title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was third-billed in Columbia's "Behold a Pale Horse" (1964), playing a priest in the Spanish Civil War alongside Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn. Director Fred Zinnemann said he chose Sharif partly on the suggestion of David Lean. "He said he was an absolutely marvellous actor, 'If you possibly can, take a look at him.'" Film historian Richard Schickel wrote that Sharif gave a "truly wonderful performance", especially noteworthy because of his totally different roles in "Lawrence of Arabia": "It is hard to believe that the priest and the sheik are played by the same man". The film, like "Fall of the Roman Empire", was a commercial disappointment.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was one of many stars in MGM's "The Yellow Rolls-Royce" (1964), playing a Yugoslav wartime patriot; the movie was a hit.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif had his first lead role in a Hollywood movie when he was cast in the title part of "Genghis Khan" (1965). Produced by Irving Allen and directed by Henry Levin for Columbia, the $4.5 million epic was a box office disappointment. He had a supporting role in a French Marco Polo biopic, "Marco the Magnificent" (1965), starring Buchholz and Quinn.


title: Omar Sharif

text: While making "Genghis Khan", Sharif heard that Lean was making "Doctor Zhivago" (1965), an adaptation of Boris Pasternak's 1957 novel. Sharif was a fan of the novel and lobbied for one of the supporting roles, but Lean decided instead to cast him in the lead as Yuri Zhivago, a poet and physician.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Film historian Constantine Santas explained that Lean intended the film to be a poetic portrayal of the period, with large vistas of landscapes combined with a powerful score by Maurice Jarre. He noted that Sharif's role is "passive", his eyes reflecting "reality" which then become "the mirror of reality we ourselves see".


title: Omar Sharif

text: In a commentary on the DVD (2001 edition), Sharif described Lean's style of directing as similar to a general commanding an army. The film was a huge hit. For his performance, Sharif was named best actor in a motion picture drama. "Doctor Zhivago" remains one of the top ten highest-grossing films of all time after adjusting for inflation.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif followed it with a cameo in "The Poppy Is Also a Flower" (1966). He, O'Toole and "Lawrence" producer Sam Spiegel were reunited in "The Night of the Generals" (1967). His fourth movie for Columbia, Sharif played a German officer in World War II. The film was not a success, nor was the Italian-French fairytale "More Than a Miracle" (1967), despite featuring Sophia Loren as co-star.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was also praised for his portrayal of Nicky Arnstein in "Funny Girl" (1968) for Columbia pictures. He portrayed the husband of Fanny Brice, played by Barbra Streisand in her first film role. His decision to work alongside Streisand angered Egypt's government because she was a vocal supporter of the State of Israel, and the country condemned the film. It was also "immediately banned" in numerous Arab nations. Streisand herself jokingly responded, "You think Cairo was upset? You should've seen the letter I got from my Aunt Rose!" Sharif and Streisand became romantically involved during the filming.


title: Omar Sharif

text: He admitted later that he did not find Streisand attractive at first, but her appeal soon overwhelmed him: "About a week from the moment I met her", he recalled, "I was madly in love with her. I thought she was the most gorgeous girl I'd ever seen in my life...I found her physically beautiful, and I started "lusting" after this woman."


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif co-starred with Catherine Deneuve in "Mayerling" (1968), and the following year was reunited with Gregory Peck in the western, "Mackenna's Gold" (1969), an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the success of "The Guns of Navarone" (1961). At 20th Century Fox he played Che Guevara in "Che!" which flopped at the box office.


title: Omar Sharif

text: "The Appointment" (1969) teamed Sharif with Anouk Aimée and director Sidney Lumet but was not a hit. James Clavell's "The Last Valley" (1971) was a huge flop, despite co-starring Michael Caine.


title: Omar Sharif

text: "The Horsemen" (1971), directed by John Frankenheimer and the last movie under his Columbia contract, also performed poorly at the box office.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif later said, "What killed my career was appearing in a succession of films you wouldn't turn down. They were by good directors, but they were bad films." He specifically referenced "Behold a Pale Horse", "The Appointment" and "The Horsemen".


title: Omar Sharif

text: "The Burglars" (1971), a French crime film with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Dyan Cannon was a huge hit in France but little seen in the English speaking world.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif appeared in a romantic thriller alongside Julie Andrews for Blake Edwards, "The Tamarind Seed" (1974); it did well at the box office and the critics gave good reviews.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif reprised the role of Nick Arnstein in the sequel to "Funny Girl", "Funny Lady" in 1975. He starred in a West German thriller "Crime and Passion" (1976) and had a cameo in Edwards' "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976).


title: Omar Sharif

text: "I lost money on gambling, buying horses, things like that", he later said. "So I made those movies which I knew were rubbish... I'd call my agent and tell him to accept any part, just to bail myself out."


