T

Taaffe Philip (1955– ). U.S. painter whose consciously derivative works, e.g. Defiance (1986) – a version of Riley’s painting – with their thickly textured surfaces and different use of colour, negate what he sees as the impersonality of much Op art. He appropriates other artists’ works, treating them as subjects and reworking them, e.g. Homo Fortissimus Excelsius (1986), almost a replica in size and colour of Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimus (1951) – in which he uses rope imagery for the zips of Newman’s work – and Green Blue (1987), a silk-screen collage in homage to E. Kelly. More recent works, e.g. Ahmed Mohammed (1989), show an increasing focus on historical cultures and their styles.

Tachibana. Shrine in the Horyu-ji temple, Japan. It presents the Buddha Amitabha flanked by two Bodhisattvas on lotus blossoms. The small, high-relief bronze is one of the finest achievements of Japanese Buddhist sculpture.

Tachisme. Action painting

Taddeo di Bartolo (Taddeo Bartoli) 14th–15th-c. Sienese painter, follower of the Lorenzetti brothers.

Taeuber-Arp Sophie (1889–1943). Swiss painter and designer, member of the Zürich Dada group and the Cercle et Carré and Abstraction-Création groups; wife of Arp. Some of her earliest paintings (1916) were geometric abstractions. In 1928 she collaborated with Van Doesburg and Arp on the interior decoration of the Aubette Café, Strassburg (since destroyed).

Taine Hippolyte (1828–93). French philosopher of art (e.g. Philosophie de l’art, 1881) and vivid exponent of positivist and scientific experimental method as applied to art and art history.

Tait Arthur Fitzwilliam (1819–1905). British-born U.S. painter; he settled permanently in N.Y. in 1850 after 1st working at Thomas Agnew’s print store, and then doing extensive sketches and lithographs of the British countryside. In the U.S.A. he became commercially successful especially with his pictures of animals and landscapes in the Adirondacks.

Takis (Vassilakis) (1925– ). Greek Kinetic sculptor, working in Paris from 1954. Signals (late 1950s) were standing steel wires with top weights which caused constant vibration. From 1959 weights were replaced by electromagnets which strengthen the vibrations, sometimes acoustically amplified.

Talashkino. A centre for artists and a school for children, founded for the encouragement of Russian arts and crafts by the Princess Tenisheva on her estate near Smolensk in the 1890s. In many ways it was based on a continuation of Mamontov’s Abramtsevo Colony. Artists such as Vrubel and Roerich, and the theatre designer Alexander Golovin worked there. These centres created the ‘Russian style’ of interior design and were influential also in theatre design.

Tamayo Rufino (1899–1991). Mexican painter. His style remained distinctively Mexican in character, inspired by folklore and primitive art, despite influences by contemporary Europeans, notably Picasso and Braque. His works include Photogenic Venus (1930), Women in the Night (1962) and numerous important murals for public buildings in Mexico City and the U.S.A. Chief among these are murals for the art gal. and mus. in Mexico City, for the UNESCO building, Paris, and for the Montreal Expo ’67.

Tanagra. Town in the province of Boeotia in Greece where a series of 3rd-c. BC terracotta figurines were excavated. Made from moulds, they are mostly of elegant young women and were decorated in coloured paint over a white slip-like coating. Many forgeries were produced in the 19th c.

T‘ang. Chinese dynasty (618–906). Artistic development, formative for later Chinese and Japanese art, shows sinification of foreign influences. Up to the persecution of Buddhism in the 840s, Indian Buddhist influence was strong in painting and sculpture. Temple wall paintings, e.g. at Loyang and Ch’ang-an, the T. capital, and after 845 at such provincial centres as Tun huang, embodied Indian formal ideals. These were fused with the traditional Chinese brush style by such masters as Wu Tao-tzu. Courtly painting is represented by Yen Li-pen (d. 673) in a handscroll of Thirteen Emperors, a monumental embodiment of Confucian ideals of dignity and order, and by Court Ladies in the tomb of Princess Yung t’ai (c. 706), near Ch’ang-an. Masters at the brilliant court of Ming Huang (713–56) included Chou Fang, Chang Hsuan and the great painter of horses, Han Kan. A courtly ‘green and blue’ style of landscape painting of precise line and decorative colour evolved under such masters as Li Ssu-hsun (651–716) and Li Chao-tao (d. c. 735). A scholarly tradition (wen-jen) of monochrome landscapists, e.g. Wang Wei, began to emerge. Some later T. painters, inspired perhaps by Ch’an Buddhism, experimented with techniques reminiscent of Action painting. Such mid-10th-c. artists as Ku Hung-chung at Nanking revived T. glories. In sculpture, Indian Gupta-period statues brought back (AD 645) by the famous Buddhist pilgrim Hsuan Tsang (Monkey) stimulated the climax of Chinese Buddhist achievement. Majestic T. Buddhist sculptures survive at the caves of Lungmen, e.g. the massive 7th-c. Vairocana Buddha, and in Japan at Nara. In pottery the semi-naturalistic floral motifs from Sassanid Persian metalwork and the shapes of Syrian and Seine-Rhine Roman glassware are evident in some T. pottery. The grey-green T. Yüeh porcelain is a forerunner of Sung dynasty (960–1279) celadons. The famous T. statuettes of horses, court dancers, Middle Eastern merchants, represent the culmination of a Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220) tradition.

