Artists

This page contains things about artists (painters, sculptors, photographers, cartoonists, etc.) that are not directly related to their individual works – including biographical details, and facts about their work as a whole.

For things about individual works (specifically, who painted what), see Painters.

US landscape photographer, 1902–84, particularly known for black–and–white views of the Yosemite valley (California). Developed the "zone system" to heighten the clarity and depth of his photographs		Ansel Adams
Artistic consultant on the construction of the Beijing National Stadium (for the 2008 Olympics); a political activist, highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights; jailed for 81 days in 2011 for alleged "economic crimes"		Ai Weiwei
Franco–American naturalist (born in what is now Haiti, in 1785): known for The Birds of America, a colour–plate book that was first published as a series, in sections, between 1827 and 1838		John James Audubon
US photographer, 1923–2004: started in fashion (Vogue, Life, Harper's Bazaar) in the 1950s; took iconic psychedelic photos of the Beatles, also the ones included with the "White Album"; Fred Astaire played the character based on him in the 1957 musical film Funny Face, which was based on his early career		Richard Avedon
Figurative painter, known for his raw, unsettling imagery: born in Dublin, of English parents, in 1909; died in 1992 aged 82		Francis Bacon
British photographer, particularly associated with the Swinging Sixties: advertised the Olympus OM range in the 70s		David Bailey
Pseudonym of the anonymous graffiti artist believed to be a native of Yate, near Bristol, whose work has appeared on the Israeli West Bank barrier among other places; some believe that he is a Bristolian named Robert Gunningham		Banksy
British photographer, 1904–80: won Oscars for Best Costume Design, for Gigi (1958) and My Fair Lady (1964); also Best Art Direction for the latter; knighted in 1972		Cecil Beaton
Contributed the If ... cartoon strip to The Grauniad for 40 years (1981–2021); famously depicted John Major wearing his underpants over his trousers; in 2020, a cartoon of Keir Starmer with Jeremy Corbyn's head on a platter (echoing Caravaggio's Salome [and] John the Baptist) provoked outrage and was described as antisemitic		Steve Bell
Family of Venetian painters: father Jacopo, and his sons Gentile and Giovanni – both of whom taught the young Titian		Bellini
Designed the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper album, and the Band Aid logo; knighted in 2002		Peter Blake
Belgian painter who bought Van Gogh's The Red Vineyard – the only painting he sold during his lifetime		Anna Boch
Born in a Paris suburb, 1882; associated with Fauvism from 1906, and co–founder of Cubism (with Picasso) 1908		Georges Braque
Born in Calais of English parents, in 1821; influenced by the Pre–Raphaelites (although never a member of the Brotherhood), he spent the last 14 years of his life (1879–93) painting a series of twelve murals for Manchester Town Hall, depicting the city's history		Ford Madox Brown
Italian architect and designer, 1377–1446: credited with developing the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art		Filippo Brunelleschi
Follower of the Pre–Raphaelites, an associate of William Morris, and instrumental in the revival of stained glass art in England in the late 19th century; uncle of both Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard Kipling (his wife was the sister of both their mothers; a fourth sister married the painter Sir Edward Poynter)		Edward Burne–Jones
Born in Venice, 1697; died in Venice, 1768 (aged 80); famous for landscapes of Rome and London, as well as his home city; also painted Warwick Castle, Alnwick Castle, and Badminton House		Canaletto
Hungarian–born US war photographer, 1913–54, particularly famous for photos of the Spanish Civil War and the D–Day landings; had an affair with Ingrid Bergman, and rejected her proposal of marriage; killed by a landmine in Vietnam (during the First Indochina War)		Robert Capa
Born Michelangelo Merisi in Milan, 1571; known by the name of the village to which his family moved five years later to escape a plague		Caravaggio
Fled Rome in 1606 after killing a young man in a brawl