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif had a lead part in a spy spoof, "S*H*E" (1980) and was second-billed (after James Coburn) in "The Baltimore Bullet" (1980). He had supporting parts in a Chevy Chase comedy "Oh! Heavenly Dog" (1981) and a Ryan O'Neal thriller "Green Ice" (1981) (which was made in the 1970s), and a small role in the comedy "Top Secret!" (1984).


title: Omar Sharif

text: He appeared on stage in a production of "The Sleeping Prince" in 1983, saying he "appeared in the bad films of great directors".


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif worked steadily in television, appearing in "Pleasure Palace" (1981), "Peter the Great" (1986), and "" (1986) (as Nicholas II of Russia). He had supporting parts in "Grand Larceny" (1987) and "The Possessed" (1988). He also appeared in the movie Rambo III (1988) as Masoud. His first notable credit in a while was "Mountains of the Moon" (1990) but Sharif's part was only small.


title: Omar Sharif

text: He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1989, when he was surprised by Michael Aspel outside his Paris apartment.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was reunited with O'Toole a third time in "The Rainbow Thief" (1990). He went to Egypt for "War in the Land of Egypt" (1991) and France for "Mayrig" (1991) with Claudia Cardinale, an autobiographical tale for Henri Verneuil. The latter was popular enough for a sequel, "588 rue paradis" (1992).


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif could also be seen in "Memories of Midnight" (1991), "Beyond Justice" (1992), "Catherine the Great" (as Alexei Razumovsky), "Gulliver's Travels" (1996), "Heaven Before I Die" (1997), and "Mysteries of Egypt" (1998).


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1996, Sharif starred in the documentary "Lebanon...Imprisoned Splendour". The documentary was written and directed by Lebanese-Australian director Daizy Gedeon, who approached Sharif for the project because she wanted someone 'remarkable' to help her tell the true story of Lebanon: a country which, at the time, was still shrouded in the fog of its Civil War. In the film, Sharif shares personal stories of his upbringing in a Lebanese family, and recites the poetry of famous Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran.


title: Omar Sharif

text: He had his first decent role in a big Hollywood film in a long time with "The 13th Warrior" (1999). The outcome of the film's production disappointed Sharif so much that he temporarily retired from film acting, not taking a role in another major film until 2003's "Monsieur Ibrahim":


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif did have a small role in "The Parole Officer" (2001). In 2003 he said, "I went 25 years without making a good film."


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 2003, Sharif received acclaim for his leading role in "Monsieur Ibrahim", a French-language film adaptation of the novel "Monsieur Ibrahim et les fleurs du Coran", as a Muslim Turkish merchant who becomes a father figure for a Jewish boy. For this performance, Sharif received the César Award for Best Actor.


title: Omar Sharif

text: It has nice big chunks of dialogue, which is what I like to do, rather than riding horses or camels. I'd turned down everything and stopped working for four years. I said, 'I'm going to stop doing that rubbish and keep some dignity.' But when I read the script for 'Monsieur Ibrahim,' I phoned the producers immediately. I said, 'Hang on, I'm coming, wait for me.' My problem is finding parts. When you're young and successful, they write or adapt parts for you. But when you're an old chap, let's be frank, you don't sell tickets anymore. If they need an old Englishman, American or Italian, there are plenty of actors around. So what's open for me? Old Arabs. And that's what I play in this film.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif's later film roles included performances in "Hidalgo" (2004), "" (2005) playing the title role for Italian television, "One Night with the King" (2005) (again with O'Toole), and 10,000 BC (2008) as the narrator.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Also in 2006, Sharif played the artist Hans Canon in "The Crown Prince", a film about Rudolf, the 19th century crown prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In Egypt he starred in "Hassan and Marcus" (2008) with Adel Emam' and was in "The Traveller" (2009). He had support roles in "The Last Templar" (2009) and "Rock the Casbah" (2013).


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif's final role was as lead actor in the short science education film "1001 Inventions and the World of Ibn Al-Haytham", which was directed by Ahmed Salim and was released as part of the United Nations' International Year of Light campaign, operated by UNESCO.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif said bridge was his personal passion and at one time was ranked among the world's top 50 contract bridge players.


title: Omar Sharif

text: At the 1964 World Bridge Olympiad he represented the United Arab Republic bridge squad and in 1968 he was playing captain of the Egyptian team in the Olympiad.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1967 he formed the "Omar Sharif Bridge Circus" to showcase bridge to the world and invited professional players including members of the Italian Blue team, which won 16 World championship titles, to tour and promote the game via exhibition matches including one watched by the Shah of Iran. Touring through Europe, the Circus attracted thousands of spectators who watched the matches via Bridge-O-Rama, a new technology (and predecessor to the modern-day VuGraph) that displayed bidding and cardplay on television monitors. Players included Benito Garozzo, (considered by many as the greatest bridge player of all time) plus his Italian compatriots Pietro Forquet and Giorgio Belladonna and Frenchman Claude Delmouly.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1970, Sharif and the circus went to London's famous Piccadilly Hotel for an 80-rubber match against British experts Jeremy Flint and Jonathan Cansino. The stakes were £1 per point, huge stakes even by today's standards. The event was to present bridge as a rich, exciting spectacle and to break through into television to bring the game within the reach of millions. The Circus ultimately won the match by 5,470 points, but Sharif still incurred a net loss after paying all related expenses.