T‘ang Horse

T‘ang Scenes from the life of Buddha (silk banner)

Tanguy Yves (1900–55). French painter living in the U.S.A. from 1939. He began to paint in 1922 and was influenced at first by De Chirico’s Metaphysical painting. In 1925 he joined the Surrealists. In 1930 he contributed to Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution. The barren landscapes of his paintings shared with Surrealist imagery a hallucinatory stillness; the amorphous organisms which inhabit them echoing similar forms in Miró’s paintings. Jours de Lenteur (1937) is a typical example of his work.

Tanner Henry Ossawa (1859–1937). Most acclaimed African-American artist of the late 19th c. T.’s father was an African Methodist minister and his mother was a former slave. He studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Eakins who greatly influenced him. Subjected to racial discrimination, T. moved to Europe, settling in Paris where he enrolled at the Académie Julian. His early works are mainly paintings of animals, and land- and seascapes, but, prompted by a brief return to Philadelphia in 1893, where he faced undiminished racism, T. began to paint genre scenes of African-American life. His aim was to restore the reality of the lives depicted as opposed to prevailing caricatural stereotypes: he wrote, ‘Many of the artists who have represented Negro life have only seen the comic, the ludicrous side of it’. His handling of brushwork, dramatic use of light in interior scenes (an effect he was to continue in his later religious works) and emphasis on the central figure(s) are modelled on Rembrandt, e.g. The Banjo Lesson (1893). Other works similar in technique depict inhabitants of rural France, e.g. The Bagpipe Lesson and The Young Sabot Maker (both 1894). From 1895, having visited the Holy Land, T. began religious paintings which show influences of French Symbolism and Impressionism, e.g. Salome (1900) and Mary (1914). T. found, like E. Lewis, a greater freedom in Europe than in his native country. He exhibited at the Paris salons and was eventually awarded the Legion d’honneur. While he forged no formal link with an African-American movement, he has been an inspiration to subsequent generations of black artists.

Tanning Dorothea (1910–2012). U.S. painter and writer associated with Surrealist circles (she married Ernst in 1946) whose work is illustrative of female Surrealist painters’ psychological exploration of sexuality in contrast to their male counterparts’ more explicit representational language. The imagery in Guardian Angels (1946) and Palaestra (1947) demonstrates T.’s fascination with the psychic forces that inform the tangible world.

Tàpies Antonio (1923–2012). Catalan painter; he took up painting with no formal training after studying law. Co-founder of the group and review ‘Dau al set’ in Barcelona. Influenced by Miró and Dubuffet, he developed a profoundly dramatic style with austere imagery and earthy colour and texture. Characteristic are canvases with thickly impastoed, scratched or scraped paint, reminiscent of arid Spanish landscapes.

Tassel Richard (1583–1666/8). French painter who worked at Langres in an eclectic style derived from contemporary Italian painting. He was a pupil of Reni at Bologna and was later in Rome. His masterpiece is a portrait in the Ursuline convent at Dijon.

Tatlin Vladimir (1885–1953). Soviet painter, born in Kharkov. T. studied at the Penza School of Art (1902–9) and the College of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at Moscow (1909–11). He became the pupil and protégé of Larionov and Goncharova. In 1911 his 1st designs for the theatre were used in a production in Moscow. He visited Paris (1913) where he was much impressed by Picasso’s work; he produced his 1st semi-abstract ‘Relief Construction’ in Moscow in the winter of 1913–14. He continued to make reliefs from such materials as glass, iron, wood, now entirely abstract; by 1915 these had developed into free-hanging ‘Corner Constructions’. In 1917 T. was invited by Georgy Yakulov to help him to decorate the Café Pittoresque in Moscow with constructions – their first practical application and generally regarded as the beginning of Constructivism. After the Bolshevik Revolution T. emerged as an important figure in the artistic reorganization of the country undertaken by the former Futurist, now ‘leftist’ artists; he was appointed head of the Moscow Department of Fine Arts. His growing group of followers gradually became known as Constructivists. He lived in Petrograd (1920–5), building his Monument to the Third International and working on practical projects, designing stoves, workers’ clothes, etc. with economy and sensitivity to the nature of the materials used. T. called this system of design ‘culture of materials’. He directed the ceramic faculty in the reorganized Moscow Art School, Vkhutein, continuing to develop ‘culture of materials’. He also became known as a glider designer. Between 1933 and 1952 he worked as theatrical designer, continuing to paint, mostly still-life subjects and nudes, using icon preparation on wooden panels.

Taylor Sir Robert (1714–88). British architect and monumental sculptor. Apprenticed to Henry Cheere, T. set up on his own as a sculptor in 1743 after a brief visit to Rome. Although gaining some important commissions, notably the pediment of the Mansion House, London, T. turned to architecture after 10 years.

Tchelitchew Pavel (1898–1957). Russian Neo-romantic painter and stage designer; he worked in Berlin and Paris before settling in the U.S.A. He made use of perspective distortion and multiple images in the late 1920s, and at that time he also began to develop his interest in metamorphic forms; the Surrealist practice of Automatism played a significant part in his metamorphic compositions, of which the most famous is Hide and Seek (1942).

