard (1949– ). British sculptor, one of the most accomplished of the same generation as Cragg who, along with other sculptors, ushered in a new wave of artists of great diversity and dynamicism in British art. D.’s works are abstract and yet they encompass a wide range of references and evoke numerous associations with the world of appearances. Made of readily available materials, such as laminated plywood, they directly expose the means and processes of fabricating forms, often in sensuous curves, e.g. Blind, Deaf and Dumb A (1985). In the late 1980s the linear, lyrical quality of his earlier laminated wood sculptures gave way to assertive, bulky forms, e.g. Struck Dumb (1988), Kiss and Tell and Host (both 1989), in which the component parts, be they timber, plywood, steel, bolts or binding glue are openly declared.
De Andrea John (1941– ). U.S. Hyper-Realist sculptor of figures cast from life which, through the perfection of his models, appear to be idealized as in classical sculpture, e.g. Seated Man and Woman (1981). Sometimes the figures re-enact 3-dimensional, realist scenes from works such as Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe or Allegory: After Courbet (1988).
Debucourt Philibert-Louis (1755–1832). French painter and graphic artist, caricaturist of manners.
Decadence. A term applied to any period of artistic or moral decline. It has also a specific and not necessarily pejorative meaning in connection with the late 19th-c. movement originating in France and characterized by emphasis on the isolated role of the artist, hostility to bourgeois society, a taste for the morbid and perverse, and a belief in the superiority of the artificial to the natural. This was a development of some of the attitudes of Romanticism, first exemplified by Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal. It reached its full development in the last 2 decades of the 19th c., reacting against Naturalism; Huysmans’s À Rebours became the virtual textbook of the movement and a magazine, Le Décadent, was publ. briefly (1886). In Britain D. was at its height in the 1890s; representative figures were Oscar Wilde and Beardsley.
decalcomania. A Surrealist technique for generating images: ink or paint is applied on to a piece of paper which is then either folded or transferred to another piece of paper by pressing the two together. The artist then would elaborate what the resulting accidental ‘image’ suggests to him as in blot drawing.
Decamps Alexandre (Gabriel) (1803–60). French painter, lithographer, caricaturist and book ill. His travels in Turkey, which antedated those of Delacroix in Morocco, gave him material for successful exotic landscapes and genre paintings.
Deccani miniature painting. Art of the Islamic states of Ahmadnagar, Golkonda and Bijapur, central Deccan, India. The earliest known is a life of the ruler of Ahmadnagar (late 1560s); some of the finest, e.g. Ragamala, was for Ibraham Adil Shah II of Bijapur (1580–1626). Mughal miniature painting, Hindu, Persian and European art affected D. m. p.
Decker Joseph (1853–1924). German-born U.S. painter who specialized in still-lifes, but also painted landscapes, portraits and genre scenes. His remarkable close-up pictures of fruit (1880s) were probably influenced by photography. Later influences came from Chardin and Innes.
décollage (Fr. unsticking). The opposite of collage: the peeling away, usually of found images, i.e. posters, resulting in the accidental creation of new images and surface effects.
Deconstruction. Postmodernism
découpage. The process of cutting designs out of paper and applying them to a surface to make a collage or papier collé.
Degas (Hilaire Germain) Edgar (1834–1917). French painter, draughtsman, sculptor and graphic artist, the son of a rich banker and a Creole mother. After a typical bourgeois education he studied law, but in 1855 went to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, then to Naples and Rome. In 1861 he was back in Paris, where he painted portraits and compositions in a severely classical style, later turning to the painting of dancers, the races, town life and portraits in an environment, which established his reputation. Though not in agreement with Impressionist theory he allied himself with the movement from its beginning in protest against sterile academic theory and practice, and exhibited with the Impressionist painters until 1886. His life was marred by hypochondria increasing with old age, and with his eyesight failing towards the end of his life, he shunned all society.
Degas Women Ironing (detail) c. 1884
D. discovered and appropriated the new environment of 19th-c. industrial man – the townscape, the street, the interiors of the places of entertainment and work of all social classes. He observed the behaviour of the female and male human animal against these settings with analytical detachment, biting wit and an unfailing eye for the typical. For this purpose he made use of photography, the store of knowledge accumulated in museums, the technical knowledge of craftsmen and the visual discoveries of the Impressionist painters. He strove after perfection in every possible way, for he believed that given sensibility the mastery of the technical means was decisive. He experimented therefore with graphic media, perfected the art of pastel, made monotypes and etchings and modelled in clay and wax in order to understand better the movements of his dancers and racehorses. These studies, which were never intended for exhibition, were cast in bronze after his death and thus preserved. He never painted on the spot, but composed only after much observation, many studies and a most intimate knowledge of the subject, relying on a prodigious visual memory. The vision of eternal truth in fleeting reality was D.’s characteristic contribution. There is a gradual development from the early classical composition of the Young Spartans (1860) with its cool colours, to the new science of colour and movement in the Washerwomen (1879), the Miss Lola, the series of ballet dancers, drawings, paintings and pastels of women at their toilette, washing themselves and dressing, and especially in the near-abstract monotypes.
Degen. Niklaus Manuel
Degenerate art (Ger. Entartete Kunst). The term of official denigration in Nazi Germany for the work of avant-garde artists such as Beckmann, Chagall, Corinth, Dix, Feininger, Grosz, Kandinsky, Klee, Kokoschka, Marc and Modersohn-Becker. Their works were held up for public contempt in an exhibition which opened in Munich, and public galleries were stripped of all ‘degenerate’ exhibits.
Deineka Alexander (1899–1969). One of the 1st generation of Soviet painters. He was trained in Kharkov art school and then the Moscow Vkhutemas, chiefly by Constructivists. His early work of a monumental character can be compared to Eisenstein’s film methods in its use of photomontage techniques. Teaching in Moscow from 1928, he was one of the most influential painters in the U.S.S.R.
