Paul Cezanne was a noted French painter considered as one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists. He was known to have led the way for the transition of Impressionism in the 19th Century to the styles the has been developing in the early 20th Century. He was one of the painters who challenged the conventional values of painting in the 19th Century which insisted on personal expression and integrity of the painting itself. Although his own works were discredited by the public for most of his life, he eventually was considered as the Father of Modern Painting.
Early Life
Paul Cezanne was born on January 19, 1839 in Aix-en-Provence in Southern France. His father, Louis-Auguste Cezanne was a prosperous banker. His mother was Anne-Elisabeth Honorine Aubert. Paul also had two other younger sisters named Marie and Rose. The family’s affluence afforded little Paul with the financial security that most of his contemporaries were not able to enjoy.
Young Paul started learning art at the age of ten while at Saint Joseph Boarding School> He first studied drawing under Joseph Gibert, a Spanish monk in Aix. In 1852, Paul entered College Bourbon where he stayed for six years. From 1859 to 1861, he followed his father’s wished and attended law school at the University of Aix. But his love for art made hi go against his father’s wishes and left for Paris in 1861. Eventually Paul’s father supported his career choice and both son and father reconciled. He was later given an inheritance of 400,000 francs, more than enough to give him financial security.
Life As An Artist
While in Paris, Paul Cezanne met with the Impressionists and formed a friendship with them. They became an influence to Cezanne especially in his first paintings which mostly consisted of figures in landscapes. Gradually, Cezanne developed a light and airy painting style that also influenced the Impressionists greatly. Cezanne later sought out to develop of representing the seen world into the canvas by the most accurate method possible.
Later on, Cezanne also became interested in simplifying his paintings, by creating naturally occurring forms into their geometric essentials. He wanted to paint forms as cylinders, spheres and cones. Cezanne became a unique painter in that he was equally proficient in painting different genres- still lifes, landscapes and portraits. In absence of the availability of models for his work, Cezanne was known to design from imagination.
His works were exhibited in some display in Paris. His paintings were shown in the first exhibition of the Salon des Refuses in 1863 but were not accepted by the jury of the Paris Salon. The salon continually rejected Cezanne’s subsequent submissions until 1869. His work was finally displayed at the Salon for exhibition in 1882. Cezanne’s “Portrait of Louis-Auguste Cezanne, Father of the Artist, reading ‘l’Evenement’, 1866 ” became his only successful submission to the Salon. He eventually enjoyed public recognition and some financial success as the admiration for Impressionist works began to grow. Cezanne later on died of pneumonia on October 22, 1906.
Willem de Kooning is one of the noted modern artists whose work became prominent in the post World War II era. He was, first and foremost, known as an abstract expressionist painter, a style of which is usually characterized by an impression of spontaneity and that of an unplanned work. De Kooning was born on April 24, 1904 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Early Years
Kooning grew up with his mother, Cornelia Nobel, with whom divorced De Kooning’s father, Leendert de Kooning when he was just five years old. He studied for eight years at the Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts and Techniques, he studied at night while working as a apprentice for a commercial art and decorating firm during the day. He later on became an assistant to the art director of a Rotterdam department store.
Move to America
In 1926, De Kooning went to America as a stowaway on the British Freighter SS Shelly that made port in Newport News, Virginia. De Kooning found his way going to New Jersey where he settled in Hoboken. He initially worked as a house painter to support himself and went on to meet some artists and fellow painters in the area. He eventually moved to a studio in Manhattan in 1927.
In 1935, De Kooning started working with the Federal Art Project at the WPA or Works Progress Administration where he stayed for two years. It provided him with the opportunity of doing creative work such as doing easel paintings and murals. By 1938, De Kooning started working on a series of works with male figures as subjects. As his work progressed, he began to make his abstractions blend with some figurative works. This continued on until the 1940’s.
Later Works
The 1940’s saw De Kooning being largely identified by then with the Abstract Expressionism movement. A solo exhibit of his works in 1948 established his reputation as a major artist. He also began to paint works having women as his subjects for abstraction. It was in the 1950’s that De Kooning began to explore the subject more exclusively. With his interesting paintings of women subjects, De Kooning caused a sensation in 1953, primarily because most other Abstract Expressionists at that time were creating chiefly abstract works of art. De Kooning did his with a figurative flair along with the abstraction of the subject typical of the movement.