Teerlinc Levina (1510/ 20–1576). Born Ben-ninck, in Ghent, in a prominent family of Ghent/Bruges illuminators, she was recruited into the service of Henry VIII, and was a gentlewoman to Mary I and Elizabeth I, as a painter of miniatures and designer of royal seals and other official printed images.

tempera. Painting technique in which powder colour is mixed with a binder, normally the yolk of an egg or both white and yolk together, thinned with water and applied to a gesso ground. It is opaque, permanent and fast drying, though the colours dry lighter than they appear when wet. Modelling is achieved by hatching. T. was the usual technique for panel painting until the 15th c. From the early 14th c. and lasting into the 16th c. a mixed technique was also common, i.e. an oil glaze applied over t. From this the technique of oil painting developed and superseded t. because of its greater range of possibilities, particularly impasto. T. has been considerably revived in the 20th c.

Ten, The. Group of U.S. artists who studied in Paris (Académie Julian) and whose work (1895) showed influence of Impressionism. They included F. W. Benson (1862–1951), T. W. Dening (1851–1938), Childe Hassam (1859–1935) and J. H. Twachtman (1853–1902).

tenebrist (pl. Tenebristi) (It. tenebroso: dark). Name given to 17th-c. painters in Naples, the Netherlands and Spain who painted in a low key and emphasized light-shade contrasts in imitation of Caravaggio.

Teniers the Elder, David (1582–1649). Antwerp painter who studied under Rubens and in Rome under Elsheimer. He painted mainly religious subjects but his reputation rests on such landscapes and genre scenes as Playing at Bowls.

Teniers the Younger, David (1610–90). Flemish painter, chiefly of peasant genre scenes. He was taught by his father (the above) but in the development of his style owed more to Brouwer. He became court painter to the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm in Brussels and keeper of his art coll., which included works by Titian, Giorgione and Veronese. T.’s copies of these pictures (engraved Theatrum Pictorium, 1660) and his paintings of the interior of the gal. provide valuable evidence for art historians. His peasant scenes were immensely popular and gained T. his fashionable reputation.

Tenniel Sir John (1820–1914). British artist and draughtsman; best remembered for his political cartoons for Punch (1850–1901) and his ills for Lewis Carroll’s Alice books (1866 and 1870).

Teotihuacán. Ancient city of Mexico, c. 30 miles (48 km) N.E. of Mexico City. The site, some 7 square miles (11.2 sq. km), comprises: pyramids, notably the Pyramid of the Sun; temples, e.g. the so-called Temple of Quetzalcoatl; and extensive residential complexes. The site was occupied by 1000 BC and the city was perhaps the major Mexican cultural centre for c. 1000 years from c. 300 BC. The art and culture of T. show strong links with those of the Maya, Mixtec, Olmec, Toltec and Zapotec. Pre-Columbian art.

Ter Borch (Terborch, Terburg) Gerard (1617–81). Dutch genre and portrait painter. He travelled widely as a young man, making his reputation with the group portrait Signing of the Peace of Munster, May 15, 1648 (1648). His early paintings were guardroom scenes similar to those of Codde and Duyster but he later specialized in a distinctive type of interior genre, elegant and serene. Examples include The Letter, Singing Lesson and Woman Writing.

Terbrugghen Hendrick (1588–1629). Dutch painter of religious and genre subjects, a leading member of the Utrecht school. After studying under Bloemaert he went to Italy (1604–14), then settled in Utrecht. He was a follower of Caravaggio and Manfredi; the influence of the latter in particular is apparent in his half-lengths of figures playing musical instruments, singing, drinking, etc. In his later works, e.g. Jacob, Laban and Leah (1627), T. came closer to Vermeer.

terracotta (It. baked earth). A hard baked clay used for statuary or decoratively in architecture.

terribilità (It. terribleness). The effect or expression of awesome grandeur in art, used by contemporaries of the work of Michelangelo.

Theodoric of Prague. 14th-c. Bohemian painter whose naturalistic style influenced later German painting. He worked at the court of the Emperor Charles IV and executed religious paintings in the royal chapel at Burg Karlstein.

Theophanes the Greek (fl. late 14th c.). Greek icon and fresco painter in the Byzantine tradition who worked in Russia in Novgorod and Moscow. His surviving paintings include frescoes in the church of the Transfiguration, Novgorod.

Thiebaud Wayne (1920– ). U.S. painter, working in California, of works of great complexity and distinction, which appear deceptively simple in terms of subject matter and in their presentation. In fact, T. is part of the grand tradition of representational art from Chardin and Manet to the American Realist masters such as Eakins and Hopper. Simple, ordinary subjects – cigar boxes, iced cakes and other food – often depicted repetitively, giving an overall abstract impression, are treated as elementary shapes – cubes, cylinders and circles – rather than because of their vernacular character. They are richly rendered in oils, sometimes in combination with acrylic. T.’s use of shadows and modelling results in surprising illusions of volume and depth, e.g. Pies, Pies, Pies, Five Hot Dogs (both 1961), Bakery Counter (1961–2) and Salads, Sandwiches and Deserts (1962). His urban landscapes, e.g. San Francisco Landscape (1976) and Study for Apartment (1980), related to those of Diebenkorn in their simplification and flatness, as well as to his figurative compositions, may be perceived as tending towards abstraction. Diebenkorn, however, challenges any opposition between representation and abstraction. T. has said that it is characteristic of the Realist idiom that ‘You take away by simplification, by leaving out detail. But you also put in selective bits of other experience, or perceptual nuances that enforce it, giving it more of a multi-dimension than if it were done directly as a visual recording.’

Thoma Hans (1839–1924). German painter in the tradition of late German Romanticism modified by the influence of Courbet. His work is very uneven in quality; his most successful paintings are landscapes and portraits of his family and friends.