French 'humanist' photographer (i.e. one concerned with everyday human experience), 1908–2004: described in his Guardian obituary (cited by Wikipedia) as "the father of photojournalism"		Henri Cartier–Bresson
Architect, interior designer, artist, and writer and broadcaster on 20th–century design (1910–99): director of architecture at the Festival of Britain, 1951; illustrated Prince Charles's children's book The Old Man of Lochnagar (1980)		Sir Hugh Casson
16th–Century sculptor, engrave and goldsmith;  celebrated autobiography published 150 years after his death;  subject of an opera by Berlioz		Benvenuto Cellini
Born Aix–en–Provence, 1839, and died there in 1906; painted several views of the nearby Mont Sainte–Victoire, in the 1880s; often referred to as "the father of modern art" – described in a line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso as "the father of us all"		Paul Cezanne
Russian–born artist, controversially commissioned in 1963 to paint the ceiling of the Paris Opéra (it opened to critical acclaim in September 1964); his The Fiddler (1912) was an inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof		Marc Chagall
Brothers at the forefront of Charles Saatchi's Young British Arts movement; works include Hell, Insult to Injury, and a 3–dimensional realisation of Goya's Disasters of War		Chapman (Jake and Dinos)
English painter (1907–96): famous for scenes of railways, horses and military action; also the official artist for the Queen's coronation (1953); after 1956, he often included a little mouse in his works (sometimes lifelike, sometimes cartoon–like)		Terence Cuneo
British painter (1817–86): murdered his father in 1843		Richard Dadd
Promised to eat his wife and muse, Gala, after her death		Salvador Dalí
Designed the Chupa Chups logo
Wore a diving suit to the opening of the International Surrealist Exhibition, London 1936
Designed a dream sequence for Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound
Kept a pet ocelot named Babou (said to be a gift from the Colombian head of state) in the 1960s, and took it everywhere with him, on a leash and stone–studded collar – including a cruise on the SS France
Collaborated with Spanish film director Luis Buñuel on the silent surrealist short films Un Chien Andalou (1929 ) and L'Age d'Or (1930)
Famous for record sleeves in the 1970s by Yes, etc. (featuring fantasy landscapes)		Roger Dean
French Impressionist, 1834–1917: famous for painting ballet dancers and racing scenes		Edgar Degas
English potter, tile designer and novelist (1839–1917): the son of a distinguished mathematician and a lifelong friend of William Morris, he married the painter Evelyn Pickering		William De Morgan
Works exhibited in New York, 2009, with the title Only God Knows I'm Good		Tracey Emin
Dutch graphic artist (1898–1972) whose mathematically inspired works featured tesellation (covering a surface with repeated shapes, with no overlaps or gaps) and impossible perspectives; works include Regular Division of the Plane (1936), Metamorphosis (I, II & III – 1937, 1939–40, 1967–8), Sky and Water (I & II – 1938), Reptiles (1943), Magic Mirror (1946), Drawing Hands (1948), House of Stairs (1951), Relativity (1953), Convex and Concave (1955), Belvedere (1958), Ascending and Descending (1960), Waterfall (1961)		M. C. Escher
The first war photographer (Crimea, 1855); founder of RPS London		Roger Fenton
Born 1922, in Berlin; came to London with his family in 1933; died in 2011, aged 88		Lucian Freud
Painted a controversial portrait of the Queen (2000–1)
Australian performance artist Leigh Bowery, and Benefits Supervisor 'Big Sue' Tilley – as well as his first wife, Kitty Garman (the daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein) – were frequent models and muses for
Italain Renaissance painter (1395–1455), beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1982		Fra Angelico
English painter and critic who coined the phrase 'postimpressionism' in the 1900s		Roger Fry
Born Paris, 1848; lived in Lima with his half–Peruvian mother between the ages of 4 and 7 (his father died on the westward voyage); became a stockbroker in 1871; married a Danish woman in 1873, and moved to Copenhagen in 1884; returned to Paris in 1885 to paint, after his wife asked him to leave. Worked as a labourer on the construction of the Panama Canal, but was sacked after two weeks. Made his home in Tahiti from 1891, and attempted to immerse himself in the island's culture; died there in 1903		Paul Gauguin