After garnering several accolades for his works, De Kooning ventured into other works of art which included making sculptures. By 1963, De Kooning permanently settled in East Hampton, Long Island where he also died on March 19, 1997.
Francisco Goya is a notable Spanish painter and printmaker. Goya has been regarded as the last in the line of the Old Masters and the first among the modern painters. In fact, Goya is considered by other artists as the Father of Modern Art, whose works became models for the works of other famous artists such as Manet and Picasso.
Early Years
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746 in Fuendetodos, Spain. His parents were Jose Benito de Goya y Franque and Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador. Goya’s father worked as a gilder. Goya spent his early childhood in Fuendetodos and later in the city of Zaragoza where the family moved later on. Goya attended school at Escuelas Pias. At the age of 14, he began his apprenticeship with the painter Jose Lucian.
Development as Painter
Goya later on moved to Madrid where he studied art under Anton Raphael Mengs. Goya the student clashed most of the time with his master which resulted in his unsatisfactory marks under Mengs. Goya then tried to enter the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the city but was denied.
Unable to enter the Royal Academy, Goya ventured to Rome. There, Goya was able to win the second prize in a painting competition held by the city of Parma in 1771. during the same year, he went back to Zaragoza where he eventually studied with Francisco Bayeu y Subias. It was during this time that Goya began to develop the use of delicate tones from which he later on became famous.
Success as Painter
Goya found success as a painter with his association with Francisco Bayeu, who is a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art. Goya married Bayeu’s sister Josefa in 1774 and was able to get work from the Royal Tapestry Workshop. Here, Goya was able to design patterns that were used to decorate the residences of Spanish monarchs. This provided him with the means to catch the attention of the Spanish royal court. During the course of his new found success, Goya also was able to be appointed as a member of the Royal Academy of Fine Art.
Painter of Royalty
Goya’s access to the Spanish royal court led him to be appointed as a painter of royalty, especially by Charles III in 1786. He eventually became court painter in 1789 to Charles IV. Goya did paintings of the King and Queen the royal family as well as other nobles.
Later Life
In 1792, Goya contracted a high fever that left him deaf. This experience also made him more withdrawn and introspective. This may have influenced him to create more bleak and intensely haunting works of art. Goya later on relocated to Bordeaux in 1824. Goya later on died in Bordeaux in 1828 at the ripe old age of 82.
Johanns Vermeer was a noted Dutch painter who specialized in the Dutch Baroque style. He was famous for his art works of domestic interior scenes depicting ordinary life. A painter with a relatively few artworks credited to him, he was for some time forgotten for nearly 200 year. It was an 1866 art critic who revived his reputation as an art master by publishing an essay that attributed 66 paintings to him. And through that, he was acknowledged as one of the greatest painters ever to come out of the Dutch Golden Age in art.Early Life
Little has been known of Johannes Vermeer’s life. It was believed that Vermeer was born in 1632 in the city of Delft in the Netherlands. His father, Reynier Jansz was a lower middle class silk worker. His mother, Digna Baltens was from Antwerp. Vermeer’s father later on bought and ran a large inn and sold paintings. When his father died in 1652, Vermeer took his father’s place in selling paintings.
Vermeer’s education in the arts has not been ascertained. But it was believed that he was apprenticed as a painter. He probably studied painting in Delft or possibly taught himself how to paint with guidance from his fathers connections with other painters as an art merchant. It was also known that Vermeer became a member of the Guild of Saint Luke, which was an association of painters. He later on became the head of the guild, according to guild records, hinting that he became an established craftsman respected by his peers.
Although respected as an artist in his hometown in Delft, Vermeer was a relative unknown outside of it. Painting only a handful of artworks, with much of it bought by a local art patron may have contributed to limiting his talents outside of the city. Vermeer also led a very short life, having died sometime in 1675, at the age of 43.
Art Technique
Vermeer’s painting technique was characterized by transparent colors produced by applying paint to the canvas in loose layers. He was also known as one of the first early painters who made use of the expensive pigment called lapiz lazuli. He used themes that are taken from mostly domestic scenes. Most of his works are largely portraits, with two known cityscapes attributed to his name. His subjects are mostly people from the 17th Century Dutch society, ranging from milkmaids going to work to rich noblemen in their homes.
