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1-32 of 32
- Writer
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Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June 1840 in Upper Bockhampton, Dorset, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Far from the Madding Crowd (2015), Tess (1979) and Maiden No More. He was married to Florence Emily Dugdale and Emma Lavinia Gifford. He died on 11 January 1928 in Dorchester, Dorset, England, UK.- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Vyatka region, Russia. He was the second of six children (five brothers and one sister). His father, named Ilya Chaikovsky, was a mining business executive in Votkinsk. His father's ancestors were from Ukraine and Poland. His mother, named Aleksandra Assier, was of Russian and French ancestry.
Tchaikovsky played piano since the age of 5, he also enjoyed his mother's playing and singing. He was a sensitive and emotional child, and became deeply traumatized by the death of his mother of cholera, in 1854. At that time he was sent to a boarding school in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the St. Petersburg School of Law in 1859, then worked for 3 years at the Justice Department of Russian Empire. In 1862-1865 he studied music under Anton Rubinstein at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1866-1878 he was a professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. At that time he met Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz, who visited Russia with concert tours. During that period Tchaikovsky wrote his first ballet 'The Swan Lake', opera 'Eugene Onegin', four Symphonies, and the brilliant Piano Concerto No1.
As a young man Tchaikovsky suffered traumatic personal experiences. He was sincerely attached to a beautiful soprano, named Desiree Artot, but their engagement was destroyed by her mother and she married another man. His homosexuality was causing him a painful guilt feeling. In 1876 he wrote to his brother, Modest, about his decision to "marry whoever will have me." One of his admirers, a Moscow Conservatory student Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova, was persistently writing him love letters. She threatened to take her life if Tchaikovsky didn't marry her. Their brief marriage in the summer of 1877 lasted only a few weeks and caused him a nervous breakdown. He even made a suicide attempt by throwing himself into a river. In September of 1877 Tchaikovsky separated from Milyukova. She eventually ended up in an insane asylum, where she spent over 20 years and died. They never saw each other again. Although their marriage was terminated legally, Tchaikovsky generously supported her financially until his death.
Tchaikovsky was ordered by the doctors to leave Russia until his emotional health was restored. He went to live in Europe for a few years. Tchaikovsky settled together with his brother, Modest, in a quiet village of Clarens on Lake Geneva in Switzerland and lived there in 1877-1878. There he wrote his very popular Violin Concerto in D. He also completed his Symphony No.4, which was inspired by Russian folk songs, and dedicated it to Nadezhda von Meck. From 1877 to 1890 Tchaikovsky was financially supported by a wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, who also supported Claude Debussy. She loved Tchaikovsky's music and became his devoted pen-friend. They exchanged over a thousand letters in 14 years; but they never met, at her insistence. In 1890 she abruptly terminated all communication and support, claiming bankruptcy.
Tchaikovsky played an important role in the artistic development of Sergei Rachmaninoff. They met in 1886, when Rachmaninov was only 13 years old, and studied the music of Tchaikovsky under the tutelage of their mutual friend, composer Aleksandr Zverev. Tchaikovsky was the member of the Moscow conservatory graduation board. He joined many other musicians in recommendation that Rachmaninov was to be awarded the Gold Medal in 1892. Later Tchaikovsky was involved in popularization of Rachmaninov's graduation work, opera 'Aleko'. Upon Tchaikovsky's promotion Rachmaninov's opera "Aleko" was included in the repertory and performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.
In 1883-1893 Tchaikovsky wrote his best Symphonies No.5 and No.6, ballets 'The Sleeping Beauty' and 'The Nutcracker', operas 'The Queen of Spades' and 'Iolanta'. In 1888-1889, he made a successful conducting tour of Europe, appearing in Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, Paris, and London. In 1891, he went on a two month tour of America, where he gave concerts in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. In May of 1891 Tchaikovsky was the conductor on the official opening night of Carnegie Hall in New York. He was a friend of Edvard Grieg and Antonín Dvorák. In 1892 he heard Gustav Mahler conducting his opera 'Eugene Onegin' in Hamburg. Tchaikovsky himself conducted the premiere of his Symphony No.6 in St. Petersburg, Russia, on the 16th of October, 1893. A week later he died of cholera after having a glass of tap water. He was laid to rest in the Necropolis of Artists at St. Aleksandr Nevsky Monastery in St. Petersburg, Russia.- Émile Zola was born on April 2, 1840, in Paris, France. His father was an Italian engineer. Young Zola studied at the Collége Bourbon in Provence, where his schoolmate and friend was Paul Cezanne. In 1858 Zola returned to Paris and became a student at the Lycée Saint-Louis, from which he graduated in 1862. After working at clerical jobs, he began to write a literary column for a Parisian newspaper. Zola's main literary work was "Les Rougon-Macquart", a monumental cycle of twenty novels about Parisian society during the French Second Empire under Napoleon III and after the Franco-Prussian War.