Thomas Alma (1891–1978). African-American Abstract painter, the first graduate in art from Howard University, Washington. After a long career as an art teacher T. became a professional artist at the age of 69 and started with still-lifes and realistic paintings. Inspired by the shifting effects of light on her garden – her natural environment was to continue to influence her – T.’s work ranged in style from Expressionist to Abstract to non-objective, working with both watercolours and acrylic paint. Her best-known works are her large, mosaic-like canvases – consisting of vertical lines and concentric circles – in which colour predominates. Her ‘Earth’ series (late 1960s) hints at a floral landscape with her application of dazzling shades of green, blue, red and orange. Her later series, ‘Space’ or ‘Snoopy’, influenced by the recent explorations of space, achieve a sense of dynamism through bright, fragmented shapes on a white background, e.g. Snoopy Sees a Sunrise (1970).

Thomson Tom (Thomas John) (1877–1917). Canadian painter, closely associated with the group of painters who in 1919 formed the Group of Seven.

Thornhill Sir James (1675–1734). British painter of portraits and, more notably, the 1st British fresco painter in the Baroque manner. Master of the Painters’ Co. (1720), he was also a fellow of the Royal Society (1723), M.P. (1722–34) and history painter to George I and George II. T. decorated the dome of St Paul’s cathedral (1716–19) and the Painted Hall at Greenwich (1708–27). He also worked on ceilings at Hampton Court, Blenheim Palace and Chatsworth. Apart from portraits of notable people such as Steele and Newton, he painted altarpieces for several Oxford colleges.

Thorwaldsen Bertel (1768–1844). Danish Neoclassical sculptor who worked much in Italy. He was greatly admired by his contemporaries and became the most influential sculptor of his time, second only to Canova. He established his fame with the frieze Alexander the Great Entering Babylon (1812). There is a Thorwaldsen Mus. in Copenhagen including one version of The Three Graces (1817–19).

Thorwaldsen Shepherd Boy 1817

Tibaldi Pellegrino (1527–96). Italian painter and architect. From 1547 to 1550 he lived in Rome, coming mainly under the influence of Michelangelo and Daniele da Volterra. He later worked at Bologna (his home town), Milan, Ferrara and in Spain (for Philip II). His style is typically Mannerist – characterized in his painting by violent gestures, strained poses and sharp contrast of light and shade (e.g. Adoration of the Shepherds), and in his architecture by arbitrarily combined classical motifs, multiplication of planes and awkward proportions (e.g. facade of S. Fedele, Milan). He is an important figure in the spread of Mannerism outside Rome.

Tiepolo Giovanni Battista (Giambattista Chiepoletto) (1692–1770). Venetian mural, genre and historical painter, draughtsman and etcher. An artist of immense industry and invention, he travelled to many parts of Europe to carry out his numerous commissions. His sons Domenico and Lorenzo worked as his assistants on many of his mural decorations. In 1737 he was active near Vienna, 3 years later in Milan, and from 1750 to 1753 he painted his most important works in the palace of the archbishop at Würzburg. He was called by Charles III to Madrid in 1761 to decorate the new royal palace and died whilst working on this monumental commission.

A typical example of T.’s work carried out for the merchant princes of Venice are the frescoes on the ceilings of Ca’ Rezzonico Palace. These decorations convey a feeling of luxury and splendour transporting the spectator into a world of heightened energy. T. was a draughtsman of genius and he introduced into his drawings and etchings a light touch which foreshadowed the achievements of the Impressionists.

T. liberated Venetian art from the academic Baroque style into which it had degenerated. He was strongly influenced by Paolo Veronese, but his colours were more brilliant, the foreshortening bolder, the compositions more dramatic yet ordered with tonal clarity and the effect of atmosphere. Life is portrayed with humour, sympathy and heroic exaggeration and his influence on 18th- and 19th-c. painters was inevitable and decisive.

Tiepolo The Institution of the Rosary (detail) 1737–9

Tilson Joe (1928– ). British sculptor, painter and print maker, apprenticed as a carpenter. Associated with the British Pop art movement, T. produced painted wood and metal reliefs, sometimes on a huge scale, of ordinary objects – a keyhole, a wristwatch, etc. Later he produced multiples and prints incorporating philosophical, ethnographic and alchemical ideas, as well as wooden sculptures of word-ladders and spheres on the same principles, inspired by pre-classical Greek literature and philosophy.

Timomachos of Byzantium (1st c. BC). Greek painter. Copies of his Medea were found at Pompeii and Herculaneum.

Tinguely Jean (1925–91). French-born Swiss sculptor working in Paris from 1952 with Kinetic ‘metamécanique’ sculpture, e.g. Homage to New York (1960) which auto-destructed during a happening. T.’s spastically operating, amateur machines are Dadaist and Surrealist in character: humorous and ironic mechanical constructions which satirize the technological world.

Tino di (da) Camaino (c. 1285–1337). Sienese sculptor, pupil of Giovanni Pisano. He worked in Pisa cathedral, then in Siena and Florence. In 1323 he settled in Naples, where he executed the series of tombs (for the Angevin rulers) for which he is chiefly remembered.

