Word: 1760s
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Charles Willson Peale, for all his fame as a portrait painter, was a practical soul. He started his adult life in the 1760s as a saddle maker and clock mender, switched to portraiture only after he discovered that he could earn as much as ?10 per painting, which was much "better than with my other trades." When he went to London to perfect his technique with Benjamin West, he was irritated by the highflown esthetic palaver that he heard. "It is generally an adopted opinion," he noted disdainfully, "that genius for the fine arts is a particular gift...
Although Fragonard is best known for his sensual vignettes of dalliance, he rarely reached such peaks of rococo rendering as in his Fantasy Portraits. Dating from the late 1760s, they are a series of 14 portraits of actual people in disguise-often in the ruffs and cuffs of the preceding century. His The Warrior is sterner than the rest, but still as theatrical as grease paint...