Vincent van Gogh cut off all or part of his ear, in December 1888, after an argument with
Italian Baroque painter, 1593–c. 1656: first woman to become a member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence: specialised in scenes of female heroines and stories centered on women from myths, allegories, and the Bible, including victims, suicides, and warriors; an exhibition dedicated to her work was held at the National Gallery in London in 2020		Artemisia Gentilleschi (Lomi)
The most famous English wood carver: born in Rotterdam in 1648, probably of English parents; moved to Deptford (east London) in 1667; known for his work in England, including Windsor Castle and Hampton Court Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral and other London churches, Petworth House and other country houses, Trinity College Oxford and Trinity College Cambridge; died in 1721 and is buried in St. Paul's, Covent Garden		Grinling Gibbons
Caricaturist and printmaker, 1756–1815: known as the father of the political cartoon, often compared with Hogarth; satirised George III as well as several prime ministers and generals; also glorified John Bull as a way of satirising the French Revolution, and has been described as "the scourge of Napoleon"		James Gillray
Said to have proved his skill to his master, the painter Cimbaue, by painting a fly on a picture he was working on, and to a sceptical emissary of Pope Benedict XI by drawing circles freehand		Giotto
Depicted the Star of Bethlehem, in his Adoration of the Magi, resembling a comet – thought to have been inspired by his observing Halley's Comet in 1301, and leading to the naming of the 1986 space probe to the comet after him
The Black Paintings (1820s, in late life; noted for their intense, haunting themes)		Francisco de Goya
Influential illustrator of children's books, died of breast cancer in 1901 aged 55		Kate Greenaway
English cartoonist and illustrator, 1872–1944: best known for drawings of ridiculously complicated machines for achieving simple objectives		William Heath Robinson
English painters of Dutch extraction, father (1795–1865) and son (1820–1907), both famous for painting horses; Queen Victoria was a patron of the father		John Frederick Herring
British sculptress, a friend and associate of Henry Moore; her studio in St. Ives was made into a museum of her works following her death there in a fire, aged 72, in 1975; an art gallery opened in 2011 in her home town of Wakefield, West Yorkshire, was also named in her honour		Barbara Hepworth
63–year–old Zanzibar–born winner of the Turner Prize in 2017 – the first year in which it was open to artists aged over 50		Lubaina Himid
Director of the video to Blur's 1995 single Country House		Damien Hirst
Designed the sets for Stravinsky's A Rake's Progress at Glyndebourne, 1975; developed a technique he called "photo–montage"		David Hockney
Tate Britain's most visited exhibition ever was a 2017 retrospective of the works of
Instrumental in the Copyright Act, 1735, after copying of his 'dumb shows'		William Hogarth
Court painter to Henry VIII, from 1536 to his death in 1543; commissioned to paint a portrait of Anne of Cleves, which (according to tradition) flattered the subject and helped to persuade Henry to marry her		Hans Holbein the Younger
Sister and brother, both artists, born in Pembrokeshire in the 1870s		Gwen and Augustus John
Mexican painter, 1907–54, famous for her self–portraits and their intense, vibrant colours. Married to the painter Diego Rivera; Leon Trotsky stayed with them, and had an affair with her, then moved to another house in the same town (Coyoacan) where he was assassinated three years later.  She was largely unrecognised until the 1980s		Frida Kahlo
Born Moscow 1866, took French citizenship in the 1930s and died in Neuilly–sur–Seine in 1944: a pioneer of abstractism, also known for his colourful landscapes		Wassily Kandinsky
Sculptor, born Bombay (Mumbai) 1954, active in Britain from the 1970s; Turner Prize 1991; works include Cloud Gate (Chicago, 2006) and Sky Mirror (Nottingham, 2001, larger version New York 2006). First living British artist to have all the main display space of the Royal Academy devoted to his works (2009).		Anish Kapoor