Tintoretto Jacopo Robusti (1518–94). Venetian painter. Though accounts of his life and work were written in his lifetime, little is known of the man. His origins and training are obscure; the 1st document (1539) refers to T. as a master. He married in 1550 and had a daughter, Marietta, and 2 sons, Domenico and Marco; all 3 were active as painters. After T.’s death Domenico carried on in charge of the workshop. In 1565 T. became a member of the charitable Brotherhood of St Rochus and eventually its official painter. He seems to have led the life of a prosperous Venetian, outwardly unadventurous but of tremendous industry and an iron will to succeed. This is clear from contemporary evidence. In his relations with his patrons he used any means to secure a commission; for example, during a competition for one of the ceiling decorations of the Scuola di S. Rocco (1564) he broke the rules by finishing the painting and displaying it on the ceiling. These practices made him unpopular with many of his contemporaries.

T.’s creative development was more complex than his alleged statement about his own work, ‘Michelangelo’s drawing, the colour of Titian’, implies. In his youth he seems to have worked briefly with Titian, for whom he professed a life-long admiration, though Titian never concealed his aversion to T. Not only did he assimilate the gigantic forms of Michelangelo, but his starting-point could have been Paris Bordone, and all his life he remained sensitive to outside influences to enrich his art. T. had a highly organized workshop capable of dealing with the most varied commissions, from cassoni panels to portraits, monumental compositions on canvas for official commissions and private patrons. He kept the best work for his native Venice, whilst studio productions found their way abroad. To keep up with the demand he developed a method of work which was swift, energetic and sure, based on study, observation and analysis. He often worked from models of his own, so as to be able to experiment with effects of light, then returned to the human figure for detailed action studies. The final, full-scale painting was made on the site when and if its relationship with the prevailing architecture and light was satisfactory. Thus he achieved a seeming spontaneity and blended the subject with its environment with much labour. A number of his action studies, drawn with a nervous, summary line, have been preserved. From one of the earliest signed and dated paintings, The Last Supper (1547) to The Last Supper of 1592–4 his work constantly gained greater depth of feeling, mastery of form and, above all, effective use of light. His influence is most apparent in El Greco’s work.

T.’s gift for dramatic story-telling is brought to its height in his vast painting cycle at the Scuola di S. Rocco. Here, unhampered by the exigencies of patrons, he composed a series of deeply tragic visual meditations on the life of Christ. The Crucifixion is perhaps the most powerful and moving composition. Painted with bold brush-strokes in a low tonal scale, it has the freedom and pathos of an elemental statement of faith. His Last Supper (1592) transformed an earthly scene into a superhuman vision.

Tintoretto Self-portrait 1588

Tischbein. Family of German artists including the following: Johann Friedrich August (1750–1812), portrait painter influenced by Gainsborough and other British portraitists, nephew of J. H. T. the Elder and cousin of J. H. W. T.; Johann Heinrich the Elder (1722–89), Rococo painter of portraits, historical and mythological subjects; Johann Heinrich Wilhelm, called ‘Goethe’ T. (1751–1829), nephew of J. H. T. the Elder and painter of the famous portrait of Goethe in the Campagna. This shows the poet unnaturally posed among classical remains and typifies the Romantic element in Neoclassicism.

Tissot James (1836–1902). French painter and ill. While working in London he painted delightful genre scenes from fashionable life, e.g. The Picnic and The Ball on Shipboard, influenced by Manet and A. Stevens. Later he concentrated on biblical subjects, staying for a time in Palestine.

Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) (c. 1487–1576). Venetian painter, the most important of the 16th c. He was born in the region of the Dolomites and brought with him to Venice, where he was apprenticed to Giovanni and Gentile Bellini, the elemental vitality and the toughness of his childhood. For some years he worked with Giorgione, a few years his senior. In 1510 he worked in Padua and returned to Venice in 1512. He became the painter of the wealthy Venetian intellectual circles and the close friend of Pietro Aretino, the writer and publicist, who did much towards establishing T.’s fame during his lifetime. The kings and princes of Europe competed for his services and his stature was as great as Michelangelo’s. In 1516, after Bellini’s death, he was appointed painter to the Venetian Republic. In the same year he was commissioned to paint a series of mythological subjects, the Bacchanals, for the duke of Ferrara, Alfonso d’Este, and in 1523 painted the portraits of the Gonzagas at Mantua. His wife died in 1523, an event which affected T. deeply. At this time Charles V commanded him to paint his portrait and in 1533 he ennobled T. as Count Palatine. In 1543 he painted the portrait of Pope Paul III and 2 years after was called to the Vatican and received with great splendour. In Rome he met Michelangelo. After 1553 he began his paintings for Philip II of Spain. T. died at the age of 99 during a plague epidemic in Venice.

Titian Charles V 1533

T.’s creative development was as meteoric as his life. From the poetic style of Giorgione he developed an unparalleled expressiveness. The feelings of the courtier, the cosmic powers of the universe, the mystery of life and death, the joys of sacred and profane love, were themes which occupied him during his long creative life. He had developed a technique which became more complex and free with maturity and foreshadowed in his last years the achievements of the Impressionists. Over an under-painting, often on coarse-textured canvas, he applied a great many glazes and brilliant colours. T.’s use of colour was an achievement both of an emotional and intellectual nature; he influenced generations of painters of all schools.

T.’s vast work is often discussed from the point of view of his subject matter: religious paintings, mythological and historical subjects and portraits. In each field his contribution was original and decisive for the future development of art. The portraits temper a searching realism with lyricism and compassion, and they range from the famous men of his time to the beauties of Venice. The portrait of Charles V (1548) is typical in showing the tragedy of a lonely man beneath the trappings of power, the Flora (c. 1515) the ideal beauty of a satiated society.

