Magda Szabo July 8, 1934 - August 17, 2024 was a Canadian miniaturist.
Magda Szabo was born in Budapest, Hungary. She started painting early, using oil as her medium, on large canvas.
Her miniature painting career started in the late eighties. She selected watercolor for this genre for technical reasons. Much of her work from that period consisted of creations, which were hardly bigger than a large postage stamp. To paint such tiny pictures, she used a magnifying glass and a brush, which consisted of three hairs. Her later works were larger, around 5" by 3.5" or smaller in size, but still classifiable as miniatures.
Magda Szabo used a special varnish to coat the surfaces of her paintings. This varnish protects the colors from fading and provides a unique illumination effect.
She had been a member of a number of Miniature Art Societies, such as the Hilliard Society of Miniaturists, [1] The Miniature Art Society of Florida US [2] and Canadian Society of Painters, Sculptors and Gravers in Ottawa, Canada. She had permanent exhibitions in a number of galleries in Maui, Hawaii. [3] Her miniatures had been sold in countries, such as England, US, Canada and others. Her output comprises over one thousand miniatures of many different themes.
Magda Szabo received several prizes in international and national juried competitions for her work, amongst others:
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolor, or enamel. Portrait miniatures developed out of the techniques of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts, and were popular among 16th-century elites, mainly in England and France, and spread across the rest of Europe from the middle of the 18th century, remaining highly popular until the development of daguerreotypes and photography in the mid-19th century. They were usually intimate gifts given within the family, or by hopeful males in courtship, but some rulers, such as James I of England, gave large numbers as diplomatic or political gifts. They were especially likely to be painted when a family member was going to be absent for significant periods, whether a husband or son going to war or emigrating, or a daughter getting married.
Nicholas Hilliard was an English goldsmith and limner best known for his portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I of England. He mostly painted small oval miniatures, but also some larger cabinet miniatures, up to about 10 inches tall, and at least two famous half-length panel portraits of Elizabeth. He enjoyed continuing success as an artist, and continuing financial troubles, for forty-five years. His paintings still exemplify the visual image of Elizabethan England, very different from that of most of Europe in the late sixteenth century. Technically he was very conservative by European standards, but his paintings are superbly executed and have a freshness and charm that has ensured his continuing reputation as "the central artistic figure of the Elizabethan age, the only English painter whose work reflects, in its delicate microcosm, the world of Shakespeare's earlier plays."
Levina Teerlinc was a Flemish Renaissance miniaturist who served as a painter to the English court of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary I and Elizabeth I. She was the most important miniaturist at the English court between Hans Holbein the Younger and Nicholas Hilliard. Her father, Simon Bening, was a renowned book illuminator and miniature painter of the Ghent-Bruges school and probably trained her as a manuscript painter. She may have worked in her father's workshop before her marriage.
The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers, more commonly known as the Royal Miniature Society (RMS), is an art society founded in 1895 dedicated to upholding and continuing the tradition of miniature painting and sculpture, generally meaning the painted portrait miniature, a particular English tradition.
Miniature art includes paintings, engravings and sculptures that are very small; it has a long history that dates back to prehistory. The portrait miniature is the most common form in recent centuries, and from ancient times, engraved gems, often used as impression seals, and cylinder seals in various materials were very important. For example most surviving examples of figurative art from the Indus Valley civilization and in Minoan art are very small seals. Gothic boxwood miniatures are very small carvings in wood, used for rosary beads and the like.
Shahzia Sikander is a Pakistani-American visual artist. Sikander works across a variety of mediums, including drawing, painting, printmaking, animation, installation, performance and video. Sikander currently lives and works in New York City.
Ambreen Butt is a Boston-based Pakistani American artist best known for her drawings, paintings, prints, and collages, and has been recognized for her labor intensive, painted self-portraits that portray feminist and political ideas through traditional Persian art. She now resides in Dallas, TX.
The artists of the Tudor court are the painters and limners engaged by the monarchs of England's Tudor dynasty and their courtiers between 1485 and 1603, from the reign of Henry VII to the death of Elizabeth I.
The portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) spans the evolution of English royal portraits in the early modern period (1400/1500-1800), from the earliest representations of simple likenesses to the later complex imagery used to convey the power and aspirations of the state, as well as of the monarch at its head.
Sara Wells Page (1855–1943) was a British artist, portrait and figurative painter, of the Victorian and Edwardian period. During her lifetime she was widely exhibited at Parisian salons and British galleries, including the Royal Academy of Arts. Three of her paintings are in Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
Henry Saxon was an artist specialising in miniatures. His paintings typically comprised verse or biblical text set in fine borders with one or more inset illustrative pictures.
Chrysoula Argyros is a South African artist who paints in watercolors and oils. Chrysoula's chosen subjects are generally portraits, Greek scenes, old buildings and people.
Stephanie Deshpande is a contemporary American painter, best known for her portraits and narrative paintings. She currently lives in northern New Jersey.
Kim Alsbrooks is a Philadelphia-based artist. She was born in Charleston, South Carolina, United States, in 1961, and lived briefly in Philadelphia during the 1990s. After living in Arizona for 10 years and in Charleston, South Carolina, she returned to Philadelphia in 2007. She has had a number of solo exhibitions, and has recently received considerable attention for her White Trash Family series, which includes over 600 miniatures painted on discarded trash. She is one of the winners of the West Prize.
Arthur Graham Reynolds was an English art historian who was Keeper of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was a leading expert on portrait miniatures and the art of John Constable, for whose works he wrote the catalogue raisonné. Reynolds's approach exemplified traditional scholarship and connoisseurship and he was fiercely opposed to the New Art History of the 1970s.
Syeda Marium Gulshan Hossain is a painter and installation artist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her work has been exhibited extensively. She currently serves as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Painting at University of Development Alternative Dhaka and is a member of the International Miniature Art Society of Florida, USA.
Mary Evelyn Wrinch (1877–1969), was a Canadian artist who created miniature paintings, oil paintings, and block prints, sometimes inspired by the Northern Ontario landscape. She pioneered the 'Canadian style', painting landscapes with bold colours of the Algoma, Muskoka and Lake Superior regions, in situ. In her miniature paintings on ivory, she depicted her sitters with freshness and vitality. Her colour block prints are virtuoso examples of the medium.
Maria Ann Chalon was a British painter of miniatures. She was Portrait Paintress to his Royal Highness, the Duke of York, and is considered one of the most talented and successful female British miniaturists of the early nineteenth century.
Ada Clara Whiting nee Cherry was an Australian oil and watercolour painter and miniaturist. She was active from 1898 to 1944, and received prestigious commissions to paint vice regal representatives, prominent members of society and celebrities, in Melbourne and later Sydney.
Neşe Aybey, also written Neş'e Aybey, was a Turkish painter, miniaturist and academic in the field of miniature art, one of the Traditional Turkish Arts and part of the Ottoman Book Arts. She was the older sister of sculptor Gürdal Duyar.