British art restorer, 1917–84, claimed to have forged over 2,000 paintings		Tom Keating
Went through a 'Golden Phase', when he used gold leaf in several of his paintings – including two of his most famous works, Portrait of Adele Bloch–Bauer I (1907) and The Kiss (1907–8)		Gustav Klimt
US artist, born 1955, famous for representations of everyday objects in unexpected forms – e.g. balloon animals with highly–reflective stainless steel finishes, and the floral dog last seen outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao		Jeff Koons
Cuban photographer, 1928–2001: took the iconic picture of Che Guevara (on 5 March 1960)		Alberto Korda
Appointed First Painter to Louis XVI; decorated the interior of Versailles		Charles le Brun
Court painter to Charles II; reputedly asked by Cromwell to paint him "warts and all"		Sir Peter Lely
Born out of wedlock in 1452, in a small hill town in Tuscany, from which his father took his name		Leonardo da Vinci
Used 'mirror writing' for many of his working notes; The Leicester Codex, bought by Bill Gates in 1994 for just over $30 million, is one of his notebooks
US pop artist, noted for large scale depictions of comic book panels		Roy Lichtenstein
US photographer – Chief Photographer of Rolling Stone magazine (left in 1983): photographed John Lennon on the day he was assassinated		Annie Liebovitz
Famously used a palette of only five colours from Winsor & Newton		L. S. Lowry
Turned down five honours – more than any other person
American photographer, known for his celebrity portraits and often controversial male and female nudes: lived with rock singer Patti Smith in the late 1960s and early 70s, and took the front cover photo for her 1975 debut album, Horses; died in 1989, aged 42, from complications of HIV/AIDS		Robert Mapplethorpe
Born in London in 1875: gave up his career as a naval draughtsman, in 1904, to become "king of the saucy postcard"		Donald McGill
English botanical artist, depicted many exotic species in the Amazon basin in the 1950s		Margaret Mee
Born 1893 in Barcelona; now celebrated in a museum on Montjuic, near the Olympic stadium		Joan Miro
Born Livorno (Leghorn) 1884; his one–man exhibition in Paris, 1918, was closed on its opening day on grounds of indecency; died of tuberculosis in 1920, aged 35		Amedeo Modigliani
Jeanne Hébuterne was a French artist best known as the frequent subject and common–law wife of ... she took her own life (aged 21) two days after his death in 1920, when she was eight months pregnant with their second child, and is now buried beside him
Lived from 1871–8 at Argenteuil, a village beside the River Seine near Paris, and from 1883 to 1926 (exactly the last half of his 86–year life) at Giverny, Haute–Normandie – approx. 45 miles (70 km) WNW of Paris; made many paintings of both places, particularly his garden at Giverny – many of them featuring lily–ponds, the so–called Japanese Bridge and/or a weeping willow		Claude Monet
English comic–book writer, born 1953 in Northampton, best known for his work in Watchmen (1986–7), V for Vendetta (1988–9) and From Hell (1989–96); often described as "the best graphic novel writer in history"		Alan Moore
English artist and socialist (1834–96), one of the principal founders of the Arts & Crafts Movement; wrote the Utopian socialist novel News from Nowhere (1890); founded the Kelmscott Press in 1891		William Morris
US primitive artist: died in 1961, aged 101		Grandma Moses
Czech artist (born in a small town in Moravia) who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, and is best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly of Sarah Bernhardt		Alfons (Alphonse) Mucha
English painter, 1878–1959: famous for painting horses (including hunting scenes), and an outspoken opponent of modernism		Sir Alfred Munnings
Surname of brothers Paul (1889–1946) and John (1893–1977), both of whom were commissioned as war artists in both world wars		Nash
Born 1917 in Carlton, an inner–city suburb of Melbourne, died 1992 in London: once a professional cyclist; famous for a series of portraits of Ned Kelly (1946–7) and other scenes from Australian history		Sidney Nolan
Born Manchester, 1968; famous for including elephant dung in his works; Turner Prize winner 1998		Chris Ofili
