Alphabetical A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z C Calder, Alexander Campbell Finkelstein, Gretna Campbell, William P. Castagnola, Gabriele Cerny, Charles Cezanne, Paul Chagall, Marc Chayat, Jacob Chayat, Shoshi Chéret, Jules Choi, In Sun Cobelle, Charles Cocteau, Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Coleman, James Collins, Earl Colquhoun, Robert Cooper, Thomas Sidney Coppedge, Fern Isabel Kuns Le Corbusier Cornwell, Dean Cortez, Jenness Cosson, Jean-Louis-Marcel Cotton, William Crawford, Ebenezer Cromartie, James H.
Alexander Calder 1925-1976 American Kinetic/Modernist One of America’s best-known sculptors, “Sandy” Calder became most famous for his kinetic abstract mobiles. He created works in a variety of mediums including watercolor, oil paint, gouache, etching, serigraph, jewelry, sculpture, tapestries, and theater stage settings. He was nurtured in an art environment, as his father and grandfather were both well-known sculptors. His fascination with machines led to his earning a degree in mechanical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 1919. In 1923, he enrolled in the Art Students League in NYC. In 1926, he went to Paris where he lived for the next seven years and began making wire sculpture. Calder’s mobiles were first shown in the U.S. in 1932. The following year, he moved back to America and bought a home in Roxbury, CT, where he lived and worked for the rest of his life. He died in 1976, coincidentally at the same time as the Whitney Museum of American Art hosted a major retrospective of his work. Top of Page
Gretna Campbell Finkelstein 1922-1987 American expressionist landscape painter Gretna Campbell was born in the Bronx, NY in 1922. In 1945 she studied at the Art Student’s League and in the late 1940’s she helped found Pyramid Gallery, where she exhibited her first solo show. In the 1950s she won a Fulbright Fellowship to France and spent time painting in Italy. In 1959, she had a solo show at Zabriskie Gallery. Gretna taught at the Philadelphia College of Art from 1963-1971, followed by the Yale School of Art until 1986. She has also taught at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the New York Studio School. Gretna died July 14, 1987, and during the same year The New York Studio School had a memorial exhibition, as did the Ingber Gallery. Her works are included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the MoMA. Top of Page
William P. Campbell 1943-1992 American urban landscape painter William P. Campbell was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1943. He studied painting at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts and then attended the School of Fine Arts at William Paterson College. In the early 1960s, Campbell painted urban landscapes that reflected the influence of the Ashcan School, an artistic movement known for depicting daily life scenes, particularly in poor urban areas. In the 1970s when Campbell began studying zen, his subjects shifted to nature scenes comprising vibrant foliage, bodies of water and greenery. Campbell worked for the United States Postal Service as a letter carrier in Passaic for over 30 years. His later work again embraced the urban environment in which he lived and worked. He had a painting studio in Passaic’s tallest building and often depicted city scenes from an aerial view. Although he passed away at the age of 49 in 1992, Campbell exhibited his works throughout the tristate area, including the Charles Mann Gallery in New York City, Allied Artists of America Annual at the National Academy of Arts in New York City, and the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, New Jersey. Additionally, Campbell won numerous awards and is represented in corporate collections. Top of Page
Gabriele Castagnola 1828-1883 Italian Artist The Italian artist, Gabriele Castagnola was born in Genoa and active in Florence. He worked in oil painting and chromolithography in an academic style. This style of painting and sculpture derived from the Academies where most artists received their formal training, and is characterized by its high finish, use of mythological or historical subject matter, and moralistic tone. Castagnola's paintings are often somewhat sentimental and often focus on themes of love and romance. The romance of the Early Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi with the young novice Lucrezia Buti is a recurring theme in his pieces, as are nuns in general. Top of Page
Charles Cerny 1892-1965 American/French/Czech Republic Charles Cerny was a painter who was born in 1892. While not much biographical information is available in this artist, it is evident that he painted a multitude of still life works varying in theme. Some themes he painted are maritime, musical, tobacco, and scientific. The artist died in 1965. Top of Page