De Kooning Willem (1904–97). Dutch painter, influenced by De Stijl and Flemish Expressionists, who moved to the U.S.A. (1926) where he worked as a decorator. He worked on the W.P.A. art project (1935) and joined the N.Y. Group of Abstract Expressionist painters, becoming a leading member. His painting has its roots in Gorky’s Surrealism and he often used open allusions to reality which may be the starting-point or may accidentally occur during the painting’s execution. His best-known series, the Women (1952) was the first sign of the ‘new figuration’ in N.Y. painting. Its violent imagery and technique caused a sensation. It was followed by a series of landscapes and a return c. 1963 to the theme of woman, then painted in flamboyant, almost satiric style.
Delacroix (Ferdinand Victor) Eugène (1798–1863). Leading French Romantic painter, draughtsman, lithographer, writer and art critic. It is possible that he was a natural son of Talleyrand. After studies with Guérin, a follower of J.-L. David, he worked at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, for a while. In 1821, when D. was in financial difficulties, he was helped by his friend Géricault, whose work he greatly admired. D. became known from 1822 with his painting Dante and Virgil in the Inferno, shown in the Salon. During a visit to Britain in 1825 D. met Lawrence and Wilkie. In 1831 he was awarded the Légion d’honneur and during the following year visited Morocco and Spain, a journey which proved to be crucial for the further development of his work. In 1833 a commission to decorate a salon in the Palais Bourbon was the beginning of a period of very intense work and a number of public commissions on a large scale, which established D. State honours followed and in 1857, after 7 rejections, he was at last elected a member of the French Institute. He was frequently ill now, but his monumental work increased and he employed about 30 assistants. His last great work, paintings for the church of St-Sulpice, occupied him until 1861.
Delacroix Women of Algiers (detail) 1834
D. used the works of his contemporaries Constable, Géricault, Gros and of the past masters, Michelangelo, Poussin, Rubens and others, as sources from which he took what he needed. He applied the same approach to his study of nature and to reality as a whole. He made use of literature for his subjects, of science in his studies of colour relationships, of photography in his study of form, and of lithography in his graphic work. He saw painting as a bridge between painter and spectator, and colour as its most important element. He was original in the realization of related – as against local – colour, and in the use of complementaries and of simultaneous contrast, but it is wrong to see D. as a colourist only. His concern for form and composition increased, and towards the end he achieved a synthesis of these elements. His use of broken colour and the freedom of his brushwork was decisive in the formation of the later Realist and Impressionist painting. D. is best known today for his Massacre of Chios (1824) and the Death of Sardanapalus (1827), and also for Liberty Leading the People (1830). He is also celebrated for his paintings of Morocco in the Louvre, such as the Women of Algiers (1834), his compositions of animal subjects and many watercolours. His religious paintings, e.g. the Pietà (1848), are less known; so are his mural paintings, mainly because of lack of access. His journals (1823–54) and critical writings are valuable as historical documents and as works in their own right.
Delaney Beauford (1901–79). U.S. African-American painter who, from 1935, lived in Paris for more than 30 years where he became closely associated with other African-American artists and writers including James Baldwin and Richard Wright. He was called the ‘dean of American Negro painters living abroad’. In the 1940s he often painted street scenes and interiors in thick impasto. His work became increasingly non-representational. It has been said that the 3 forces which contributed to his style were ‘the techniques of Van Gogh, the colour of the Fauves, and the design principles of Abstract Expressionism’.
Delaroche Paul (properly Hippolyte) (1797–1856). French painter of historical subjects of romantic or sentimental interest derived from works by Sir Walter Scott, Shakespeare and others. Pictures painted with extreme naturalism such as Children of Edward (the Princes in the Tower), 1830, were popular and widely used in history textbooks.
Delaunay Robert (1885–1941). French painter and the originator of Orphism, which extended the Cubist practice of fragmentation into the field of colour. He started painting c. 1904. His works of 1905–7 are painted in a brilliantly coloured Divisionist technique. In 1907, under the influence of Cézanne, his palette was temporarily subdued, and during his military service (1908) he began his study of optics. He met Léger in 1909, and their sombre-coloured paintings pursued a parallel search for structural organization. In the Saint-Severin and The Eiffel Tower series (1909–10) he returned to his highly coloured palette and by 1912, in the Fenêtre Simultané paintings, he had isolated pure colour areas from the motif. In Orphist paintings, D. writes, ‘the breaking up of form by light creates coloured planes; these are the structure for description but a pretext’. He saw Orphism as a logical development of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but his transition to pure abstraction was probably inspired by Kupka (c. 1911–12). D. was visited in 1912 by Marc, Macke and Klee, who later trs. his essay On Light. His influence upon the Blaue Reiter group was considerable and by 1914 he was probably the most influential artist in Paris. His later work, like Léger’s, attempted to reconcile his innovations with more traditional forms.
Delaunay The Eiffel Tower 1909–10
Delaunay-Terk Sonia (née Terk) (1885–1979). Russian painter who settled in Paris (1905), married Delaunay (1910) and with him was a pioneer of abstract painting (Orphism). After World War I she concentrated on textile and fashion design but returned to painting in the late 1930s. She exhibited regularly from the early 1950s and held retrospectives in Paris (1967) and Lisbon (1972). She designed costumes and décor for Stravinsky’s ballet Dances Concertantes (1968).
Delvaux Laurent (1695–1778). Flemish Baroque sculptor whose style showed leanings towards classicism. He worked in Britain and Italy before settling in the Low Countries, where he was sculptor to the Emperor Charles VI and later to Charles, Duke of Lorraine. The pulpit (1745) in Ghent cathedral is one of the best examples of his work.