Zola was the founder of the Naturalist movement in 19th-century literature. His medicinal approach in scrupulous description of the lives of ordinary people was based on the contemporary theory of hereditary determinism, which he used to demonstrate how genetic and environmental factors influence human behavior. His most notable novels, "L'assommoir" (1877), "Nana" (1880) and "Germinal" (1885), displayed Zola's concerns of both scientific and artistic nature, as well as his stances on social reform. His life in the Parisian intellectual elite was that of a statesman and a bon vivant. He lived in a villa in Medan on the Seine and had a home in Paris. He was a political apprentice and follower of Victor Hugo in his stand against the corrupt monarchy of Napoleon III. Zola was among the strongest proponents of the Third Republic and was elected to the Legion of Honour. At the same time he was an important figure in the Parisian cultural milieu. He entered a circle of realist writers such as Edmond de Goncourt, Alphonse Daudet, Ivan Turgenev and Gustave Flaubert, his literary mentor and a close friend. After his novels brought him critical and financial success, Zola himself became surrounded by such followers as Guy de Maupassant and Paul Alexis, among others.
Zola shook the Parisian art world with his novel "L'Oevre" ("The Masterpiece") in 1886. Its protagonist, named Claude Lantier, was actually an amalgam of several artists including Paul Cezanne, Edouard Manet and Claude Monet. Zola also portrayed himself and his friend and mentor Gustave Flaubert. However, the personality and artistic career of painter Paul Cezanne was shown with a closer resemblance, especially when it came to intimate personal characteristics. Zola and Cezanne were schoolmates and close friends from childhood, which gave the writer a wealth of material for the novel. Cezanne's reticent personality, his self-doubt, his artistic anxieties and his more hidden sexual anxieties all came out in Zola's narrative. He revealed Cezanne's "passion for the physical beauty of women, and insane love for nudity desired but never possessed", his almost misogynistic perception of the "satanic female beauty", which affected his sexuality, and sublimated in his brush-strokes that he laid on his paintings. He showed Cezanne's work on his numerous sketches of nudes and impressionistic bathers as an outlet to artist's masculinity. He also hinted on Cezanne's countless depictions of apples as a sublimation and displacement of the artist's erotic interests. Zola used Cezanne's inner struggles of artistic and sexual nature and the interdependence of his sexual and artistic anxiety, to show some intricate parts of an eternal conundrum where lies one of the mysterious sources of creativity. In Zola's novel the artist fails to depict a perfectly beautiful nude, his wife has a baby that has a disfigured head and dies, then artist presents a painting of his dead child to the Salon, then artist commits suicide. In real life Cezanne, as a highly sensitive and refined individual, took Zola's novel too personally. The book ended their life-long friendship. Even the wise and friendly comments by Claude Monet and Camille Pisarro failed to help their reconciliation. Zola's powerful literary image had formed a lasting perception of Cezanne among his fellow artists, as well as among critics and public. Cezanne fled from the Parisian art world into a self-imposed isolation.
Zola risked his career in February of 1898, when he defended army Capt. Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for treason. Zola accused the French government of anti-Semitism in an open letter to François Félix Faure, the President of France. Zola's "J'Accuse" was published on the front page of the Paris daily "L'Aurore". Zola declared that Dreyfus' conviction was based on false accusations and forged "evidence" of espionage, which the court that convicted him knew was false, and was a misrepresentation of justice. Zola was brought to trial for libel for publishing "L'Accuse" and was convicted two weeks later, sentenced to jail, and removed from the Legion of Honour. Zola managed to escape to England. He returned during the collapse of the government and continued defending Dreyfus, who was imprisoned on the hellish penal colony in South America called Devil's Island. France became deeply divided by the case, known as the Dreyfus affair. Zola stood together with the more liberal commercial society opposite the reactionary army and Catholic church. Zola's open letter formed a major turning point in the Dreyfus affair. The case was reopened and Dreyfus was acquitted, then convicted again, but ultimately freed and completely exonerated by the French Supreme Court.