His mythological paintings, e.g. the Bacchanal (1518) and the later Venus paintings, are in praise of the ideal, celebrating the beauty and richness of life. T.’s religious paintings vary from the sensuality of the Mary Magdalene (c. 1530) to the horror and tragedy of the unfinished Pietà.

Tobey Mark (1890–1976). U.S. painter; in 1960 he settled in Switzerland. The main formative influence upon his painting was his visit (1934–5), with the British potter Bernard Leach, to China and Japan, where he spent some time in a Zen monastery. His technique in the 1940s (sometimes called ‘white writing’) bore a formal resemblance to oriental calligraphy, but more important was his intention to create, like Rothko, abstract images for meditation. One of the most subtle of U.S. abstractionists, T. compounded a delicate style out of Klee’s discoveries and Chinese calligraphy.

Tocqué Louis (1696–1772). French portrait painter of the Rococo period, pupil and son-in-law of Nattier.

Tokugawa. Edo

Tom(m)aso da Modena (14th–15th c.). Italian painter, son of the painter Barisino dei Barisini (d. 1343). His paintings include 40 figures of monks of the Dominican order for the Chapter-House, S. Nicolò, Treviso, painted in a flat linear style with interesting individual characterization, and an altarpiece, Madonna with SS Wenceslaus and Dalmasius and panels in Burg Karlstein, Bohemia, where he worked with Theodoric of Prague. He had many followers among minor Bohemian painters.

Tomlin Bradley Walker (1899–1953). U.S. painter, for a long time of Cubist still-lifes and, in the last few years of his life, of Abstract Expressionist canvases filled with symbols (geometrical forms, letters, etc.).

Tonks Henry (1862–1937). British figure painter, notably of conversation pieces, Slade Professor of Fine Art, Univ. of London (1918–30) and a leading member of the N.E.A.C.

Toorop Jan Theodoor (1858–1928). Dutch Symbolist and Art Nouveau painter, ill. and graphic designer. He exhibited at the Groupe des Artistes Indépendants in Paris in 1884 and also with Les XX (Les Vingt) in Brussels, and its successor La Libre Esthétique whose shows became increasingly dominated by the Neo-Impressionists and the Nabis. The 2 phases of his work are illustrated by After the Strike (1887) and the later decorative linear art which was influenced by oriental art, e.g. The Three Brides (1893).

Torelli Giacomo (1608–78). Italian scene painter and designer, the 1st professional designer and one of the most expert in devising machinery and effects. He worked in Venice and then Paris, where he introduced many innovations.

Torrès-Garcia Joaquin (1874–1949). Uruguayan painter; he worked in Paris (1924–34), where he was influenced by abstract art, though his work has always retained figurative elements – owing much formally to Pre-Columbian art.

Torrigiano Pietro (1472–1528). Florentine sculptor, the most important Italian Renaissance artist to work in Britain. He studied under Bertoldo di Giovanni in Florence but was exiled after a fight in which he broke Michelangelo’s nose. He died in Spain while imprisoned by the Inquisition. His masterpiece is the joint tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York (1512–18). Of his work in Spain only the statues St Jerome and Virgin and Child have been preserved.

torso. The trunk of the human body and hence a statue which by accident or design is without head, arms and legs. Modern sculptors often used this depersonalized human form to express abstract concepts of line and pose.

Tosa. Family of Japanese artists of the Edo period. Rivals of the Kano family, the T. tended to more traditional, small-scale style and subject matter, e.g. ills of the literary classics.

Toulouse-Lautrec Henri de (1864–1901). French painter born at Albi into an aristocratic family. Physically frail, he broke both legs in accidents of 1878–9, after which he remained crippled. He studied in Paris (1882–5) under Bonnat and Cormon, was a student with Bernard and met Van Gogh in 1886. He was aware of Impressionism, but his 1st important work Le Cirque Fernando (1888) is formally closer to Manet, Degas and the poster artist Jules Cheret. In studying the same aspects of contemporary life as Degas – racecourses, music- and dance-halls, cabarets, etc. – T.-L. foreshadowed Seurat and the Nabis in his flat treatment of forms enlivened by curvilinear contours. This interest in exotic silhouettes predominates in his studies of the Moulin Rouge and the Cabaret Aristide Bruant of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Jane Avril Entering the Moulin Rouge (1892) is typical in its strident colour, theatrical lighting and strong contours. A personal friend of the singers and dancers, T.-L. was a central figure of the society he depicted and the intimacy of a painting such as Les Deux Amies (1894) is characteristic. Like Degas he worked in a wide range of media often freely mixed: his reputation as a graphic artist was established with his earliest posters and lithographs (1891–2). His prolific output shrank with his deteriorating health (c. 1896) and his last painting, the Examination Board (1901), an uncomfortable attempt to reorientate his art, betrays his spiritual and physical exhaustion. His work inspired Rouault, Seurat, Van Gogh and others and his brief career was an important manifestation of the fin de siècle intensity and exoticism (he admired Wilde enormously) which swept Europe and which can be seen for example in the early work of Picasso.

Toulouse-Lautrec Poster (lithograph)

Tournier Nicolas (late 16th–17th c.). French painter, chiefly of religious subjects, in a Caravaggesque style, pupil of Valentin in Rome. He worked in Toulouse and many of his paintings are there.