American artist, best known for paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes: described as "the Mother of American modernism"; died in 1986, aged 98; her painting Red Poppy was used on a US postage stamp in 1996		Georgia O'Keeffe (sic) O'Keeffe OKeeffe
Keeps his childhood teddy bear, named Alan Measles, on a golden throne in his bedroom		Grayson Perry
The world's most prolific painter		Pablo Picasso
Born in 1830 on the island of St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but then in the Danish West Indies): described as the "dean of the Impressionist painters", but also contributed to Post–Impressionism; the only one to display at all eight Paris Impressionist exhibitions (1874–86)		Camille Pissarro
Abstract impressionist, famous for drip painting, and for giving his paintings numbers rather than titles; invented "action" painting in 1947; dubbed 'Jack the Dripper' (by Time magazine) in 1956; died in 1956, aged 44, in a car crash while driving under the influence of alcohol; No. 5, 1948 sold for a world record $140 million in 2006, and No. 17A (also 1948) made $200 million (another record) in 2016 – both sold by music and film executive David Geffen		Jackson Pollock
Arthur George Carrick – watercolour Farm Building in Norfolk accepted for exhibition by the Royal Academy, January 2007 – is a pseudonym of		Prince Charles
Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in Philadelphia, 1890; met Marcel Duchamp in New York in 1915, and moved to Paris in 1921; became the unofficial photographer of an influential group of artists and thinkers including Cocteau, Picasso, Joyce and Matisse; contributed to the Dada and Surrealist movements, but had no formal links to either; invented what he called the 'rayograph' – a monochrome image formed by placing objects on light–sensitive paper		Man Ray
First President of the Royal Academy (1768) – commemorated by a statue in the courtyard of its headquarters, Burlington House (on Piccadilly)		Sir Joshua Reynolds
Popular American artist: most famous for his cover illustrations of everyday life, created for the Saturday Evening Post magazine from 1916 to 1963; awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the USA's highest civilian honour – in 1977		Norman Rockwell
Born Dalton–in–Furness, Lancashire (now in Cumbria), 1734; died Kendal, Westmorland 1802; painted many of the leading society figures of his day – most famously Emma, Lady Hamilton ("his artistic muse")		George Romney
US painter and TV personality – catchphrase "We don't make mistakes ... just happy little accidents" – died of lymphoma in 1995, aged 52, but later became an Internet celebrity thanks to YouTube, etc.; his programmes were subsequently shown on BBC4		Bob Ross
Knighted by both Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England		Peter Paul Rubens
Born in Florence, 1856, to American parents; considered "the leading portrait painter of his generation" (Wikipedia); trained in Paris, but moved to London after his Portrait of Madame X (1884) caused a scandal; died London 1925		John Singer Sargent
Graphic artist associated with Factory Records – designed sleeves for Joy Division and New Order – also for Roxy Music, Peter Gabriel, Pulp, etc.		Peter Saville
English cartoonist and illustrator (born St. John's Wood, London, 1936): worked with Pink Floyd throughout the 1970s, culminating in The Wall (1979); drew the opening and closing sequences for Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister (from 1980); production designer on Disney's Hercules (1997)		Gerald Scarfe
Original illustrator of the Winnie–the–Pooh stories (1926–8); also drew what are probably the most popular illustrations for The Wind in the Willows (1931 – book first published in 1908)		E. H. Shepard
British painter, born 1931, famous for painting African wildlife and steam locomotives		David Shepherd
Leader of the Camden Town Group (of English post–impressionists): controversially linked with the Jack the Ripper murders by US crime writer Patricia Cornwell in 2002		Walter Sickert
Wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti: an important poet and artist in her own right, she often modelled for him, and other pre–Raphaelites including Holman Hunt and Millais		Elizabeth Siddall