By 1880, Van Gogh started taking an earnest interest in art upon the suggestion of his brother Theo. This led him to attend the Royal Academy of Art where he learned the basics of anatomy as well as the standard rules of modeling and perspective. By 1881, Van Gogh went back living with his parents in Etten while continuing on his new craft in drawing. He initially used neighbors as his frequent drawing subjects.But the year did not go by without the tension also coming between Van Gogh and his father. A quarrel that Van Gogh had with an uncle caused by his insistent but futile pursuit of marrying an older widowed cousin led to renewed tensions with his father. It became so serious and violent that Van Gogh immediately left for The Hague.
While at The Hague during 1882, Van Gogh was encouraged by his cousin in law Anton Mauve to pursue painting. An art dealer uncle commissioned Van Gogh to do 20 ink drawings of the city after which he began to dabble in oil painting. Out of loneliness, Van Gogh went back to living with his parents who were by then situated in Nuenen, North Brabant in 1883.
While in Nuenen, Van Gogh devoted himself to drawing. In March of 1885, Van Gogh’s father died of a stroke and the artist grieved deeply. It was also during this time that his works began to be noticed in Paris. This led him to do what is considered his first major work, The Potato Eaters. His artwork during his stay at Nuenen did not yet display the vivid coloration that is distinct of his best known works later on. His stay at Nuenen produced 200 oil paintings as well as numerous drawings and watercolors.
From 1885 to 1886, Van Gogh found himself in Antwerp where he continued to develop and improve his painting technique. Van Gogh lived poorly and spent what money he had on painting materials. This led him to suffer from poor health. During his stay at Antwerp, Van Gogh was able to look at the works of Peter Paul Rubens, influencing him to broaden his use of color from earthly tones to incorporating carmine, cobalt and emerald green.
Sometime in 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris where he studied at Fernand Cormon’s studio. It was during this time that Van Gogh was able to study more about the Impressionist works of artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. In 1887, Van Gogh began to paint using some elements of pointillism. Over the course of his stay in Paris, which lasted until 1887, Van Gogh was able to create over 200 paintings and staged an exhibition of his work along with other artist friends at the Restaurant du Chalet in Montmarte.
Tired of the fast paced life in Paris, Van Gogh decided to move to Arles, France on February of 1888 where he stayed ad a nearby hotel and then transferred to the Yellow House Which became his studio. It was here that Van Gogh painted sunflowers as subjects. It was here that Van Gogh also increasingly displayed serious mental problems that led him to cut his own left ear lobe over the growing tension he had with fellow artist and friend Paul Gauguin. This event led Gauguin to separate himself from Van Gogh and never saw him again. Van Gogh was hospitalized due to his critical mental state during this time. It was also during this time that Van Gogh began having hallucinations and become paranoid that he was being poisoned.
His mental state became all the more serious that the townspeople in Arles began to call him the “Redheaded Madman” (fou roux). In 1889, due to his deteriorating mental state, Van Gogh was accompanied by a carer to Saint Remy where he committed himself to a mental institution. Saint Remy was over a mile away from the town and is an area covered by cornfield, vineyards and trees. The garden and the clinic became Van Gogh’s subjects for his subsequent painting. It was also in Saint Remy that Van Gogh did one of his best known paintings, The Starry Night, which was characterized by swirls. Limited access to the outside world led Van Gogh to remake works from the memory of his past.
In May 1990, Van Gogh left the clinic and went instead to make visits to Dr. Paul Gatchet, a physician who treated other artists previously. Van Gogh was able to do two oil paintings of the doctor and an etching. But during this time, Van Gogh’s bout with depression severely deepened. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh walked into the fields and shot himself in the chest with a revolver. Not knowing that he was fatally wounded, he still made it back into his rented room at the Ravoux inn where he died in his bed two days later due to complications of the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a famous Dutch Post-impressionist artist whose paintings and drawings have become some of the most popular and most expensive works of art in the world today.His use of color as the chief mode of expression has led him to create some of the most beautiful paintings, the mix of color and dramatic content of his works display his genius as an artist. Van Gogh’s posthumous success despite the tragic life he led seems to be in line with the lives of other great artists that achieved renown only after their death.
Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in the province of North Brabant in the Netherlands. His father,Theodorus van Gogh was a minister of the Dutch Reformed |Church. His mother was Anna Cornelia Carbentus. As a child, Van Gogh was serious and silent. But generations of the Van Gogh’s have been associated with either art or religion. Early relatives seem to either lean on a life of art or religion. So it can be safely said that art runs in Van Gogh’s blood.
Van Gogh learned about drawing and the arts while attending middle school. He was taught by Constantijn C. Huysmans, a teacher at Willem II College in Tilburgand an artist who have achieved a certain success in France. But this did not motivate Van Gogh to lead a life of an artist.
In 1869, at the age of fifteen, Van Gogh decided to find work after deciding to leave school abruptly the year earlier. He was able to find work as an art dealer in The Hague with the help of an uncle. Van Gogh was later on transferred to London in 1873 where he started to become successful. This was considered as one of Van Gogh’s happy life periods.
But unfortunately, Van Gogh’s behavior began to change after being rejected by a woman he fell in love with. From that point on, Van Gogh became increasingly isolated and seem to become fervent in religion. Van Gogh also began to notice and became dismayed at how art was being treated as a commodity rather than as an admirable body of work. He began to express his sentiments to his customers. This later on led to his termination as an art dealer in 1876.
After stints of becoming a minister’s assistant at a Methodist church, Van Gogh decided to studytheology but failed a three month course at a Protestant missionary course. But this did not hamper him from having a brief and temporary stint as a missionary in Belgium. His erratic behavior slowly began to come out, baffling some of the people who came to meet him.
Afterwards, Van Gogh went home after having a bad experience with the church authorities as a missionary in Belgium and in part to the insistence of his family to go back home. But then, his strange behavior began to show increasingly at home which even led his father to make inquiries of committing Van Gogh in a lunatic asylum, mostly due to the growing tension happening between them. Van Gogh decided to go someplace else and found himself going back to Belgium. There he began to harbor a growing interest of the everyday scenes around him and began to capture them in his drawings. (to be continued)
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a noted French painter that is also considered as the founder of Neo-impressionism in the 19th Century. He was born on December 2, 1859 to a well-off family in Paris, France. His father, Antoine Chrysostom Seurat was a known legal official in La Vilette.Seurat’s mother, Ernestine Faivre came from a family of prosperous middle class Parisians.
Early influences for Georges was his uncle, an amateur painter from his mother side, who introduced the young Seurat. In 1875, Georges started attending a drawing class that was taught by Justin Lequien who was a sculptor. In 1878 to 1879, he was admitted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.After serving a year of military service, he returned to Paris where he devoted his time in trying to master the art of black and white drawing.
In 1883, Seurat was able to finish his very first painting but was rejected by the Paris Salon, a big and popular art exhibition in Paris. This rejection led Seurat to instead ally with the other independent artists in Paris. It was in 1884 that Seurat, along with other independent artists, formed the Societe des Artistes Independants. It was with the group that Seurat begin to share his ideas on a new painting technique called pointillism, which became the art movement that he founded called Neo-impressionism.
In 1884, Seurat began working on his most well-known work, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La GrandeGrande, which took about two years to finish. The painting showed members of the different social classes participating in various activities at the park. The painting was done using the pointillism technique that Seurat started. This new technique allowed viewers of the painting to blend the different colors optically through the positioning of the multi-colored dots instead of blending the color using pre-blended pigment on canvas.
Seurat died unexpectedly on March 29, 1891 in Paris. The cause of his death was uncertain but was later on attributed to a form of meningitis, pneumonia or diphtheria.
Paul Gauguin was a famous Post-Impressionist painter whose bold experimentation with color helped develop the Synthetist style in modern art. His painting style also led to the development of Primitivism and a return to the pastoral. He is also known for his woodcuts and wood engravings from which he became one of its influential proponents.Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, 1848 in Paris, France. His father, Clovis Gauguin, was a journalist while his mother, Aline Maria Chazal, was the a half-Peruvian daughter of a socialist leader and feminist. It was unfortunate that Paul’s father died while on a voyage to Peru when he was three years old, leaving his mother to raise him along with Paul’s sister. The fractured family lived in Lima, Peru for four years before returning to France.