Paul Cezanne 1839-1906 French Impressionist still life and landscape painter Paul Cezanne was born in 1839 in Aix-en-Provence in France. In 1852, he entered the College Bourbon, where he met and befriended Emile Zola. In 1857, he attended the Free Municipal School of Drawing in Aix where he studied drawing under Joseph Gibert, a Spanish monk. From 1858-1861, under his father’s wishes, he attended the law school of the University of Aix. He then left for Paris where he met Camille Pissarro. Cezanne’s early work focused on groups of large, heavy figures in landscapes, and, later on, he became interested in working from life and developed an airy painting style. His paintings were shown in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refuses in 1863, which displayed works that had not been accepted by the jury of the official Paris Salon, and who had rejected Cezanne’s works from 1864-1869. While Cezanne is most known for his paintings, he did make nine prints during his lifetime, five etchings and four lithographs. All of the etchings date from 1873, when he experimented with Armand Guillaumin. Before 1895, Cezanne exhibited twice with the Impressionists, and in 1895 the Parisian dealer, Ambroise Vollard gave the artist his first solo exhibition. Although he was finally gaining recognition, he chose to work in isolation, usually painting in Provence. Cezanne died of pneumonia in Provence in 1906. Top of Page
Marc Chagall 1887-1985 Russian born, New York/France affiliated painter and master printmaker, known for abstract peasant themed paintings Born in Vitebsk, Russia, his original name was Moishe Shagal (Segal), but when he became a foremost member of the Ecole de Paris, he adopted French citizenship and the French spelling of his name. To understand Chagall's work, it is necessary to know that he was born a Hasidic Jew, heir to mysticism and a world of the spirit, steeped in Jewish lore and reared in the Yiddish language. In the mysterious world of Kabbala and fantastic ancient legends of Chagall's youth, the imaginary was as important as the real. His extraordinary use of color also grew out of his dream world; he did not use color realistically, but for emotional effect and to serve the needs of his design. The circus he views as a mirror of life; the crucifixion as a tragic theme, used as a parallel to the historic Jewish condition, but he is perhaps best known for the rapturous lovers he painted all his life. His love of music is a theme that runs through his paintings. When France fell during the war, Chagall accepted an invitation from the Museum of Modern Art to immigrate to the United States. The day before he arrived in New York City, June 23, 1941, the Nazis attacked Russia. The United States provided a wartime haven and a climate of liberty for Chagall. In America he spent the war years designing large backdrops for the Ballet. He waited for three years after the war before returning to France, to a home and studio in rustic Vence. Chagall died on March 28, 1985 in St. Paul de Vence, France. Top of Page
Jacob Chayat b. 1939 Israeli painter of interior genre scenes and musicians Jacob Chayat was born in 1939 in Israel and studied at the Kibbutv Dafna An Autodidact in 1951. He later studied graphics at the Technological Institute in Tel Aviv in 1959, and started the artists association in Bat-Yam in 1981. Chayat served as director of the Ben-Ari Museum in Bat-Yam from 1983-1987. He now has his own design and publishing studio, as well as the Chayat Gallery in Tel-Aviv. Top of Page
Shoshi Chayat 1947-2011 Romanian painter Shoshi Chayat is a graphic designer and sculptor born in 1947 in Romania. She manages the Chayat Gallery in Tel Aviv, together with her husband, Yaacov (Jacob) Chayat. Top of Page
Jules Chéret 1836-1932 French Belle Époque painter and lithographer Born in Paris to a poor family of artisans, Jules Cheret established a three-year apprenticeship with a lithographer. From 1859-1866 Cheret trained in lithography in London and, on his return to France, he created vivid posters of cabarets, music halls, and theaters. His most outstanding contribution was the creation of advertising posters that inspired an industry of new poster designers such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Top of Page
In Sun Choi b. 1963 Korean Contemporary Artist In Sun Choi was born in 1963 in Seoul, Korea. He is a professor in the painting department at Hong-Ik University in Seoul, and a visiting research professor at Drew University in New Jersey. His works have been exhibited in various galleries in Korea, China, New York, and New Jersey, and he has been the recipient of several art awards. Top of Page
Charles Cobelle 1902-1998 French-born American naïve painter Charles Cobelle was born in Alsace-Lorraine, France, and became a US citizen in the late 1920s. He began his career in Paris after earning his Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees at the University of Munich. Later he studied at the L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and with Marc Chagall, even apprenticing with Raoul Dufy. Once in the United States, he lived in Connecticut and continued to create mixed-media paintings. Cobelle was commissioned to paint murals for several commercial establishments, including Neiman Marcus in Dallas, The Desert Inn in Las Vegas, and the Teheran Restaurant in New York City. His works are in private collections throughout the country, as well as in the public collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT. Top of Page
Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau 1889-1963 French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist, and filmmaker Jean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, France to a socially prominent Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. Jean left home at the age of fifteen and published his first volume of poems, Aladdin’s Lamp, at nineteen. During WWI, he served in the Red Cross as an ambulance driver. It was at this time that he met artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani. Cocteau and Picasso joined Sergey Diaghilev in Rome where Picasso did the set designs and Cocteau wrote for the ballet, Parade. His writing and art expression were surreal in style, and he became an ongoing influential exponent of this style. However, he was proudest of his poetry and ever insisted that he was primarily a poet. Cocteau died in 1963. Top of Page