Known for his paintings of Biblical scenes occurring as if in Cookham, a small village beside the River Thames in Berkshire, where he was born in 1891 and lived for much of his life, describing it as "a village in Heaven"		Stanley Spencer
English cartoonist and illustrator – born Wallasey, Merseyside, 1936: best known for his work with US writer Hunter S. Thompson, including Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)		Ralph Steadman
English painter, 1724–1806, best known for painting horses – e.g. Whistlejacket (c. 1762 – National Gallery)		George Stubbs
Venetian painter, c. 1490–1576: gave his name to a brownish–orange colour, which he used to use to paint hair		Titian
Born 1864 in Albi, Pyrenees–Midi region, where there is now a museum dedicated to his works; died 1901 at Chateau Malromé, his family's seat in the Gironde; said to have invented the "earthquake" cocktail, made with "three parts cognac and three parts absinthe"		Henri de Toulouse–Lautrec
American photographer, specialising in large–scale outdoor nude shoots: the subject of three HBO documentaries – Naked States, Naked World, and Positively Naked		Spencer Tunick
Wildlife artist (bird specialist); illustrated Tarka the Otter; born Langley, near Macclesfield, 1901; died on Anglesey in 1975		Charles Tunnicliffe
Said to have had himself tied to the mast of a ship so that he could paint a storm		J. M. W. Turner
Born in Strasbourg, in 1761; moved to England in 1802, touring the country with an exhibition of her works; established a permanent exhibition in Baker Street, London, in 1835; died in London in 1850, aged 88		Madame Tussaud
Described by Rubens in 1618 as "the best of my pupils"		Anthony van Dyck
Court painter to Charles I of England; sent a triple portrait (full face, left and right profiles) to Bernini as a model for a bust; gave his name to a type of beard, a type of collar, a shade of brown, and a technique used to reproduce that colour in photographs
Worked as an art dealer in London and Paris, and as a schoolmaster in Ramsgate (Kent) and Isleworth (Middlesex) (1880s)		Vincent van Gogh
Dutch art forger, 1889–1947: specialised in imitating the works of Vermeer		Han van Meegeren
Known by a surname that indicates the city where he was born in 1528 (then the largest possession of Venice on the Italian mainland)		Paolo Veronese
Bass guitarist with Manfred Mann, designed the cover for the Beatles' Revolver album (also played in the Plastic Ono Band, etc.)		Klaus Voormann
Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1928; his parents were working class immigrants from a village then in Austria–Hungary, now in Slovakia; abandoned a successful career as a commercial illustrator, to set up a studio in New York called The Factory (which eventually had three successive locations); his works explored the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and the celebrity culture that flourished in the 1960s; barely survived an attempted assassination in 1968, when he was shot in his studio by Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist writer; died in 1987, aged 58, while apparently making a good recovery from gallbladder surgery		Andy Warhol
Won ¼d (one farthing) libel damages against Ruskin, who accused him of "flinging a pot of paint in the public's face" (in Nocturnes, 1877)		James Abbott McNeill Whistler
Lived from the ages of 9 to 13 in Russia, where his father worked on the railways; dismissed from the US Military Academy at West Point, by General Robert E. Lee, for persistent rule–breaking
Signed his works with a stylised butterfly motif (originally a monogram)
Autistic child prodigy, born London 1974 of West Indian parents, famous for his detailed freehand drawings of architecture; collected in Drawings, 1987		Stephen Wiltshire
Landscape and portrait painter, 1734–97: particularly associated with Derby, his birthplace; noted for his use of chiaroscuro, and for his expression of the spirit of the Industrial Revolution		Joseph Wright (of Derby)
First woman to win the Turner Prize (1993)		Rachel Whiteread
Surname of painters and illustrators N. C. (Newell Convers), Andrew and Jamie – three generations of the same family from Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, where their home and studio is now a museum		Wyeth

© Haydn Thompson 2017–24