Delvaux Paul (1897–1994). Belgian painter, leading member of Belgian Surrealist movement since 1935, although he was never an official member of the Surrealist group. He studied first architecture, then painting at the Brussels Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts, and in his early work followed the Expressionists Permeke and De Smet. In the 1930s he came under the influence of Magritte, De Chirico and the Surrealists, though never wholeheartedly adhering to their programme. In characteristic works such as Venus Asleep (1944), The Hands (1941) and Le Corte (1963), he places female nudes, juxtaposed with clothed figures, in incongruous architectural settings, imbuing the whole with the mysterious, disquieting inconsequentiality of a dream, reminiscent of De Chirico’s ‘metaphysical’ painting.
De Maistre (Le) Roy (Levenson Laurent Joseph) (1894–1968). Australian-born painter of French descent who settled in London in 1936. His best-known paintings – religious subjects such as the Pietà (1950) – are in a heavily formalized naturalistic style, deeply indebted to Cubism.
De Maria Walter (1935– ). U.S. artist of Earth and Minimal art, who works both in and out of doors, which reflects his persuasion that ‘the invisible is real’. In The New York Earth Room (a 1977 version of a 1968 work), moist earth, 2 ft (0.6 m.) deep, fills up the entire exhibition space. In perhaps his most famous work, Lightning Field (1971–7), located on a high plateau in the desert in New Mexico, 400 stainless steel poles are arranged in a rectangular grid array (16 poles wide by 25 poles long) spaced 220 ft (67 m.) apart, with an average pole height of 20 ft, 7 in. (6.3 m.). The poles rise to form an even plane and when a storm cloud ‘senses’ the polished steel ‘high energy bars’ lightning strikes them with thunderbolts. Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977) consists of a brass rod, 1 km.-long, sunk into the earth with only its top visible.
Demuth Charles (1883–1935). U.S. painter, with Sheeler the most important exponent of Cubist-Realism (or Precisionism), and also an ill. His preferred subject matter was colonial and industrial architecture, which he treated with exceptional clarity and delicacy of line and colour. His early paintings, many in watercolour, included vaudeville subjects and flower pieces. Magic Realism.
Denis Maurice (1870–1943). French painter who followed various styles. He was a leader of the Nabis and made the famous statement ‘A picture – before being a horse, a nude or an anecdotal subject – is essentially a flat surface covered with colours arranged in a certain order.’ His picture Homage to Cézanne (1900) shows members of the Nabis admiring a still-life by Cézanne. He painted decorative murals and biblical subjects in modern settings.
Denny Robyn (1930– ). British painter. After studying in Paris (1950) and London he developed a style influenced by Rothko and painted large canvases of Hard-edge geometrical shapes.
Derain André (1880–1954). French painter, who studied at the Académie Carrière. D. was one of the most original of the Fauve painters, working at first with Vlaminck at Chatou and then at Collioure with Matisse. The Pool of London (1906) shows him using a Neo-Impressionist technique with a freedom inspired by Matisse. Between 1906 and 1909 he was working along parallel lines to Braque and Picasso, whom he had met, and even preceded them in his fusion of African and Cézannesque forms, e.g. Baigneuses (1906); but he never wholly responded to Cubism and after about 1919 withdrew from the avant-garde.
Desiderio ‘Monsù’ (fl. early 17th c.). ‘Painter’ of architectural fantasies, recently discovered to be in fact 2 painters from Lorraine, Didier Barra and Francesco de Nome, who worked in the same studio. Paintings by D. include An Explosion in a Church and St Augustine.
Desiderio da Settignano (c. 1430–c. 1464). Florentine sculptor. Born into a family of stonemasons and carvers, D. was greatly influenced by Donatello, of whom he may have been a pupil. Many of D.’s studies of the Madonna and Child and busts of Florentine women and children have an unsentimental grace and great beauty, e.g. Bust of a Woman. His 2 major works are the tomb of the humanist scholar Carlo Marsuppini and the Tabernacle of the Sacrament.
Desmarées Georg (1697–1776). Swedish portrait painter, a pupil of G. B. Piazetta in Venice. He worked chiefly in Munich in a Rococo style.
Desnoyer François (1894–?). French landscape and figure painter whose style is an attempt to combine the structural qualities of Cubism with a Fauvist approach to colour.
Desnoyers Auguste Gaspard Louis Boucher (1779–1857). French engraver. D. made a famous engraving of Raphael’s Belle Jardinière; he worked for Napoleon.
Despiau Charles (1874–1946). French sculptor who worked as Rodin’s assistant and for a time followed his style. D.’s characteristic work was more weighty and controlled, and closer to that of Maillol.
Desportes Alexandre-François (1661–1743). French painter renowned for his hunting scenes and tapestry designs. He also painted portraits.
De Stijl. A group of artists, among them the Dutch abstract painter Mondrian, who took the name from a magazine ed. by Van Doesburg, painter and theoretician, from 1917. De S. advocated the use in art of basic forms, particularly cubes, verticals and horizontals: in an essay entitled Neo-Plasticism (1920), Mondrian suggested that such an abstract art best expresses spiritual values. Architects such as Rietveld and J. J. Oud were connected with the group, which became international with the adherence of artists like H. Richter, Lissitzky and Brancusi. De S. ideas influenced the Bauhaus (where Van Doesburg lectured) and geometric abstract art of the 1930s. The group had split up by Van Doesburg’s death in 1931.
Deutsch. Nikiaus Manuel
Deutscher Werkbund. German organization founded in 1907 to promote progressive ideas and better-quality design in architecture and in industry.
Devis Arthur (1711–87). British painter of small portraits and conversation pieces of the provincial gentry; he flourished until the 1760s when he was ousted by Zoffany. His style was essentially primitive and the naïvety, stylization and tranquillity of his work gave it great charm. D. was ‘discovered’ in the 1930s along with his son Arthur William (1763–1822) and his brother Anthony (1729–1816).