When Paul and his family returned to France when he was seven, they stayed with his grandfather where he soon learned French and did very well on his studies. His interest in art started when he was young. Free time he spends painting and visiting galleries to purchase work by emerging artists. This led him to get in touch with a network of other artists which led him to rent his own studio and exhibit his paintings in Impressionist exhibitions in 1881 and 1882. After trying out work as a stockbroker in Copenhagen in 1884, he decided to devote his time in painting and returned to Paris in 1885.
Although trying to develop his craft in painting, Paul started to suffer from the poor subsistence that his profession brought with him. Painting wasn’t providing much of what he needed just to survive. This is what probably driven him to bouts of depression. But yet, his love for art prevailed and he continued on painting in Paris until 1891.
Throughout his stay in France, Paul Gauguin became frustrated for not being recognized for his work and still in the state of financial disrepair. He resolved to sail into the tropics in order to escape the conventionalities and supposed unnatural state of European civilization. This led him to briefly stay in Martinique and become a day laborer during the construction of the Panama Canal.
He later on moved to Tahiti where he did a number of masterpieces influenced by the culture and style he experienced while staying in the tropics. The style that he employed also influenced the Primitivism art movement in the late 19th century. The style is characterized by exaggerated body proportions, geometric designs and stark contrasts from which Gauguin was the first artist to make use of such styles and achieve broad public success. His works fascinated and intrigued a number of the European elite who were just discovering the art coming from foreign cultures in Micronesia, Africa and the tropics. Paul returned to France only once after that and lived out the rest of his life in the Marquesas Islands. Paul Gauguin died in 1903 and was buried in the Marquesas Islands.
Alexander Calder is a well known American sculptor and artist who was credited to inventing the mobile or the kinetic sculpture. It is a sculpture that takes advantage of the principle of equilibrium to achieve balance. A mobile usually consists of a number of rods from which weighted objects or other rods hang. The different objects hanging from the rods balance each other making them remain more or less horizontal. The display of rods and objects usually hang from only one string giving them freedom to rotate about.Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. He came from a family of artists with his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, already a well-known sculptor of many public installations in Philadelphia. Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who has studied in Paris. Calder also had an older sister, Margaret “Peggy” Calder, who was born in 1896.
Calder made his first sculpture at the age of four. This and other early works showed the talent of this budding sculptor at a very young age. Calder’s parents encouraged their children’s creativity in art but somehow discouraged them to lead a career as artists due to the difficulties and uncertainties that usually come with having such a profession. And because of this, Calder decided to study mechanical engineering after graduating from high school in1915 at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. He received his degree in the school in 1919. Thereafter, Calder went on to work on a variety of engineering jobs and even worked on a passenger ship as a fireman in the boiler room. Eventually, Calder decided to pursue a career as an artist.
Calder then moved to New York to study art at the Art Students’ League. In 1926, he relocated to Paris where he took the job creating toys. During his stay in Paris, Calder started making out his Cirque Calder which is a miniature circus fashioned out of wire, string, wood, cloth and other discarded objects, small enough to fit into suitcases. His miniature circus became popular with the avant-garde crowd in Paris.
Calder returned to the US in 1927 where he designed several kinetic wooden toys for children. In 1928, he had his first solo exhibit at the Weyhe Gallery in New York. During this time, Calder was already fascinated by wire sculptures and kinetic art. It was in 1931 that Calder made his popular mobiles. He also went to create self-supporting, static abstract sculptures that he called as “stabiles” to distinguish them from his mobiles. He went on to do several other artworks using other media. Calder died on November 11, 1976.