Zola's strange and tragic death from carbon monoxide poisoning was caused by a stopped chimney and remained an unresolved mystery. His enemies were blamed, but nothing was proved. He died on September 29, 1902, in Paris, and was initially laid to rest in the Cimetiere de Montmartre in Paris. On June 4, 1908, Zola's remains were laid to rest in the Pantheon in Paris, France. - Alphonse Daudet was born on 13 May 1840 in Nîmes, France. He was a writer, known for Sapho (1934), Sapho (1917) and Sapho (1913). He was married to Julia Allard. He died on 16 December 1897 in Paris, France.
- Oscar-Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. His father, named Adolphe Monet, was a grocer. His mother, named Louise-Justine Monet, was a singer. Young Monet grew up in Le Havre, Normandy. There he developed a reputation for the caricatures he loved to draw. He studied drawing with Jean-Francois Ochard, an apprentice of Jacques-Louis David. Then he studied painting 'en plein air' with marine painter 'Eugene Boudin'. After having served in the French Army in Algeria for two years, Monet was decommissioned after contracting a typhoid. In 1862, in Paris he joined the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he met Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.
In 1865 Monet submitted his painting to the official Salon for the first time. His 'Le dejeuner sur l'uerbe' (The Picnic 1865), depicting his lady friend Camille Doncieux and artist Bazille, was gently criticized by Courbet; Monet modified the painting, then, still unsatisfied, dismissed it from the show. In 1866, he painted Camille Doncieux as 'Camille, ou la femme a la robe verte' (Woman in the green Dress), and in 1867, she bore their first child, named Jean. Monet's paintings were treated as inferior at the Salon shows. In 1868 he made a suicide attempt. With the modest financial support from Frederic Bazille, Monet survived the first attack of depression. In 1870 he married Camille Doncieux and they settled in Argenteul. There he painted from a boat on the Seine River, capturing his impressions of the interplay of light, water and atmosphere.
Claude Monet became enthusiastic over the London landscapes, when he took refuge in England, to avoid the Franco-German War of 1870-1871. In London he was joined by his friend Camille Pissarro and the two artists continued painting landscapes. At that time Monet became interested in the paintings of William Turner in London museums. Turner's influence on Monet remained noticeable, especially in some later more vivdly chromatic paintings of the Thames, which he made during his visits to London in the 1890's and 1900's. In 1899, in London, Monet painted the river Thames in the series of paintings of the Houses of Parliament with the reflections of light in the river and fog. Then Monet said, "Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city."
Monet's painting 'Impression, soleil levant' (Impression, Sunrise 1872) was untitled until the first show in 1874, in the Paris studio of photographer Nadar. A title was needed in a hurry for the catalogue. Monet suggested simply 'Impression'. The catalogue editor, Renoir's brother Edouard, added an explanatory 'Sunrise'. From the painting's title, art critic Louis leroy coined the term "Impressionism", which he intended to be derogatory. Monet's title came under criticism which seized upon the first word. Monet with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, were joined by Edgar Degas, and continued to exhibit together despite the financial failure of the first show.
Impressionists slowly gained recognition after 1880, when public begun to recognize the value of their works. In 1883 Monet was able to rent a house in Giverny, in Haute-Normandie. In 1890 Monet bought the house and expanded the garden into a beautifully landscaped park with a pond. There he painted many landscapes, and his water lily pond became the favorite subject of his paintings during the next 40 years of his life. Monet outlived his second wife and first son Jean. He suffered from cataracts, which affected his vision so that his later paintings had a general reddish tone. After two cataract surgeries in 1923, Monet even repainted some of the reddish paintings. He died on December 5, 1926, and was laid to rest at the Giverny church cemetery.
"My king is the sun, my republic is water, my people are flowers and leaves," said Claude Monet. He was the first artist to present his initial impressions as completed works. In 2004, his London painting 'Le Parlement, Effet de Brouillard' (The Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog. 1904), sold for over $20,000,000. - Princess Royal Victoria was born on 21 November 1840 in Buckingham Palace, Westminster, London, England, UK. She was married to King Frederick III of Prussia. She died on 5 August 1901 in Kronberg im Taunus, Kingdom of Prussia [now Kronberg im Taunus, Hesse, Germany].
- Richard von Krafft-Ebing was born on 14 August 1840 in Mannheim, Baden, Germany. He was a writer, known for Libidomania (1979), Psychedelic Sexualis (1966) and Stato di Grazia (2011). He died on 22 December 1902 in Graz, Styria, Austria-Hungary [now Austria].