De Wint Peter (1784–1849). British landscape painter in oil and watercolour, influenced by Girtin and Varley. De W. used a technique of broad washes, enlivening his blocks of sober colour with subtle variations of light. A good example of his work is Landscape near Gloucester in 1840.
Diamante Fra (1430–c. 1498). Italian painter, pupil of Fra Filippo Lippi and his assistant on the frescoes in Prato and Spoleto cathedrals. Filippo’s son Filippino was left in his care.
Diana Benedetto (c. 1460–1525). Venetian painter in the manner of Giorgione.
diaper-work. A simple pattern based on small geometric or floral forms repeated uniformly over a surface. It is found in textiles, manuscripts, murals and panel painting, metalwork, sculpture and architectural detail, especially in the Middle Ages.
Diaz (de la Peña) Narcisse Virgile (1808–76). French painter of Spanish descent. As a landscape painter he was taught by T. Rousseau and belonged to the Barbizon school. He also painted mythological figure groups.
Dibbets Jan (1941– ). Dutch Conceptual artist who uses series of aligned colour photographs to depict landscapes by ‘correcting’ or modifying the way humans, the camera and nature itself interact and thus challenge both the ‘reality’ of the photograph and that of seeing with the naked eye, e.g. Dutch Mountain, Big Sea 1 ‘A’ (1971). D. has used similar modifications of seeing in videos, e.g. Horizon I – Sea (1970).
Dickinson Edwin (1891–1978). Distinguished and original U.S. figurative painter in a romantic and theatrical idiom, combining figures and studio props in extravagant, imaginary scenes, e.g. Composition with Still Life (1933–7).
Didot. Firm of French printers founded (1713) by François D. (1689–1757). His son François Ambrose (1730–1804) completed the development of the system of standard type measure (now called after him) originated by S.-P. Fournier. His younger son Firmin (1764–1836), one of the great type-cutters, was responsible for the introduction of the ‘modern’ type-face with its distinctive strictness and regularity of line; he also devised the 1st completely successful stereotype process (c. 1795). With his brother Pierre (1761–1853) he produced many fine books.
Diebenkorn Richard (1922–93). U.S. painter. He studied (1946) at the California School of Fine Arts. He achieved recognition as an abstract painter but in 1955 turned to a figurative style becoming one of the few artists of his generation to carry on the figurative tradition in U.S. art with vigour and imagination. His example inspired younger Californian artists to return to representationalism.
Dine Jim (1935– ). U.S. artist. In the late 1950s and 1960s he collaborated in Happenings with Oldenburg and produced Pop art works and objects. From the early 1970s D.’s oil paintings, prints (perhaps his most successful work, usually sensitive and simple depictions of tools, robes, etc.) and drawings became increasingly figurative. He collaborated with writers, e.g. series of lithographs with R. Padgett (1970).
diorama. A large-scale scenic representation, parts of which are translucent, displayed in a special building which allows for lighting effects by means of which the picture can be animated.
diptych. Two-panelled paintings (often a portrait facing the portrayal of a saint) hinged together and thus a free-standing unit when opened out. Several survive from the late Middle Ages.
Direct art. Name given by a group of Austrian artists active in the 1960s, among them Hermann Nitsch and Otto Mühl, to sexual, sado-masochistic performances.
distemper. A painting medium of powder colours mixed in water used since classical times for interior decoration. It is impermanent but was occasionally used by Renaissance artists for cartoons.
Divisionism. An alternative term for the techniques of Neo-Impressionism.
Dix Otto (1891–1969). German painter and graphic artist best known for his paintings and etchings of protest based on his experience of World War I. He became famous with a portfolio of etchings publ. in 1917. His early paintings resemble the primitive style of the Douanier Rousseau, but he later adopted the principles of the New Objectivity and like Grosz exposed the corruption of post-war Germany with biting satire; the Hitler era brought persecution to D. After the war he painted mainly religious subjects.
Dobell William (1899–1970). Australian painter, among the earliest to achieve wide recognition. D. was not as openly nationalistic as many of his younger contemporaries; he lived in London from 1929 to 1939, and his cruel realistic portraits owe as much to Hogarth and Rembrandt as to contemporary national or international movements.
Dobson Frank (1886–1963). British sculptor and painter, highly regarded in the 1920s and 1930s.
Dobson William (1611–46). British painter, best known for his portraits of Royalist officers. D.’s robust style is quite unlike that of Van Dyck, his great contemporary. The full-length portrait James Compton, 3rd Earl of Northampton has been called ‘the best thing of its kind painted by an Englishman before Hogarth’. Another fine example is Endymion Porter.
Doesburg Theo van (real name C. E. M. Küpper) (1883–1931). Dutch painter, writer on art, poet; leader of the movement De Stijl and founder of its journal. In 1916 he began to collaborate with the architects J. P. Oud and J. Wils and in 1923 with C. van Eesteren in applying the principles of De Stijl to building and interior decoration; in 1922 he taught at the Bauhaus, Weimar. In the same year he publicized Dadaism in the Netherlands and under the pseud. ‘I. K. Bonset’ ed. the Dada periodical Mecano. In 1930 he ed. a pamphlet entitled Art Concret introducing this term as an alternative to ‘abstract art’.
Dogon. W. African people settled in the great bend of the River Niger. Their outstanding sculpture is represented by: free-standing ancestor figures in a spindly style; softwood masks, in bold simplified forms; and decorative high-relief ancestor figures in cubistic forms, found, e.g. on granary doors. The masks may be pierced with iron hooks to counteract the life force in the wood. D. granaries are tall tubular structures of great elegance. The D. territory yields hoards of ancient cult carvings, often encrusted with sacrificial matter, called telem.