title: Omar Sharif

text: The Circus, under the management of Mike Ledeen, toured Canada and the U.S. in 1970–71. Sharif's team joined with the Dallas Aces for a seven-city tour of Chicago, Winnipeg, Los Angeles, Minneapolis–St. Paul, Dallas, Detroit and Philadelphia. In each city, a team of local experts participated in the exhibition.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1975, sponsored by the Lancia division of Fiat, Sharif and members of the Italian Blue Team faced off in four challenge matches against American teams. Sharif's team won in Chicago, but was defeated in New York, Los Angeles and Miami.


title: Omar Sharif

text: The Omar Sharif World Individual Championship held in 1990 offered the largest total purse ($200,000) in the history of bridge.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1997, he was a member of the Committee of Honour for the Bermuda Bowl on the first time it was held in an Arab country, Tunisia. He competed in a transnational team (with French, German and Lebanese players) and finished 11th. In 1999 he played in a French senior team at the European Championships in Malta, finishing second. In 2000 at Maastricht, he joined Egypt's senior team, finishing in ninth place.


title: Omar Sharif

text: With Charles Goren and later Tannah Hirsch, Sharif contributed to a syndicated newspaper bridge column for the "Chicago Tribune".


title: Omar Sharif

text: He was also both author and co-author of several books on bridge and licensed his name to a bridge video game, "Omar Sharif Bridge", initially released in an MS-DOS version and Amiga version in 1992 and is still sold in Windows and mobile platform versions. He was also the hand analyst commentator for the Epson worldwide bridge contests.


title: Omar Sharif

text: By 2000 Sharif had stopped playing bridge entirely. Having once proudly declared the game his passion, he now considered it an addiction: "I didn't want to be a slave to any passion anymore. I gave up card playing altogether, even bridge and gambling." Sharif, however, continued to license his name to bridge software games, and co-authored a book with bridge writer David Bird, "Omar Sharif Talks Bridge". Written in 2004, it includes some of his most famous deals and bridge stories.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif lived in Egypt from his birth until he moved to Europe in 1965. He recounted that in 1932, his father "wasn't a wealthy man", but "earned quite a bit of money". Before the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, King Farouk frequented Sharif's family home, and became a friend and card-game partner of Sharif's mother. His mother was an elegant and charming hostess who was all too delighted with the association because it gave her the privilege of "consorting only with the elite" of Egyptian society. Sharif also recounted that his father's timber business was very successful during that time in ways that Sharif describes as dishonest or immoral. By contrast, after 1952, Sharif stated that wealth changed hands in Egypt under Nasser's nationalisation policies and his father's business "took a beating".


title: Omar Sharif

text: In 1954, Sharif starred in the film "Struggle in the Valley" with Faten Hamama, who shared a kiss with him although she had previously refused to kiss on screen. The two fell in love; Sharif converted to Islam, changed his name, and married her. They had one son, Tarek Sharif, born in 1957 in Egypt, who appeared in "Doctor Zhivago" as Yuri at the age of eight. The couple separated in 1966 and their marriage ended in divorce in 1974. Sharif never remarried; he stated that after his divorce he never fell in love with another woman again. Before their divorce, Sharif dated actresses Pat Sheehan and Dodie Marshall.


title: Omar Sharif

text: The Nasser government imposed travel restrictions in the form of "exit visas", so Sharif's travel to take part in international films was sometimes impeded, something he found to be intolerable. These restrictions influenced Sharif's decision to remain in Europe between his film shoots, a decision that cost him his marriage, though the couple remained friends. It was a major crossroad in Sharif's life and changed him from an established family man to a committed bachelor living in European hotels. When commenting about his fame and life in Hollywood, Sharif said, "It gave me glory, but it gave me loneliness also. And a lot of missing my own land, my own people and my own country". When Sharif's affair with Streisand was made public in the Egyptian press, his Egyptian citizenship was almost withdrawn by the Egyptian government because of Streisand being Jewish and a vocal supporter of Israel, which was then in a state of war with Egypt.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif became friends with Peter O'Toole during the making of "Lawrence of Arabia". They appeared in several other films together and remained close friends. He was also good friends with Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. Actor and friend Tom Courtenay revealed in an interview for the 19 July 2008 edition of BBC Radio's Test Match Special that Sharif supported Hull City Association Football Club and in the 1970s he would telephone their automated scoreline from his home in Paris for score updates. Sharif was given an honorary degree by the University of Hull in 2010 and he used the occasion to meet Hull City football player Ken Wagstaff. Sharif also had an interest in horse racing spanning more than 50 years. He was often seen at French racecourses, with Deauville-La Touques Racecourse being his favourite. Sharif's horses won a number of important races and he had his best successes with Don Bosco, who won the Prix Gontaut-Biron, Prix Perth and Prix du Muguet. He also wrote for a French horse racing magazine.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In later life, Sharif lived mostly in Cairo with his family. In addition to his son Tarek Sharif, he had two grandsons, Omar Sharif Jr (born 1983 in Montreal) and Karim. Omar Sharif Jr is also an actor.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was also one of the ambassadors of Egypt's bid for the 2010 FIFA World Cup which lost out to South Africa.


