martedì 29 aprile 2014

May Day in paintings

Waiting for a May Day, the spring festival related to ancient and pagan traditions...take a look at these wonderful May Day paintings that celebrate flowers, nature, joy and love! 
I love them so much..!:)

Edgar Barclay
'May Day', Edgar Barclay, 1898
Edgar Barclay (1842 - 1913), was painter of genre scenes and landscapes. He began his studies at Dresden, with Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld until 1861 then in Rome, and, from the late 1860s, he spent his time between London and Italy. He was a member of a group of English painters known as 'The Etruscans', who specialised in Italian landscapes. Barclay returned to England in the 1880s, and devoted himself to lyrical treatments of rural subjects in Wessex, especially Hampshire and Dorset.




Thomas Falcon Marshall

'May Day Garlands', Thomas Falcon Marshall, 1860
Thomas Falcon Marshall (Liverpool 1818 - Kensington 1878) was a well-known British artist, painted history scenes, genre scenes, portraits and landscapes. He was also a watercolorist. He was an associate, then member of the Liverpool Academy; he exhibited at the Royal Academy, at the British Institution and at Suffolk Street from 1836. He obtained a silver medal at the Society of Arts in 1840. His works have been displayed in museums in Liverpool and London.


James Hayllar
'May Day', James Hayllar, 
James Hayllar (1829–1920) was an English genre, portrait and landscape painter. Hayllar was born in Chichester in Sussex (now West Sussex), and received his training in art at Cary's Art Academy in London; he painted Cary's portrait in 1851. He went on to study at the Royal Academy.
He was member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA).  He first became known as a portrait painter but later turned his brush to genre art, often featuring pretty young girls his work became very popular. With George Dunlop Leslie (who also lived in Wallingford at the same time), he painted a large portrait of Queen Victoria to celebrate her Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Helen Allingham 
'May Day', Helen Allingham
Helen Allingham (née Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson) (26 September 1848 – 28 September 1926) was an English watercolour painter and illustrator of the Victorian era.
Helen Mary Elizabeth Paterson was born in England on 26 September 1848, at Swadlincote in Derbyshire, England, the daughter of Alexander Henry Paterson, a medical doctor, and Mary Herford Paterson. Helen Paterson was the eldest of seven children. Paterson showed a talent for art from an early age, drawing some of her inspiration from her maternal grandmother Sarah Smith Herford and aunt Laura Herford, both accomplished artists of their day. Her younger sister Caroline Paterson also became a noted artist. 


Herbert Gustave Schmalz
'Queen of May', Herbert Gustave Schmalz, 1884

Herbert Gustave Schmalz (1856 – 1935) who named himself John Wilson Carmichael in 1918, was an English painter. He is counted among the Pre-Raphaelites.
Schmalz was born in England as the son of a German father and an English mother. He received conventional education in painting, first at the South Kensington Art School and later at the Royal Academy of Arts. 
He was a history painter, with a style influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites and orientalism. 

Myles Birket Foster
'May Day Garlands',  Myles Birket Foster 
Myles Birket Foster (4 February 1825 – 27 March 1899) was a popular English illustrator, watercolour artist and engraver in the Victorian period. His name is also to be found as Myles Birkett Foster.
Foster was born in North Shields, England of a primarily Quaker family, but his family moved south to London in 1830, where his father founded M. B. Foster & sons - a successful beer-bottling company. He worked on illustrations for Punch magazine, the Illustrated London News and the Illustrated London Almanack. He also found work as a book illustrator and, during the 1850s, trained himself to paint in watercolour. Although he had painted great numbers of landscape scenes from Scotland to the Mediterranean, it was after moving to Witley that Birket Foster produced the works for which he is best known - a sentimentalised view of the contemporary English countryside, particularly in the west Surrey area.

Pál Szinyei Merse
'May Day', Pál Szinyei Merse
Pál Szinyei Merse (also known Paul von Szinyei-Merse; 4 July 1845 – 2 February 1920) was a Hungarian painter and politician.
Born in Szinyeújfalu, Hungary (today Chminianska Nová Ves, Slovakia), he learned painting at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich under Karl von Piloty. He was a friend of Wilhelm Leibl and Hans Makart. His are some of the earliest works of Impressionism in Hungary and Central Europe.
At the 1873 World's Fair in Vienna he won a medal with his painting Bath House.
Szinyei was also an active politician. He was elected to the parliament of Hungary where he fought for the modernization of art education. He died on 2 February 1920, just four months and two days before the Trianon treaty, in Jarovnice, which passed the town and all what is now known as Slovakia to the newly formed Czechoslovakia.