Andy Warhol is considered as one of the central figures in the popularity of the movement known as Pop art. An American artist who began his career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol later on became famous as a painter, avant-garde filmmaker and a famous public figure known in various social circles- from distinguished intellectuals to Hollywood celebrities.Andy Warhol was born Andy Warhola in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on August 6, 1928. His parents, Andrew and Julia Warhola were working class immigrants that came from Hungary. Warhol’s father worked as a coal miner caring for a family that also included Warhol’s two older brothers, John and Paul. When he was at third grade, Warhol was afflicted by St. Vitus Dance, a condition that affects the nervous system causing involuntary movements said to be brought about by complications of scarlet fever. This later on led to Warhol developing blotchiness in the pigmentation of his skin. And because Warhol was frequently bed-ridden as a child he became somewhat of a hypochondriac as well as a social outcast among school mates. This led him to spend his time drawing that helped form and develop his skill in the arts.
Later on, Warhol showed his artistic talent and studied commercial art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology School of Fine Arts. After graduating, he moved to New York City where he began a successful career in magazine doing illustrations for advertisements. He was primarily known in the 50’s for his ink drawings of shoes used for advertisements. His career later on led Warhol to do illustrations for the music industry doing album covers as well as promotional materials.
It was during the 60’s that Warhol started to create paintings of famous American products as well as paintings of Hollywood celebrities. It was also during this tie that he began gathering a wide circle of artists, writers, musicians and underground celebrities. Warhol aimed to mass produce art and sparked a revolution that became controversial as well as popular. Warhol’s subject in art usually revolves around American Pop culture. He painted dollar bills, popular brand name products as well as celebrities. His subjects are usually recognizable and have mass appeal. He became a popular figure in the art world as well as the various social circles up until his death in February 22, 1987.
Paul Cezanne was a noted French painter considered as one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists. He was known to have led the way for the transition of Impressionism in the 19th Century to the styles the has been developing in the early 20th Century. He was one of the painters who challenged the conventional values of painting in the 19th Century which insisted on personal expression and integrity of the painting itself. Although his own works were discredited by the public for most of his life, he eventually was considered as the Father of Modern Painting.
By 1880, Van Gogh started taking an earnest interest in art upon the suggestion of his brother Theo. This led him to attend the Royal Academy of Art where he learned the basics of anatomy as well as the standard rules of modeling and perspective. By 1881, Van Gogh went back living with his parents in Etten while continuing on his new craft in drawing. He initially used neighbors as his frequent drawing subjects.But the year did not go by without the tension also coming between Van Gogh and his father. A quarrel that Van Gogh had with an uncle caused by his insistent but futile pursuit of marrying an older widowed cousin led to renewed tensions with his father. It became so serious and violent that Van Gogh immediately left for The Hague.
Vincent Willem van Gogh was a famous Dutch Post-impressionist artist whose paintings and drawings have become some of the most popular and most expensive works of art in the world today.
Georges-Pierre Seurat was a noted French painter that is also considered as the founder of Neo-impressionism in the 19th Century. He was born on December 2, 1859 to a well-off family in Paris, France. His father, Antoine Chrysostom Seurat was a known legal official in La Vilette.
Paul Gauguin was a famous Post-Impressionist painter whose bold experimentation with color helped develop the Synthetist style in modern art. His painting style also led to the development of Primitivism and a return to the pastoral. He is also known for his woodcuts and wood engravings from which he became one of its influential proponents.Paul Gauguin was born on June 7, 1848 in Paris, France. His father, Clovis Gauguin, was a journalist while his mother, Aline Maria Chazal, was the a half-Peruvian daughter of a socialist leader and feminist. It was unfortunate that Paul’s father died while on a voyage to Peru when he was three years old, leaving his mother to raise him along with Paul’s sister. The fractured family lived in Lima, Peru for four years before returning to France.
Alexander Calder is a well known American sculptor and artist who was credited to inventing the mobile or the kinetic sculpture. It is a sculpture that takes advantage of the principle of equilibrium to achieve balance. A mobile usually consists of a number of rods from which weighted objects or other rods hang. The different objects hanging from the rods balance each other making them remain more or less horizontal. The display of rods and objects usually hang from only one string giving them freedom to rotate about.Alexander Calder was born on July 22, 1898 in Lawnton, Pennsylvania. He came from a family of artists with his father, Alexander Stirling Calder, already a well-known sculptor of many public installations in Philadelphia. Calder’s mother, Nanette Lederer Calder, was a professional portrait painter who has studied in Paris. Calder also had an older sister, Margaret “Peggy” Calder, who was born in 1896.