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif was very supportive of the 2011 Youth revolution in his home country and asked for the resignation of Hosni Mubarak, stating: "Given that the entire Egyptian people don't want him and he's been in power for 30 years, that's enough."


title: Omar Sharif

text: Sharif had a triple heart bypass operation in 1992 and suffered a mild heart attack in 1994. Until his bypass, Sharif smoked 25 cigarettes a day. He quit smoking after the operation.


title: Omar Sharif

text: In May 2015, it was reported that Sharif was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. His son Tarek Sharif (who portrayed his father's character as a child in Doctor Zhivago) said that his father was becoming confused when remembering some of the biggest films of his career; he would mix up the names of his best-known films, "Doctor Zhivago" and "Lawrence of Arabia", often forgetting where they were filmed.


title: Omar Sharif

text: On 10 July 2015, less than six months after his former wife's death at the same age, Sharif died after suffering a heart attack at a hospital in Cairo.


title: Omar Sharif

text: On 12 July 2015, Sharif's funeral was held at the Grand Mosque of Mushir Tantawi in eastern Cairo. The funeral was attended by a group of Sharif's relatives, friends and Egyptian actors, his coffin draped in the Egyptian flag and a black shroud. His coffin was later taken to the El-Sayeda Nafisa cemetery in southern Cairo, where he was buried.