Dokoupil Jiri Georg (1954– ). Czech-born painter and sculptor resident mostly in Germany. His prolific production consists of works which are compulsively eclectic in style, but Expressionist in character. D. also uses subjects from mass culture, e.g. Frotee Bilder (1984), but unashamedly shifts to whatever mode might suit the commercial gallery system.
Dolci Carlo (Carlino) (1616–86). Florentine painter whose work exemplifies one aspect of the decline of Baroque painting. The tenderness and piety affected by his languorous, softly modelled half-length madonnas and female saints were popular with his contemporaries but have since appeared sentimental.
Domela (Nieuwenhuis) César (1900–92). Dutch painter in the Constructivist tradition. D. first exhibited non-figurative work with the Novembergruppe, Berlin, in 1923; in 1925 he joined the De Stijl group after contact with Mondrian and Van Doesburg in Paris, where he settled, 1933. In 1946 he founded the Research Centre. His works include coloured relief constructions composed of various contrasting materials.
Domenichino Domenico Zampieri called (1581–1641). Bolognese painter, pupil and assistant of the Carracci. He worked in Rome, becoming the leading exponent of the Bolognese school there; in 1630 he moved to Naples. His frescoes in Rome included Scourging of St Andrew (1608) and Scenes from the life of St Cecilia (1615–17); the latter marked the peak of classicism in his painting. A tendency towards the Baroque in his work in S. Andrea della Valle, Rome (1624–8), was further developed in his frescoes (1630–41) in Naples cathedral.
Domenichino Apollo Killing Cyclops 17th c.
Domenico di Bartolo (Domenico Ghezzi) (c. 1400–f. 1445). Sienese painter, pupil of Taddeo di Bartolo.
Domenico Veneziano (d. 1461). Italian painter of the Florentine school (although he was probably born in Venice: his work shows a stronger sense of colour than that of most of his Florentine contemporaries). He is known to have been in Perugia in 1438 and in Florence between 1439 and 1445. The story in Vasari of D.V.’s murder by Castagno is disproved by the fact that he died after Castagno. D.V.’s work has recently been critically revalued and his influence traced in the painting of Piero della Francesca. D.V.’s surviving masterpiece is the signed St Lucy Altarpiece, consisting of the central panel, Madonna and Child with Four Saints, 2 very fine predella panels, The Miracle of St Zenobius and Annunciation, and the panels St John in the Wilderness and St Francis Receiving the Stigmata and The Martyrdom of St Lucy.
Domenico Veneziano Head of a Beardless Saint
Dominguez Oscar (1906–58). Spanish Surrealist painter and sculptor, living in Paris from 1934. He evolved decalcomania, his own style of Automatism in painting; later works introduced technological imagery. His sculptures used readymades.
Donatello (c. 1386–1466). Italian sculptor of the Florentine school. Probably no artist so shaped the whole artistic expression of the Italian Renaissance. In himself he found the whole range of that expression, from the lyrical joy of the dancing cherubs, or putti, to the high tragedy and the extremes of religious passion given daring expression in works such as the Magdalen. At the same time, in the bronze David, St George and the Gattamelata, D. demonstrates that enormous confidence in himself and his destiny which marks the man of the Renaissance.
Little is known about D.’s life. He was trained as a goldsmith and in other crafts, entered the workshop of L. Ghiberti at 17 and was probably taught to carve marble by Nanni di Banco, with whom he collaborated on figures for Or San Michele. His earliest work is probably the marble David. D. is first mentioned in records of artists working on Florence cathedral in 1406 and he executed commissions for the cathedral throughout his life. In this early period he became a friend of Brunelleschi. Critics now believe the traditional account of a trip to Rome taken by D. and Brunelleschi together, but differ on the date. Classical motifs and conceptions become important in the work of both artists from the 1420s. Other of D.’s major works include: the figures for Or San Michele, Florence, which include St George and the plaque St George Slaying the Dragon, important because it creates a scene in depth for the 1st time and the illusion of perspective in carved relief; the figures for the cathedral; the wall tombs executed with Michelozzo, such as the tomb of the Antipope John XXIII; the Crucifix; the carvings on the Siena font, including the scene Herod’s Feast; Judith and Holofernes; the important panel in low relief, Ascension; the bronze David, the singing gallery or Cantoria of Florence cathedral, and in Padua, the equestrian statue Gattamelata and the high altar of the Santo; finally the influential and enormously powerful carving in wood, the Magdalen.
Donatello David 1431–3
D.’s influence is traceable in the work of every Florence artist, notably the painters Masaccio and Castagna, Botticelli to some extent, and, to the greatest degree of all, Michelangelo. The Paduan artists under Mantegna and even the Venetians drew upon the enormous technical and spiritual wealth inherent in his work. Almost all later schools have made use of some aspects of D.’s work, e.g. the putti in the Rococo period, the ‘rediscovery’ of D.’s values in sculpture by Rodin and the way in which emotional tension is reproduced in much contemporary sculpture.
Donati Enrico (1909–2008). Italian painter. In the 1930s he lived in Paris where he was associated with Breton and other Surrealists. He settled in the U.S.A. in 1940 and developed an Abstract Expressionist style.
Dongen Kees van (1877–1968). Dutch painter who settled in Paris in 1897. He joined the Fauves in 1905 and became an important member of the group; he also exhibited with Die Brücke. After World War I he was successful as a society portraitist of wit and sophistication.
Doré Gustave (1832–83). French graphic artist, painter and sculptor. He visited London for a period, and for a time there was a Doré Gallery there exhibiting his ambitious but now thought unsuccessful oil paintings. D.’s best work results from the unrestrained outpouring of his fantastic imagination and gift for the grotesque; it includes ills for Dante’s Divine Comedy and Cervantes’s Don Quixote and plates in London, publ. by Blanchard Jerrold.