Towne Francis (1740–1816). British watercolourist chiefly inspired by the mountainous districts of Italy, Switzerland and the Lake District. His best work is notable for its bold simplification of natural forms, e.g. The Source of the Arveiron.

Traini Francesco (fl. early 14th c.). Italian painter, follower of the Lorenzetti brothers and the Sienese school and known principally for his fresco Triumph of Death (c. 1350; destroyed in World War II) for the Campo Santo, Pisa.

Trans-avantgarde. Name coined in Italy for the Expressionist revival of the late 1970s and the 1980s, involving German, Italian and U.S. artists. Among those associated with the movement are Baselitz, Chia, Clemente, Kiefer, Lupertz, Penck and Schnabel. Neo-Expressionism.

Traylor Bill (1854–1947). African-American artist who began drawing at the age of 85, having spent most of his life as a plantation worker. He used pencil and crayon on scraps of card or paper and from simple geometric shapes created often humorous, primitive figures which, 40 years after his death, were seen as paradigms of Outsider art.

triptych. 3 painted panels, usually of wood, hinged together; the 2 outer wings can be closed over the central panel and may be decorated on the reverse side. Altarpieces were frequently in the form of a t., the central panel showing the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion or some similar subject, the outer panels showing figures of Saints or the donor of the painting, etc.

triumphal arch. Roman monument erected in honour of victorious emperors, normally with either 1 large opening, or 1 large plus 2 smaller ones, 1 on each side; it carried reliefs and inscriptions of the emperor’s campaigns. The best known are those of Constantine (AD 312), which contains sculpture from a variety of earlier monuments; of Titus (AD 82), with reliefs of the taking of Jerusalem; and of Septimius Severus (AD 203); all are at Rome.

Trockel Rosemarie (1952– ). German artist whose work is neither strictly abstract nor figurative. T. posits a discourse of the ‘feminine’ in her art through the appropriation of materials traditionally associated with women, e.g. stretching patterned woven fabric over a frame, canvas-like. Influenced by, though often parodying, the prevalence of abstract painting in the ’80s, T.’s repeated geometrical re-presentation of certain representative images, e.g. the Cowboy and the Hammer and Sickle, is intended to subvert – through this ‘purified’ reiteration – their ideological symbolism, allowing for the possibility of non-conformity.

trompe l’œil (Fr. deceive the eye). In painting a type of illusionism designed to trick the onlooker into accepting what is painted as real.

Troy François de (1645–1730). French portrait painter influenced by the portraiture of Rubens and Van Dyck.

Troy Jean-François de (1679–1752). French Rococo painter and designer for Gobelins tapestries, pupil of his father François de T. He specialized in light, charming genre scenes of upper-class life and large decorative compositions.

Troyon Constant (1810–65). French landscape and animal painter, at first associated with the Barbizon school but later influenced by A. Cuyp and P. Potter. His mature work consists chiefly of very large paintings of cattle. His attempt to treat animals in the grand manner was developed in later 19th-c. animal painting.

Trubetskoi Pavel (1866–1938). Russian Symbolist sculptor, known as the ‘Russian Rodin’. Of aristocratic family, he grew up in Milan, where he studied sculpture with Bazarro. He made likenesses of many celebrities of his day, e.g. Leo Tolstoy (1899), Tsar Alexander III (1909), and also taught in the Moscow College; Goncharova was among his pupils.

Trumbull John (1756–1843). U.S. painter, the pictorial chronicler of the American Revolution in which he took part, for a time as aide-de-camp to Washington. He later studied under West in London. He executed 4 large panels (completed 1824) – Declaration of Independence, Surrender of Burgoyne, Surrender of Cornwallis and Resignation of Washington at Annapolis – for the rotunda of the Capitol, Washington, based on small earlier versions.

Tucker William (1935– ). British sculptor. He studied history at Oxford University and sculpture with Caro at St Martin’s School of Art. His works include abstracts in steel, and in fibre-glass, plastics and wood. He has also written numerous articles and an influential book, The Language of Sculpture, 1974.

Tuke Henry (1858–1929). British marine painter noted for his fresh and vivid feeling for sea and sunlight. Among his best-known works are pictures of naked boys bathing from sunlit beaches or boats.

T’ung Ch’ i-ch’ ang (1555–1636). Chinese Ming scholar-painter, calligrapher and critic whose classification of Chinese art into a ‘northern school’ and a ‘southern school’ dominated later Chinese art theory.

Tunhuang caves. The Six Dynasties

Tunnard John (1900–71). British painter particularly well known in the late 1940s and early 1950s for rather spiky semi-abstract landscapes and figure paintings.

Tura Cosimo (c. 1430–95). Court painter to the d’Este family at Ferrara and founder of the Ferrarese school; he was eventually eclipsed by Ercole Roberti. He is best known for his series of wall paintings commissioned by Duke Borso d’Este for the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara to record the splendour of court life. A more dramatic aspect of his talent is revealed in St Jerome where the influence of Mantegna is apparent in the sculpturesque treatment of the figure.

Turkish art. Islamic art

Turnbull William (1922– ). Scottish artist and poet, trained in London and Paris. A leading Situation artist, he developed towards Minimal art styles. His sculptures include totem-like, wood or stone, balanced cylinders (1960s) and painted steel abstracts.