title: Omar Sharif

text: At the 35th Academy Awards, Sharif was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Sherif Ali in "Lawrence of Arabia" but lost to Ed Begley. He won two Golden Globe awards in the same year for his role. In 1966, he won a third Golden Globe award for the titular role in the film "Doctor Zhivago". In November 2005, Sharif was awarded the inaugural Sergei Eisenstein Medal by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in recognition of his significant contributions to world film and cultural diversity. The medal, which is awarded very infrequently, is named after Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Only 25 have been struck, as determined by the agreement between UNESCO, Russia's Mosfilm and the Vivat Foundation.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Siouxsie and the Banshees were a British rock band formed in London in 1976 by vocalist Siouxsie Sioux and bass guitarist Steven Severin. They have been widely influential, both over their contemporaries and with later acts. "Q" magazine included John McKay's guitar playing on "Hong Kong Garden" in their list of "100 Greatest Guitar Tracks Ever", while "Mojo" rated guitarist John McGeoch in their list of "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" for his work on "Spellbound". "The Times" called the group “one of the most audacious and uncompromising musical adventurers of the post-punk era".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Initially associated with the punk scene, the band rapidly evolved to create "a form of post-punk discord full of daring rhythmic and sonic experimentation". Their debut album "The Scream" was released in 1978 to widespread critical acclaim. Following membership changes, including the addition of guitarist McGeogh and drummer Budgie, they radically changed their musical direction and became one of the most successful alternative pop groups of the 1980s. Their third album "Kaleidoscope" (1980) peaked at number 5 in the UK Albums Chart. With "Juju" (1981) which also reached the top 10, they became an influence on the emerging gothic scene. In 1988, the band made a breakthrough in North America with the multifaceted album "Peepshow", which received critical praise. With substantial support from alternative rock radio stations, they achieved a mainstream hit in the US in 1991 with the single "Kiss Them for Me".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: During their career, Siouxsie and the Banshees released 11 studio albums and 30 singles. The band experienced several line-up changes, with Siouxsie and Severin being the only constant members. They disbanded in 1996, with Siouxsie and Budgie continuing to record music as the Creatures, a second band they had formed in the early 1980s. In 2004, Siouxsie began a solo career.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975, at a time when glam rock had faded and there was nothing new coming through with which they could identify. From February 1976, Siouxsie, Severin and some friends began to follow an unsigned band, the Sex Pistols. Journalist Caroline Coon dubbed them the "Bromley Contingent", as most of them came from the Bromley area in south east London, a label Severin came to despise. "There was no such thing, it was just a bunch of people drawn together by the way they felt and they looked". They were all inspired by the Sex Pistols and their uncompromising attitude. When they learned that one of the bands scheduled to play the 100 Club Punk Festival, organised by Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren, was pulling out from the bill at the last minute, Siouxsie suggested that she and Severin play, even though they had no band name or additional members. Two days later, the pair appeared at the festival held in London on 20 September 1976. With two borrowed musicians at their side, Marco Pirroni on guitar and John Simon Ritchie (already commonly known as Sid Vicious) on drums, their set consisted of a 20-minute improvisation based on "The Lord's Prayer".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The band intended to split up after the gig, but they were asked to play again. Over the next few months, Siouxsie and Severin recruited drummer Kenny Morris and guitarist Peter Fenton. After playing several gigs in early 1977, they realised that Fenton did not fit in because he was "a real rock guitarist". John McKay took his place in July. Their first live appearance on television took place in November on Manchester's Granada, on Tony Wilson's TV show "So It Goes". That month they also recorded their first John Peel session for BBC radio in which they premiered a new song "Metal Postcard", introducing a "motorik austerity" in the drums patterns, with "the space in the sound" and "the serrated guitars". The band described their music as "cold, machine-like and passionate at the same time". When they appeared on the cover of "Sounds" magazine, Vivien Goldman wrote: "they sound like a 21st century industrial plant".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The band sold out venues in London in early 1978, but still had problems getting the right recording contract that could give them "complete artistic control". Polydor offered this guarantee and signed them in June. Their first single, "Hong Kong Garden", featuring a xylophone motif, reached the top 10 in the UK shortly after. A "NME" review hailed it as "a bright, vivid narrative, something like snapshots from the window of a speeding Japanese train, power charged by the most original, intoxicating guitar playing I heard in a long, long time".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The band released their debut album, "The Scream", in November 1978. Nick Kent of "NME" said of the record: "The band sounds like some unique hybrid of the Velvet Underground mated with much of the ingenuity of "Tago Mago"-era Can, if any parallel can be drawn". At the end of the article, he added this remark: "Certainly, the traditional three-piece sound has never been used in a more unorthodox fashion with such stunning results".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The Banshees' second album, "Join Hands", was released in 1979. In "Melody Maker", Jon Savage described "Poppy Day" as "a short, powerful evocation of the Great War graveyards", and "Record Mirror" described the whole record as a dangerous work that "should be heard". The Banshees embarked on a major tour to promote the album. A few dates into the tour in September, Morris and McKay left an in-store signing after an argument and quit the band. In need of replacements to fulfil tour dates, the Banshees' manager called drummer Budgie, formerly with the Slits, and asked him to audition. Budgie was hired, but Siouxsie and Severin had no success auditioning guitarists. Robert Smith of the Cure offered his services in case they could not find a guitarist (his group were already the support band on the tour), so the band held him to it after seeing too many "rock virtuosos". The tour resumed in September and after the last concert, Smith returned to the Cure.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Budgie became a permanent member, and the band entered the studios to record the single "Happy House" with guitarist John McGeoch, then still a member of Magazine. Their third album, "Kaleidoscope", released in 1980, saw the Banshees exploring new musical territories with the use of other instruments like synthesizers, sitars and drum machines. The group initially had a concept of making each song sound completely different, without regard to whether or not the material could be performed in concert. "Melody Maker" described the result as "a kaleidoscope of sound and imagery, new forms, and content, flashing before our eyes". "Kaleidoscope" was a commercial success, peaking at number 5 in the UK albums chart. This line-up, featuring McGeoch on guitar, toured the United States for the first time in support of the album, playing their first shows in New York City in November 1980.