Dosso Dossi. The name used by Giovanni di Lutero (d. 1542), Italian painter of Ferrara, greatly influenced by Giorgione, Titian and Raphael, but a strongly individual painter. He borrows the theme of Giorgione’s pastoral in his best-known picture, Circe and Her Lovers in a Landscape, but replaces the poetic evocation with a sense of drama and worldly splendour. There is a second, very fine version in the N.G., Washington, in which the lovers have been turned into animals by the enchantress. Both D. and his brother Battista (d. c. 1548) were employed as painters, designers and craftsmen at the Ferrarese court. D. painted a number of warriors in armour at this time.
Dosso Circe and her Lovers in a Landscape (detail) c. 1525
Dou Gerard or Gerrit (1613–75). Dutch painter of portraits and genre, and the founder of the fijnschilders (‘fine-painters’). D. was first apprenticed to his father, an engraver on glass, then became a pupil or companion of the young Rembrandt. After Rembrandt left Leyden, c. 1631, D. became the city’s leading painter. Close to Rembrandt’s style is A Hermit. D.’s highly finished scenes, often of dramatically lit interiors with figures, e.g. The Young Mother, were very popular and had a lasting influence even outside Holland. Among D.’s pupils were F. van Mieris the Elder, G. Metsu and G. Schalcken.
Doughty Thomas (1793–1856). U.S. Romantic landscapist of the Hudson River school. Carefully observed sky effects and silvery grey tones characterize his paintings.
Douglas Aaron (1899–1979). U.S. painter and teacher, one of the leaders of the ‘Negro Renaissance’ period who, from the mid-1920s, defined a modern, black approach to art, e.g. Aspiration (1936).
Dove Arthur G(arfield) (1880–1946). U.S. painter and, in his youth, commercial ill. He began experiments in abstraction after a visit to Paris (1907/8) and was a pioneer of abstract painting in the U.S.A. His paintings as exemplified in Rise of the Full Moon (1937) recognizably relate to natural forms.
Downing Tom. Washington Color Painters
Downman John (1750–1824). British painter, notably of small-scale portraits in crayon tinted with watercolour; pupil of Benjamin West.
Doyle Richard (1824–83). British draughtsman and ill. His vigorous gift for grotesque comedy appears in the famous cover for Punch, drawn for the first issue (1841), also in his ills for Ruskin and Dickens and his comic social histories, Ye Manners and Customs of Ye Englishe, drawn from ye Quick and The Foreign Tour of Brown, Jones and Robinson, for which he was admired by the Pre-Raphaelites.
Doyle Cover for Punch 1841
drapery. In sculpture, painting and drawing the representation of the folds in a garment. Artists have used d. as an important expressive medium and different schools and periods render it in a characteristic style. Hence it is a valuable guide to the art historian in identifying and classifying a work of art. Leonardo da Vinci, Dürer and Grünewald are among the artists to have made fine studies of d.
drawing. In the Western tradition the instruments used for d. have normally been charcoal, chalk, pen or pencil (however, watercolours are sometimes classified as drawing); d.s can be merely preparatory studies for a painting or work of sculpture, or independent works entire in themselves. The importance of d. in the visual arts has been much debated since the 16th c. and contrasted with the importance of colour. Florentine art, Poussin and Ingres are ranged against the Venetians, Rubens and Delacroix. In Chinese and Japanese art there is no distinction between painting and drawing, as the only instrument used is a brush, normally with ink.
drip painting. A technique in which the paint is dripped on to the canvas which is usually laid on the floor. It was used frequently by the Abstract Expressionists especially Pollock.
Driskell David C. (1931– ). U.S. African-American painter and influential teacher who worked with a number of important Nigerian artists when he taught at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ife, W. Nigeria. In his semi-abstract work he makes use of African imagery.
Droeshout Martin (fl. 1620–51). British portrait engraver of Flemish parentage. His copper-plate engraving of Shakespeare prefixed to the 1st folio (1623) and commissioned by Shakespeare’s friends and eds, Heminge and Condell, is one of the 2 authenticated portraits of the poet. It was probably taken from a portrait now lost.
Drouais François-Hubert (1727–75). French society portraitist, especially of women and children in a graceful, if over-facile, Rococo style. He was a favourite with Mme de Pompadour and Mme Du Barry.
Drouais Jean-Germain (1763–88). French Neoclassical painter, son of the above and pupil and assistant of J.-L. David, by whom he was influenced. In 1784 he gained the Grand Prix de Rome and very soon after he went with David to Rome to study at the Rome Academy and also to assist David in his The Oath of the Horatii. D.’s first painting to be displayed in Rome as a Grand Prix winner was the Dying Athlete (1785), also called Wounded Warrior. It was followed by Marius at Minturnae (1786), Philoctetes on Lemnos (1787) and Cairs Gracchus (unfinished 1788). He died of smallpox. Further to and beyond David’s influence, D. absorbed the example of Poussin and the ideas about classicism of Winckelmann and Lessing.
dry point. engraving
Drysdale Russell (1912–81). British-born painter who emigrated to Australia and achieved a substantial reputation. He applied semi-abstract and Surrealistic techniques to depict Australian landscapes.
Dubuffet Jean (1901–85). French painter and print maker. His works, imbued with the spirit of l’Art Brut, created an irrational, primitive world, and varied textural surfaces produced by experimenting with sand, cement, tar, lacquer, etc., gave to his work a supra-pictorial existence. In 1954 he exhibited sculptures which he called Little Statues of Precarious Life, made from ephemeral and cast-off materials such as newspaper, worn-out sponge and string. In the late 1960s D. became increasingly occupied with sculpture.