- In 1860 Antoine Lumière left his hometown in the Haute-Saône to set up a photography business in Besançon. His first son, Auguste was born in 1862, and the second, Louis, arrived two years later. In 1870 Antoine moved to Lyons with his family and opened a new workshop. Over the next 10 years he gradually built up an industrial manufacturing plant for photographic plates. The factory was taken over by Auguste and Louis in 1893. By 1894, when Edison's kinetoscope arrive on the scene in France, the Lumière Company, with a capital of 3 million francs, already had a work force of 300 people and was producing 15 million photographic plates a year.
- Jacob H. Smith was born on 29 January 1840 in Ohio, USA. He died on 2 March 1918.
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Edmond Audran was born on 12 April 1840 in Lyon, France. He is known for La poupée (1920), Miss Helyett (1928) and Miss Helyett (1933). He died on 17 August 1901 in Tierceville, Seine-et-Oise, France.- Henry Holt was born on 3 January 1840 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was a writer, known for Father Steps Out (1937) and The Spider (1939). He was married to Florence Taber and Mary Florence West. He died on 13 February 1926 in New York, New York, USA.
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Akaki Tsereteli was born on 9 June 1840 in Schwitori, Georgia, Russian Empire. He was a writer, known for Akakis akvani (1947), Bashi-Achuki (1956) and Mgeli da kravi (1981). He was married to Natalia Petrovna Bazilevskaya. He died on 26 January 1915 in Satschchere, Georgia, Russian Empire.- Jules Clarétie was born on 3 December 1840 in Limoges, France. He was a writer, known for Little Jack (1912), Her Final Reckoning (1918) and Il principe Zilah (1919). He died on 23 December 1913 in Paris, France.
- Giovanni Verga was born on 2 September 1840 in Catania, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies [now Catania, Sicily, Italy]. He was a writer, known for Fatal Desire (1953), Tigre reale (1916) and Cavalleria rusticana (1916). He died on 27 January 1922 in Catania, Sicily, Italy.
- Joseph Daly was born on 3 December 1840 in North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Daybreak (1918), What Happened to Jones (1915) and Driftwood (1916). He died on 6 August 1916 in Yonkers, New York, USA.
- Wincenty Rapacki Sr. was born on 22 January 1840 in Lipno, Poland, Russian Empire [now Lipno, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland]. He was an actor, known for Cud nad Wisla (1921). He was married to Józefina Rapacka. He died on 12 January 1924 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.
- Writer
William Pittenger was born on 31 January 1840 in Knoxville, Ohio, USA. He was a writer. He died on 24 April 1904.- Edward Sylvester Ellis was born on 11 April 1840 in Geneva, Ohio, USA. Edward Sylvester was a writer, known for The Cabin in the Clearing (1954). Edward Sylvester was married to Clara Spalding Brown and Anna M. Deane. Edward Sylvester died on 20 June 1916 in Cliff Island, Maine, USA.
- Music Department
Franco Faccio was born on 8 March 1840 in Verona, Italy. Franco is known for Faccio: Hamlet (2017). Franco died on 21 July 1891 in Italy.- Writer
- Soundtrack
Abraham Goldfaden was born on 24 July 1840 in Starokonstantinov, Volhynian Governorate, Russian Empire [now Starokostiantyniv, Khmelnytskyi Oblast, Ukraine]. He was a writer, known for Di farshtoysene tokhter (1915), Two Kuni Lemel (1966) and Shulamith (1931). He died on 9 January 1908 in New York City, New York, USA.- Edward Whymper was born on 27 April 1840 in London. He died on 16 September 1911 in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, Haute-Savoie, France.
- William T. Sampson was born on 8 February 1840 in Palmyra, New York, USA. He died on 6 May 1902 in Washington, District of Columbia, USA.
- Joseph Allen was born on 2 January 1840 in Bristol, England, UK. He died on 12 January 1917 in Newton, Massachusetts, USA.
- Charles Warren was born on 17 February 1840 in Bangor, Gwynedd, Wales, UK. He died on 26 January 1927.
- Mykhailo Starytsky was born on 14 December 1840 in Klishchyntsi, Zolotonosha, Poltava, Ukraine. He was a writer, known for Za dvoma zaytsiamy (1961), Marusia (1938) and Tsyganka Aza (1987). He died on 27 April 1904 in Kyiv, Ukraine.