James Coleman b. 1949 American animation artist James Coleman was born in Hollywood, CA. He spent three decades at Disney Studios creating animation art for more than twenty-five films including The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. He had an abiding interest in fine art and painted many works of art when he was not working for Disney. Top of Page
Earl Collins 1925-1992 Connecticut/New York affiliated marine painter Earl Collins was born in New Haven, CT and was a painter who focused primarily on marine painting. From his childhood, he grew up around boats and spent hours sketching busy harbor and boat scenes. When he was twelve, he worked on a commercial fishing boat. Collins served for three years in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he went to Paris to study under Swiss artist Rudolph Eicher and learned Old Master techniques. Missing the ocean life, Collins moved back to the U.S. when he was twenty-seven and became the Captain of two large merchant ships. In 1962, he bought and became Captain of the largest commercial sword fishing vessel in the U.S. From 1971, he was a member of the American Society of Marine Artists. His works are in the collections of the Chrysler Museum and the U.S. Navy Collection. Top of Page
Robert Colquhoun 1914-1962 Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer Robert Colquhoun was born in 1914 in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy. He won a scholarship to study at the Glasgow School of Art, where he met Robert MacBryde who became his life partner and professional colleague. His early works depict agricultural laborers and workmen, but his style developed into a more Expressionistic style, heavily influenced by Pablo Picasso, and focused on the theme of the isolated, agonized figure. Colquhoun was a prolific printmaker, producing a large number of lithographs and monotypes throughout his career. He died in London in 1962. Top of Page
Thomas Sidney Cooper, RA (Royal Academy) 1803-1902 British landscape painter In his hometown of Canterbury, England, Thomas Sidney Cooper became one of England's most prominent mid 19th century painters, with his signature work being bucolic landscapes with cattle and sheep. He began painting in Canterbury as an employee of a carriage painter and also in the theatre as a painter of backdrops. His talent was recognized, and he was invited to become a student at the Royal Academy in London, where he was especially encouraged by portrait painter Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830). Cooper also spent four years in Brussels. There he became very impressed with the painting of peaceful landscape and marine genre scenes of Albert Cuyp (1620-1691) and other Dutch Old Masters, especially those who painted landscapes with billowing skies and grazing cattle. It was a motif he adopted for his own work. He was also much influenced by the brightness of the palette of the Belgian artist, Eugene Veroeckhoven (1798-1881). As his career progressed from the time he returned to London in 1831, Thomas Sidney Cooper became known as “Cow Cooper” because of the many precisely painted bucolic landscapes he did with grazing cattle. Cooper was also known to have painted sheep. The best years of his career in terms of public attention were in the 1840s and 1850s, which was during a period when Prince Albert and Queen Victoria commissioned him to paint their herds. He became a regular exhibiter at the Royal Academy. "No one has broken his record of sending at least one picture to the Royal Academy of Arts summer exhibition every year from 1833 to 1902, a total of 266 entries." In 1882, he founded an art school in Canterbury, and his work is at the Canterbury Royal Museum. Top of Page
Fern Isabel Kuns Coppedge 1883-1951 Pennsylvania, Kansas, Illinois affiliated, Pennsylvania Impressionist painter known for landscapes, snow scenes and coastal paintings Fern Isabel Kuns was born in 1883 in Decatur, Illinois. She attended high school in Topeka, Kansas, where her teachers encouraged her to pursue further art training. She enrolled at the University of Kansas and in 1910 married Robert Coppedge, a biology professor at the University. Fern continued her art studies at the Art Institute of Chicago and later at the Art Students League in New York City. Beginning in 1918, she attended classes on a fellowship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Daniel Garber was one of her teachers. Coppedge became a plein-air Impressionist painter associated with those from the New Hope Art Colony in Pennsylvania. In 1920, she bought a studio in Lumberville and participated in the group’s first exhibition that year. In 1929, she built a house and studio on the main street in New Hope. A member of many artist clubs and associations, Coppedge participated in a variety of exhibitions throughout her life. She died in 1951. Top of Page
Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris - Le Corbusier 1887-1967 French architect, designer, painter Born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in Switzerland, Le Corbusier was attracted to the visual arts from a young age and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School studying architecture. In 1907, he traveled to Paris where he worked in the office of August Perret, the French pioneer of reinforced concrete. In 1908, he studied architecture in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann. In 1910/1911, he worked near Berlin with renowned architect Pter Behrens, where he met Ludwig Mies va der Rohe and Walter Gropius. More than anything else, it was his visit to the Charterhouse of the Valley of Ema that influenced his architectural philosophy. He believed that everyone should have the opportunity to live as beautifully and peacefully as the monks in the sanctuaries at the Charterhouse. In 1920, he adopted Le Corbusier (from his maternal grandfather’s name Lecorbésier) as a pseudonym. Between 1918 and 1922 he concentrated his efforts on Purist theory and painting. It was after 1922 that he began designing structures that were to be built. He was responsible for the urban planning of the Parisian slums after the devastation of World War II. He died in 1965. Top of Page
Dean Cornwell 1892-1960 American illustrator and genre painter Dean Cornwell was born in Louisville, KY in 1892. He received his first training from Paul Plaschke at the local YMCA and, by the age of eighteen, he was a cartoonist for the Louisville Herald. In 1911, he moved to Chicago where he worked in the art department for the Chicago Tribune and studied art at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1914, he received his first major commission for The Red Book Magazine and, in 1915, he moved to New York and enrolled in the Art Students League and then at Harvey Dunn’s school of illustration in Leonia, NJ. His illustration work included Redbook and Cosmopolitan, and all of his illustrations were based on original paintings. In 1927, Cornwell began a five-year period of mural painting in California, including works at the Los Angeles Public Library and the Lincoln Memorial Shrine. He assisted the famed Mexican muralist painter, David Siqueiros with the Olvera Street mural, America Tropical. He died in New York in 1960. Top of Page
Jenness Cortez b. 1944 American landscape and equestrian painter Jenness Cortez was born in Indiana in 1944 and began her formal studies when she was sixteen under the guidance of Dutch painter, Antonius Raemaekers. She also attended the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and was a student at the Art Students League of New York. Beginning in 1977, and for the next twenty years, she received attention for her sporting paintings and her powerful depictions of horses. It was at this time that she focused on horses, mostly thoroughbred racehorses. During the 1990s, he interest in landscape began to grow and her landscape works evoke a certain transcendent quality rarely seen in contemporary realism. Later she moved to cityscapes, interiors, and still life painting. Top of Page
Jean-Louis-Marcel Cosson 1878-1956 French genre painter Jean-Louis-Marcel Cosson was born in Bordeaux in 1878. He was a member of the Sociétaire des Artistes Français, receiving an honourable mention in 1901 and a third medal in 1911. His work was also represented at the Salon de la Nationale and the Tuileries. He is known for his scenes of dancers, the theatre, bars, interiors and also flowers. Throughout his career, Cosson was fascinated by the theatre; his oeuvre is filled with images of backstage, the wings, Opera foyers, dance classes and ballerinas. His canvasses sparkle with the light of footlights reflecting off the tutus of dancers and the elegant costumes of theatre goers. He was awarded numerous prizes in Paris, Versailles, Lucerne and Milan. Top of Page
William Cotton b. 1965 American abstract still life and fantasy portrait painter, active in New York City William Cotton, primarily called Will, is a New York City artist known for large scale compositions of female nude figures that combine formal beauty with devices that arouse childish desires. He incorporates candy and sweets into his paintings that conjure up childhood dreams of excess. He has not created many abstract paintings, and most of his newer works include celebrities such as Katy Perry. These figural paintings with dessert foods are painted in a realistic style and realize much higher prices at auction and retail than the more abstract works. Top of Page
Ebenezer Crawford 1830-1874 English history and genre painter Ebenezer Crawford was born in Belfast, Ireland, and studied at the Belfast School of Design. From 1859-1873, he exhibited about a dozen pictures at the Royal Academy. Biographical information on Crawford is limited, but he was known for his genre and musketeer paintings. Top of Page
James H. Cromartie b. 1944 American Hard-Edge Realist painter James Cromartie was born into one of North Carolina’s oldest and most prominent families. Growing up, he was inspired by the works of Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper. In 1969, Nelson and Happy Rockefeller visited his gallery on Nantucket, buying two paintings. The following summer, Nelson returned to the gallery with his friend, Roger Firestone. The pair bought every Cromartie piece in the gallery and later promised their continued patronage indefinitely until James realized what would soon become his signature note—Hard-Edge Realism. In addition to his depictions of Nantucket, he is also known for his historical portraits and paintings of the White House, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Capitol, and the Supreme Court. Top of Page