Duccio di Buoninsegna (c. 1260–c. 1319). Italian painter, the creator of the Sienese school as Giotto was that of the Florentine school. D.’s break with the conventions of Byzantine painting was far less revolutionary than Giotto’s, and the great success with which he filled many of the old forms with the new spirit, combined with his superlative colour sense, his feeling for composition, and the dramatic rendering of familiar religious scenes, meant that those Sienese painters who followed him were often content to remain detached from the search for more natural forms of representation which was being pursued in Florence and elsewhere.
Duccio Maestà 1308–11
The documents of D.’s life tell of his frequent clashes with the government of his city. Despite this he was trusted with important commissions and rose to a position of power, wealth and influence. It may have been during a period of exile from Siena that he executed the earliest picture attributed to him. Most critics now agree that the famous Rucellai Madonna is the painting D. was commissioned to paint for the Chapter of Sta Maria Novella in 1285. While the figure of the Madonna remains a type of Byzantine art, the graceful angels and the Child are alive with the new spirit.
The work which displays every quality of D.’s greatness is unquestionably the Maestà which D. was commissioned to paint in 1308 and which, according to tradition, was carried to the cathedral with rejoicing in 1311. Apart from the Maestà itself, there are some 44 panels on the front and back of the altarpiece representing scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints; 10 of these panels are now separated. Among these are the outstanding Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew and Annunciation.
Duchamp Marcel (1887–1968). French painter, brother of Jacques Villon and Raymond Duchamp-Villon. He studied part-time at the Académie Julian, Paris, while working as a librarian at the Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève. He abandoned painting in the 1920s but contributed to Surrealist exhibitions in 1938 and 1947. His 1st paintings (1911–12), influenced by the Cubists, analysed the movement of form in space. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 1 (1911) and No. 2 (1912) inspired, like contemporary Futurist painting, by chronophotography, attempted to create an autonomous equivalent to the moving figure, and he originally intended that the construction The Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, even should actually move. The 2nd version of the Nude Descending was rejected from a 1912 Cubist exhibition and became the most notorious exhibit at the famous Armory Show (1913). The exhibition of his readymades, e.g. Bicycle Wheel (1913), Bottle Rack (1914), In Advance of the Broken Arm (1915), Comb (1916), Fountain (1917), etc. foreshadowed the polemical ‘anti-art’ character of Dada. He was, with Picabia, the leader of the New York Dada and Surrealist movement – he moved permanently to the U.S.A. in 1913. D. exerted the greatest influence on the post-Abstract Expressionist generation of U.S. artists like Rauschenberg and Johns and determined to a large extent, and for a long period, the course of the most visible U.S. art. He remained throughout his life a legendary figure. The Bride stripped bare by her Bachelors, even occupied him between 1915 and 1923. From 1946 to 1966, when he was supposed to have stopped making art and seemed interested only in chess, he was secretly engaged in Etant donnés: 1. La Chute d’eau/2. Le Gaz d’éclairage, a 3-dimensional mixed-media assemblage which is viewed through two peepholes in an old Spanish wooden door. The scene revealed is of a sun-lit landscape with a waterfall and in the foreground the realistic form of a female nude. This work is probably related to The Bride … It is perhaps the most mysterious and certainly the most intriguing work of art in the 20th c.
Duchamp-Villon Raymond (1876–1918). French sculptor, brother of Gaston (known as Jacques Villon) and Marcel Duchamp. He took up sculpture in 1898 after studying medicine and was first influenced by Rodin. In 1910 he joined the Cubists. Cubist sculpture reached its apogee in his Horse (1914), a masterly synthesis of organic and mechanical elements.
Duchamp-Villon Horse 1914
Dufresne Charles (1896–1938). French painter and designer who combined the stylistic influences of Fauvism and Cubism with romantic subject matter. A visit to Algeria (1910–12) stimulated his interest in exotic subjects – Patio à Alger (1913). Among his last works were murals for the Palais de Chaillot (1937) and the École de Pharmacie (1938), Paris.
Dufresne Jacques (1922– ). French sculptor, son of the above and pupil of Laurens; he works in a variety of materials, producing severe figures full of tension.
Dufy Raoul (1877–1953). French painter, born in Le Havre, where he met Braque and Friesz. He studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Under Matisse’s influence he produced Fauve paintings around 1905 with strong colour areas and an intermittent heavy black contour – e.g. La Plage de Ste-Adresse (1904). Cubism and the influence of Cézanne prompted a monumental sense of form as in Les Trois Baigneuses (1919), but after 1920 D.’s paintings of racecourses, regattas and casinos were conceived, like his remarkable textiles, as a tapestry of clear colours. His brother Jean (1888–1964) was also a painter, mainly in watercolour.
Dughet Gaspard. Gaspard Poussin
Dujardin Karel (1622–78). Dutch painter of Italianate landscapes with animals or figures, genre pieces and portraits. He was a pupil of N. Berchem and twice visited Italy.
Dulac Edmund (1882–1953). French-born British ill., watercolour painter, portraitist and designer. Some of the best known of his fantastic, intricate ills are the watercolours for The Arabian Nights, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Sinbad the Sailor, The Tempest and many books of fairy-tales.
Dumoustier (Dumonstier). Large family of French artists working in the 16th–17th cs.
Duncanson Robert Scott (1821–72). U.S. African-American painter who first travelled in Europe in 1853 financed by an abolitionist organization. On a subsequent trip to England and Scotland he was especially attracted to the work of Claude Lorrain and Turner. D. painted portraits, landscapes, still-lifes and murals, including a series of 12 murals for Belmont, residence of Nicholas Longworth (abolitionist and political leader), with landscapes painted in trompe l’œil. His highly accomplished classical landscapes include Loch Long (1867) and at least two paintings of Pompeii (1855 and 1871).