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: For "Juju" (1981), the band took a different approach and practised the songs in concert first before recording them. "Juju", according to Severin, became an unintentional concept album that "drew on darker elements". "Sounds" hailed it as "intriguing, intense, brooding and powerfully atmospheric". The album later peaked at number 7 in the UK albums chart and became one of their biggest sellers. McGeoch's guitar contributions on "Juju" were later praised by Johnny Marr of the Smiths.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: During the 1981 accompanying tour, Siouxsie and Budgie became a couple. At the same time, they also began a drum-and-voice duo called the Creatures, releasing their first EP, "Wild Things".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The Banshees followed in 1982 with the psychedelic "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse". The record, featuring strings on several numbers, was an intentional contrast to their previous work, with Severin later describing it as a "sexy album". The British press greeted it enthusiastically. Richard Cook finished his "NME" review with this sentence: "I promise...this music will take your breath away". At that time, McGeoch was struggling with alcohol problems, and was hospitalised on his return to a promotional trip from Madrid. The band fired him shortly thereafter. Severin asked Robert Smith to take over guitarist duties again; Smith accepted and rejoined the group in November 1982.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: During 1983, the band members worked on several side projects; Siouxsie and Budgie composed the first Creatures album, "Feast", while Severin and Smith recorded as the Glove. Smith then insisted on documenting his time with the Banshees, so the group released a cover version of the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" in September 1983. It became their biggest UK hit, reaching number 3 on the Singles Chart. They also released a live album, "Nocturne", and completed their sixth studio album, "Hyæna". Shortly before its release in May 1984, Smith left the group, citing health issues due to an overloaded schedule, being in two bands at once.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Ex-Clock DVA guitarist John Valentine Carruthers replaced him. The Banshees then reworked four numbers from their repertoire, augmented by a string section, for "The Thorn" EP. "NME" praised the project: "The power of a classical orchestra is the perfect foil for the band's grindingly insistent sounds". The new Banshees line-up spent much of 1985 working on a new record, "Tinderbox". The group finished the song "Cities in Dust" before the album, so they rushed its release as a single prior to their longest tour of the UK. "Tinderbox" was released in April 1986. "Sounds" magazine noted: ""Tinderbox" is a refreshing slant on the Banshees' disturbing perspective and restores their vivid shades to pop's pale palette". Due to the length of time spent working on "Tinderbox", the group desired spontaneity and decided to record an album of cover songs, "Through the Looking Glass", in 1987. "Mojo" magazine later praised their version of "Strange Fruit". After the album's release, the band realised Carruthers was no longer fitting in and decided to work on new material as a trio.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Following a lengthy break, the band recruited multi-instrumentalist Martin McCarrick and guitarist Jon Klein. The quintet recorded "Peepshow" in 1988, with non-traditional rock instrumentation including cello and accordion. "Q" magazine praised the album in its 5-star review: ""Peepshow" takes place in some distorted fairground of the mind where weird and wonderful shapes loom". The first single, "Peek-a-Boo", was seen by critics as a "brave move" with horns and dance elements. "Sounds" wrote: "The snare gets slapped, Siouxsie's voice meanders all around your head and it all comes magically together". "Peek-a-Boo" was their first real breakthrough in the United States. After the tour, the band decided to take a break, with Siouxsie and Budgie recording as the Creatures and releasing their most critically acclaimed album to date, "Boomerang", and Severin and McCarrick working on material together.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 1991, Siouxsie and the Banshees returned with the single "Kiss Them for Me", mixing strings over a dance rhythm laced with exotica. The group collaborated with the then unknown Indian tabla player Talvin Singh, who also sang during the bridge. The single received glowing reviews and later peaked in the "Billboard" Hot 100 at number 23, allowing them to reach a new audience. The album "Superstition" followed shortly afterwards, and the group toured the US as second headliners of the inaugural Lollapalooza tour. The following year, the Banshees were asked to compose "Face to Face" as a single for the film "Batman Returns", at director Tim Burton's request.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 1993, the Banshees recorded new songs based on string arrangements, and then played them in festivals abroad. On their return home, they hired former Velvet Underground member John Cale to produce the rest of the record. Released in 1995, "The Rapture" was described by "Melody Maker" as "a fascinating, transcontinental journey through danger and exotica". A few weeks after its release, Polydor dropped the band from its roster and Klein was replaced on the band's last tour in 1995 by ex-Psychedelic Furs guitarist Knox Chandler. In April 1996, the Banshees disbanded after 20 years of working together. Siouxsie and Budgie announced that they would carry on recording as the Creatures. In 1999, they released the album "Anima Animus".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 2002, Universal Music kicked off the band's remastered back catalogue by releasing "The Best of Siouxsie and the Banshees". In April, Siouxsie, Severin, Budgie and Chandler reunited briefly for the Seven Year Itch tour, which spawned the "Seven Year Itch" live album and DVD in 2003. The day after their last concert in Tokyo, Japan, Siouxsie and Budgie stayed in town on their own and entered a recording studio as the Creatures. Their fourth and final studio album, "Hái!", came out a few months later.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 2004, "Downside Up", a box set that collected all of the Banshees' B-sides and "The Thorn" EP, was released. "The Times" wrote in its review: "here is a group that never filled B-sides with inferior, throwaway tracks. Rather they saw them as an outlet for some of their most radical and challenging work".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 2006, the band's first four records were remastered and compiled with previously unreleased bonus tracks. Several recordings made for the John Peel radio show from 1978 to 1986 were also compiled on the CD "". AllMusic described the first session as "a fiery statement of intent" and qualified the other performances as "excellent". The second batch of remasters, concerning the 1982–1986 era, was issued in April 2009. It included four other reissues (including "A Kiss in the Dreamhouse" from 1982). The "At the BBC" box set, containing a DVD with all of the band's UK live television performances and three CDs with in-concert recordings, was also released in June of the same year.