The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (98 page)

(1781–1841).
English sculptor. The son of a carpenter, he was apprenticed to a wood carver in Sheffield but left to come to London,
c.
1802, to study at the
Royal Academy
Schools. Until about 1804 his work included painted portraits, but after that date he confined himself to sculpture. His portrait bust of the Revd J. Horne-Took, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811 (Fitzwilliam, Cambridge), brought him fame, and he succeeded
Nollekens
as the most successful sculptor of portrait busts in England. Once he was well established, Chantrey, like Nollekens, did little of the cutting of the marble himself. His enormous practice included statues and church monuments as well as busts; his monument to the Robinson children (1817) in Lichfield Cathedral and his bronze equestrian statue of George IV (1828) in Trafalgar Square are his best-known works in these fields. He became extremely wealthy, and besides being very generous during his life he left the bulk of his fortune of £150,000 to the Royal Academy, the interest to be used for the purchase of ‘works of Fine Art of the highest merit executed within the shores of Great Britain’. These are now housed in the
Tate Gallery
.

 
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charcoal
.

Charred twigs or sticks used for drawing. Its use dates back to Roman times and possibly much earlier. An essential characteristic of charcoal is that it is easily rubbed off the drawing surface unless a
fixative
is used, so it has been much favoured for preparatory work, either for sketches or
cartoons
or for outlining on wall or panel a design that could be gone over with a more permanent medium. The soft-edged effect it produces has been notably exploited by 16th-cent. Venetian painters,
Baroque
artists, and the
Impressionists
.
Pencils
and
chalks
have now taken its place to some extent, but it remains well suited to large-scale work and broad, energetic draughtsmanship, and in the 20th cent. has been memorably used by
Barlach
and
Kollwitz
.

 
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(1699–1779).
French painter of still life and
genre
, in which fields he was one of the greatest masters of all time. He was the contemporary of
Boucher
and he taught
Fragonard
, but his work is a contrast to theirs in every way, representing the naturalistic tendency which persisted through the 18th cent. alongside the more fashionable
Rococo
. He was received into the Académie in 1728 on the strength of a still life (
The Rayfish
, Louvre, Paris), which drew forth the extravagant praises of
Diderot
for its realism, and he was Treasurer of the Académie for twenty years. His small canvases depicting modest scenes and objects from the everyday life of the middle classes to which he belonged were in the tradition of the Dutch
cabinet pictures
, which were having a great commercial success in France at the time. Chardin, however, developed a technique of his own, achieving great richness of tone by successive applications of the loaded brush and a subtle use of
scumbled
colour. He was praised for his verisimilitude of detail, but his work goes far beyond matter-of-fact realism and through its simplicity and directness of vision achieves a sense of deep seriousness, in spite of the humble objects he portrayed (
Pipe and Jug
, Louvre). His genre paintings, which usually contain only one or two figures, are likewise completely without sentimentality or affectation (
The Young Governess
, versions in the National Galleries of London and Washington). In his last years, when his sight was failing, he turned his hand to pastel portraits and in the 1775 Salon exhibited two self-portraits and a portrait of his wife (Louvre).

 
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(
c.
1410–66).
French painter, born in Laon. His career is unusually well documented for a provincial artist of his date (he was active in Aix, Arles, and Avignon), but there are only two extant works that are certainly by him. These are the
Virgin of Mercy
(1452) in the Musée Condé at Chantilly, painted in collaboration with an obscure artist called Pierre Villatte , and the
Coronation of the Virgin
(1454) in the Musée de l'Hospice at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon. They are both highly impressive works, uniting Flemish and Italian influence and having something of the monumental character of the sculpture of Charonton's region. Indeed, they show Charonton to have been a painter of such commanding stature that there is an increasing tendency to attribute to him the celebrated
Avignon Pietà
(Louvre, Paris), the greatest French painting of the period (see
AVIGNON, SCHOOL OF
).

 
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(1849–1916).
American painter. He settled in New York in 1878 after five years studying in Munich and became the most important American teacher of his generation. He taught at the
Art Students League of New York
and then at his own Chase School of Art, founded in 1896. The vigorous handling and fresh colour characteristic of much of the best American painting of the early 20th cent. owes a good deal to his example. His pupils (whom he encouraged to paint in the open air) included
Demuth
,
O'Keefe
, and
Sheeler
. Chase was a highly prolific artist (his output of more than 2,000 paintings included still lifes, portraits, interiors, and landscapes), and his work is represented in many American museums and private collections. See also
TEN, THE
.