Dupré Jules (1811–89). French landscape painter, one of the leading members of the Barbizon school. He visited Britain in 1831 and was greatly impressed by Constable, though his own work gave a more romanticized and introspective interpretation of nature.
Duquesnoy François (1594–1643) called ‘Il Fiammingo’. Flemish sculptor who settled in Rome. His major works are the marble statues St Andrew and St Susanna. In his own time he was renowned for his putti. He represented the classical tradition in the age of Bernini’s Baroque.
Durand Asher Brown (1796–1886). U.S. landscape painter, founder, with T. Cole, of the Hudson River school. He abandoned a successful career as an engraver to become a painter, first of portraits and biblical and anecdotal subjects, later of quiet, Romantic landscapes.
Dürer Albrecht (1471–1528). German painter, engraver, designer of woodcuts and major art theorist. D. was born in Nuremberg and trained 1st under his father, a goldsmith. He was apprenticed (1486–90) to M. Wolgemut, in whose workshop he became familiar with the best work of contemporary German artists and with the recent technical advances in engraving and drawing for woodcuts. D. soon began to provide ills himself for his godfather, the printer A. Koberger. In 1490 he went on the 1st journeys that were so to affect his art, visiting Colmar, Basel and Strassburg. He was in Nuremberg for his marriage in 1496, but left in the autumn of that year for Italy. On this visit and during the longer stay of 1505–7, D. made a profound study of Italian painting at the very moment when it was being changed by the revolutionary ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and others. He also studied the whole intellectual background of the Italian Renaissance, the writings of the humanists and, in particular, Mantegna’s attempts to re-create in engravings and paintings the classical canon of art. D. was thus able to make his own personal synthesis of the arts of the north and south, a synthesis which was to have immense importance to European art. From 1495, when D. established his workshop in Nuremberg, his success and reputation increased rapidly. Until 1499 he was engaged chiefly on engravings and designs for his books of woodcuts. Comparatively easy to reproduce in large numbers and to transport, this work made him more widely known than any but the almost legendary Italians. He was encouraged by an enthusiastic patron, the Elector of Saxony, and he became the friend of many of the chief figures of the Reformation. Though he never broke with Catholicism, D. was deeply involved in the religious controversy until his death. In 1512 he was made court painter to the Emperor Maximilian. This honour was confirmed by Charles V, and when D. visited the Netherlands in 1520 he was widely fêted. In his last years he planned and partly composed a thesis on the theoretical basis of the arts.
Dürer Self-portrait 1500
To mention only his greatest works: The Madonna of the Rose Garlands and The Adoration of the Trinity were painted almost in competition with the Italians. His portraits are of great interest, particularly the series of self-portraits: that of 1493, of 1498, of 1500 and of 1522. Probably his major work in oils is the late Four Apostles. However, D.’s greatest single achievement and one which established him as supreme among graphic artists is his book of woodcuts, The Apocalypse (1498). Other series of woodcuts are: The Great Passion, The Life of the Virgin and The Lesser Passion. Single woodcuts of outstanding quality are: The Last Supper and The Men’s Bath House. Of his engravings the series The Engraved Passion, and the single plates: Adam and Eve, Melancholia, Knight, Death and the Devil, The Prodigal Son, St Jerome in his Study and St Eustace are the finest in quality. D.’s smallest sketches are often masterpieces of draughtsmanship and feeling, e.g. Crowned Death on a Thin Horse, charcoal. His watercolours of places (often scenes done on his travels), people, animals and plants are evidence of his desire to record the world around him with the greatest precision, yet with no surrender of the passion of an artist before the objectivity of the scientist.
Dusart Cornells (1660–1704). Dutch genre painter and engraver, pupil and close friend of A. van Ostade, whose style he followed. On Van Ostade’s death D. inherited his pictures and completed a number of them.
Düsseldorf school. U.S. painters who studied at Düsseldorf and exhibited at the Düsseldorf Gal., N.Y. (1849–61); notably Bierstadt, Bingham and E. Johnson. The paintings were polished and realistic in style, sentimental and anecdotal in mood.
Duveneck Frank (1848–1919). U.S. painter who was trained in Munich, 1870–3, and was influenced by Leibl. He spent 1875–88 again in Europe: in Munich he had his own painting class that attracted several U.S. painters. D. introduced anti-academic styles in the U.S.A. in the late 1870s.
Duyster Willem Cornelisz (1598/9–1635). Dutch genre painter who specialized in social gatherings of officers, etc., e.g. Players at Tric-Trac and Soldiers Quarrelling.
Dyce William (1806–64). Scottish painter. Early sympathy with the Nazarenes encountered by him in Rome (1827) made him welcome the Pre-Raphaelites. Though his frescoes in the House of Lords and elsewhere lack inspiration, his Pegwell Bay is an admirable piece of mid-19th-c. Realism.
Dyck Sir Anthony Van (1599–1641). Flemish painter chiefly famous for portraits of the English aristocracy, though he also painted a number of large religious, allegorical and mythological subjects. D. was trained in Antwerp by H. van Balen and became the chief assistant of Rubens. He was in Britain for some months in 1620–1, then embarked on a prolonged tour of Italy, where he spent periods at Venice, Genoa and Rome, executing portraits and commissions for churches. He painted for a further period in Antwerp before he settled in Britain in 1631 as court painter. Typical of his rich but refined and elegant portrait style, which flattered almost all his sitters with a look of distinction and intelligence, are Philippe le Roy, Frans Snyders, Charles I and the more ambitious Charles I in Hunting Dress. This style set a pattern, especially for British portrait painters, for at least 200 years. Larger works include The Crucifixion of St Peter, Samson and Delilah, Rinaldo and Armida and Amarillis and Mirtille.
Dyck Charles I in Hunting Dress (detail) c. 1635