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In April 2014, their debut single "Hong Kong Garden" was reissued on double 7-inch vinyl. It was announced that this would be part of a three-year plan with Universal. In late October, their last four studio albums (1987's "Through the Looking Glass", 1988's "Peepshow", 1991's "Superstition" and 1995's "The Rapture") were reissued on CD in remastered versions with bonus tracks. Siouxsie and Severin curated a compilation CD called "It's a Wonderfull Life" for the monthly magazine "Mojo", issued in September with Siouxsie on the front cover. On this CD, the pair honoured several composers of film and classical music that had inspired them.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 2015, after releasing another compilation called "Spellbound: The Collection", which included singles, album tracks and B-sides, the band reissued 1979's "Join Hands" on vinyl for Record Store Day, with different cover artwork.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: A vinyl reissue series on Polydor of all of the band's albums, remastered from the original ¼" tapes in 2018 by Miles Showell and cut at half speed at Abbey Road Studios, began in August 2018. The eleven studio albums were reissued on black vinyl. "The Rapture" was pressed on double LP for the first time. A clear vinyl edition of the compilation "Once Upon a Time/The Singles" was also reissued with an extra poster included. In 2021, a burgundy vinyl edition of "Tinderbox" was released.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: On October 21, 2022, a 10 track compilation titled "All Souls" was released to celebrate the autumn season. The album's track list was curated by Siouxsie and features "Spellbound" (licensed for season four of series "Stranger Things"), "Fireworks", "Peek-a-Boo", plus album tracks and rarities. It was released on black vinyl, and also on orange vinyl - in limited edition.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Siouxsie and the Banshees have been described as developing "a form of post-punk discord full of daring rhythmic and sonic experimentation". "The Times" wrote that "The Banshees stand proudly [... as] one of the most audacious and uncompromising musical adventurers of the post-punk era". With some of their darkest material, the band also helped spawn the gothic scene. The band is also considered a new wave act.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: They were also one of the first alternative bands; music historian Peter Buckley pointed out that they were at "the very front of the alternative-rock scene". In 1988, "Peek-a-Boo" was the very first track to top the US Modern Rock chart after "Billboard" launched this chart in the first week of September to list the most played songs on alternative and college radio stations. Simon Goddard wrote that the "Banshees - Mk II would become one of the biggest alternative pop groups of the 1980s". "Spin" described them as "alternative rockers" in 1991 when referring to their presence in the top 40 chart. Noting the band's participation in the first Lollapalooza festival, journalist Jim Gerr saw them as one of the "elements of the alternative rock community". "Mojo" retrospectively presented them as one of "alternative rock's iconic groups".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Siouxsie and the Banshees had an impact over many later genres including post-punk, new wave, synth pop, gothic rock, alternative music, shoegaze and trip-hop, influencing a wide range of musicians including Joy Division, the Cure, the Smiths, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley, Tricky and LCD Soundsystem.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: Joy Division's Peter Hook, who saw the group in concert in Manchester in 1977, said: "Siouxsie and the Banshees were one of our big influences [...] The Banshees first LP was one of my favourite ever records, the way the guitarist and the drummer played was a really unusual way of playing and this album showcases a landmark performance". Joy Division drummer Stephen Morris was influenced by the Banshees Mk1 from their 1977's John Peel session because their "first drummer Kenny Morris played mostly toms" and "the sound of cymbals was forbidden". He added, "The Banshees had that [...] foreboding sound, sketching out the future from the dark of the past". Joy Division producer Martin Hannett saw a difference between the Banshees' first main line-up and the other bands of 1977: "Any harmonies you got were stark, to say the least, except for the odd exception, like Siouxsie. They were interesting". The Cure's leader, Robert Smith, declared in 2003: "Siouxsie and the Banshees and Wire were the two bands I really admired. They meant something." He also pinpointed what the 1979 "Join Hands" tour brought him musically. "On stage that first night with the Banshees, I was blown away by how powerful I felt playing that kind of music. It was so different to what we were doing with the Cure. Before that, I'd wanted us to be like the Buzzcocks or Elvis Costello, the punk Beatles. Being a Banshee really changed my attitude to what I was doing".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The two songwriters of the Smiths cited the band; singer Morrissey said that "Siouxsie and the Banshees were excellent", and that "they were one of the great groups of the late 1970s, early 1980s". He also said in 1994, "If you study modern groups, those who gain press coverage and chart action, none of them are as good as Siouxsie and the Banshees at full pelt. That's not dusty nostalgia, that's fact". When asked "who do you regret not going to see live", guitarist Johnny Marr replied "Siouxsie and the Banshees mk 1. But mk 2 were even better". Marr mentioned his liking for John McGeoch and his contribution to the single "Spellbound". Marr qualified it as "clever" with a "really good picky thing going on which is very un-rock'n'roll". Smiths' historian Goddard wrote that Marr "praise[d] the McGeoch-era Banshees as a significant inspiration". U2 cited Siouxsie and the Banshees as a major influence and selected "Christine" for a "Mojo" compilation. The Edge was the presenter of an award given to Siouxsie at the "Mojo" ceremony in 2005. In December 1981, Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode named the Banshees as one of his three favourite bands along with Sparks and Roxy Music. Gahan later hailed the single "Candyman" at its release, saying, "She always sounds exciting. She sings with a lot of sex - that's what I like. This is a great Banshees record[...], I like their sound. I used to see them quite a lot when I was younger." Commenting on the original Banshees line-up and how they were different from other groups, Gahan said: "Siouxsie And The Banshees, whom I adored, sang much more abstract, artistic about frustration. Colder and darker". Jim Reid of the Jesus and Mary Chain selected "Jigsaw Feeling" from "The Scream" as being among his favourite songs. Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth cited "Hong Kong Garden" in his top 25 all-time favourite songs, saying "it was a completely new world". Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine also mentioned them as being among his early influences. Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction once noted a parallel between his band and the Banshees: "There are so many similar threads: melody, use of sound, attitude, sex-appeal. I always saw Jane's Addiction as the masculine Siouxsie and the Banshees". Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie liked the group's ability to produce pop songs while transmitting something subversive. He said, "They were outsiders bringing outsider subjects to the mainstream. We’re not trying to rip off the Banshees, but that's kind of where we’re coming from". He stated that among "the last great rock bands were Siouxsie and the Banshees [...] the best post-punk bands for me. The ideas in the music and the lyrics for those [...] bands completely influenced Primal Scream".