Turner Joseph Mallord William (1775–1851). British painter in oils and watercolour, mainly of landscape, historical and seascape subjects; he was born in London, the son of a barber. He was taught by Thomas Malton but his precocious talent took him to the R.A. Schools (1789) and he exhibited at the R.A. for the first time in 1790; he became a full Academician in 1802. Contact with Dr Monro’s circle led him to be influenced by J. T. Cozens, Richard Wilson and Girtin, and his work gained greatly in imagination and technical expertise. The death of Girtin (1802) left T. master of the architectural and topographical field, but already his interests had broadened. In 1802 he made studies in the Louvre and was showing the influence of the Dutch marine artists and the Venetian painters. A journey to Switzerland, via Lyon, returning through Schaffhausen and Strassburg, resulted in 400 sketches, many later worked up into pictures. This was a culmination of earlier sketching tours to North Wales, Yorkshire and Scotland. After 1802 T. produced a large number of historical works such as Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812). Influence of Claude Lorrain is seen in several idyllic landscapes, including Dido Building Carthage (1815). Between 1810 and 1835, the ‘middle period’, T. produced many large-scale works for rich or aristocratic patrons. He also did engravings for a number of books, including the Liber Studiorum (1807–19), a series of landscapes and intended to rival Claude’s liber veritatis. After a visit to Italy (1819), Italian and especially Venetian scenes formed the subject matter of many hundreds of works. T.’s late period, beginning in the early 1830s, was concerned with the painting of light, to which the ostensible subject matter was almost secondary. Forms and details were suggested and painted on previously prepared broad areas of yellows, whites, pinks and reds, or cool greys and blues. Petworth, the home of T.’s friend and patron Lord Egremont, figured in many of these works. Among major late paintings were The Fighting Téméraire, A Fire at Sea, Interior at Petworth, and Rain, Steam and Speed, and Rockets and Blue Lights. Although T. had become successful as a painter by 1801, the case also for many of his formal Academy paintings, the advocacy of Ruskin in Modern Painters (vol. 1, 1843) helped greatly in the public appreciation of his later works. His painting of light influenced the Impressionists, especially Monet and Pissarro, who saw his work in London in 1870. After the T. exhibition at the Venice Biennale (1948) there was a second wave of influence, on non-figurative painters. There was a major retrospective at the R.A., London, 1977.

Turner Petworth: A Stag Drinking c. 1830

Turrell James (1943– ). U.S. artist whose works – site-specific, depending on the neutrality of the site where they are installed – use as the artist’s material light, colour and space (‘I’m interested in the weights, pressures, and feeling of the light inhabiting space itself and in seeing this atmosphere rather than the walls.’) In the late ‘60s T. was one of a group of artists in Los Angeles including L. Bell, R. Irwin and D. Wheeler. In 1967 he made Afrum-Proto using projected light. Since then he has consistently explored visual perception and the use of light, whether projected or natural, as physical material in creating space and volume (‘… the light is used to make a realm that’s of the mind’). His light projections and large-scale installations that use natural light, as in his monumental work-in-progress, which he has been engaged in since 1974 – the Roden Crater project, near Flagstaff, Arizona – fuse an aesthetic impulse with scientific calculation, the laws of human perception and cognition, man’s relationship with his environment and the mutability of light as material in time. They ultimately direct the viewer’s experience inwards. As Robert Hughes has written, ‘… one is confronted … with the reflection of one’s own mind creating its illusions and orientations and this becomes the “subject” of the work. The art, it transpires, is not in front of your eyes. It is behind them.’ The volcanic Roden Crater provides the setting within which ‘I am making spaces that will engage celestial events. Several spaces will be sensitive to starlight and will be literally empowered by the light of stars millions of light years away. The gathered starlight will inhabit that space, and you will be able to feel the physical presence of that light.’

Tutankhamun (d. c. 1350 BC). A young Pharaoh whose tomb, with its original magnificent contents astonishingly almost intact, was discovered in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes by Howard Carter, in an expedition financed by the Earl of Carnarvon, 1922. Carnarvon gave the treasures to the Cairo mus. The sensational find inspired neo-Egyptian design styles in art deco.

Twombly Cy (1928–2011). U.S. painter lived abroad almost continuously since 1951, settling in Rome in 1957. T. evolved an abstract style of ‘writings’; in the late 1950s allover graffiti-like figurations developed along with a fresh interest in the surface on which they are placed, e.g. School of Athens (1961), while ‘figure’ and ‘landscape’ lines began to merge. Pencil marks with fragments of rectangles, numbers and words are drawn, scratched and crayoned over the canvas, reminiscent of works by Abstract Expressionists, or complete words suggest layers of association and meaning.

Tworkov Jack (1900–82). Polish-born U.S. painter and teacher. Cézanne influenced his early figures, landscapes and still-lifes. After 1950, T.’s paintings lost specific figurative references and his style moved closer to Abstract Expressionism. His abstraction developed suggestive and atmospheric action of brushstroke and vigorous colour, e.g. Watergame (1955). T. used verticals recurrently, sometimes in a more linear style and in an allover pattern. In the 1960s he experimented with pure colours in grid-like compositions, as in West 23rd, 1963. He was chairman, Art Department, Yale School of Art and Architecture, 1963–9.

Tzara Tristan (1896–1963). Rumanian poet who founded the Dada group in Zürich (1916) and ed. the periodical Dada. He later became leader of the Paris group. In addition to numerous writings on the Dada movement, his own Dada works include Vingt-Cinq poèmes (1918) and the play La Cœur à Gaz (1923).