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The Banshees have been hailed by other acts. Thom Yorke said that seeing Siouxsie on stage in concert in 1985 inspired him to become a performer. Radiohead cited McGeoch-era Siouxsie records when mentioning the recording of the song "There There", and rehearsed Banshees' material prior to their 2008 tour. Jeff Buckley, who took inspiration from several female vocalists, covered "Killing Time" (from the "Boomerang" album) on various occasions. Buckley also owned all the Banshees' albums in his record collection. When asked what were his influences, Buckley replied: "I grew up for the 1960s, early 1970s, 1980s, so I observed Joni Mitchell, I observed the Smiths and Siouxsie and the Banshees. That turns me on completely". Suede singer Brett Anderson named "Juju" as one of his favourite records. Red Hot Chili Peppers performed "Christine" in concert, and their guitarist John Frusciante cited the Banshees in interviews. Garbage singer Shirley Manson stated, "I learned how to sing listening to "The Scream" and "Kaleidoscope"". Siouxsie has also been praised by other female singers including PJ Harvey and Courtney Love. PJ Harvey has stated, "It's hard to beat Siouxsie Sioux, in terms of live performance. She is so exciting to watch, so full of energy and human raw quality", and selected Siouxsie's album "Anima Animus" in her top 10 albums of 1999. The band had a strong effect on two important trip hop acts. Tricky covered "Tattoo" to open his second album, "Nearly God"; the original 1983 proto-trip-hop version of that song aided Tricky in the creation of his style. Massive Attack heavily sampled "Metal Postcard" on the song "Superpredators (Metal Postcard)", recorded prior to their "Mezzanine" album. Air's Jean-Benoît Dunckel cited the group as one of his three main influences. Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins cited the Banshees as an important influence on his music. Faith No More covered "Switch" in concert and cited "The Scream" as one of their influences.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: The Banshees continue to influence younger musicians. Singer James Murphy was marked by certain Banshees albums during his childhood. His band LCD Soundsystem covered "Slowdive" as a B-side to the single "Disco Infiltrator". The Beta Band sampled "Painted Bird" on their track "Liquid Bird" from the "Heroes to Zeros" album. TV on the Radio said that they have always tried to make a song that begins like "Kiss Them for Me" where all of a sudden, there's an "element of surprise" with "a giant drum coming in". Santigold based one of her songs around the music of "Red Light". "'My Superman' is an interpolation of 'Red Light'". Indie folk group DeVotchKa covered the ballad "The Last Beat of My Heart" at the suggestion of Arcade Fire singer Win Butler; it was released on the "Curse Your Little Heart" EP. Gossip named the Banshees as one of their major influences during the promotion of their single "Heavy Cross". British indie band Bloc Party took inspiration from "Peek-a-Boo" and their singer Kele Okereke stated about that Banshees' single: "it sounded like nothing else on this planet. This is [...] a pop song that they put out in the middle of their career [...] to me it sounded like the most current but most futuristic bit of guitar-pop music I've heard". A Perfect Circle's Billy Howerdel said that the Banshees was "top three favorite bands for me". The Weeknd sampled different parts of "Happy House" for his song "House of Balloons", and also used the chorus of the initial version.


title: Siouxsie and the Banshees

text: In 2022, guitarists John Frusciante, Johnny Marr, and Ed O'Brien gave interviews for a new book about John McGeoch, particularly his work with the Banshees. "The Light Pours Out Of Me: The Authorised Biography Of John McGeoch" was released in April on Omnibus Press. It also included new interviews with Siouxsie and Severin.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.


title: Rembrandt

text: Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch art (especially Dutch painting), whilst antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was prolific and innovative. This era gave rise to important new genres. Like many artists of the Dutch Golden Age, such as Jan Vermeer, Rembrandt was an avid art collector and dealer.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt never went abroad, but was considerably influenced by the work of the Italian masters and Netherlandish artists who had studied in Italy, like Pieter Lastman, the Utrecht Caravaggists, Flemish Baroque, and Peter Paul Rubens. After he achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt's later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt's portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible are regarded as his greatest creative triumphs. His self-portraits form an intimate autobiography. Rembrandt's foremost contribution in the history of printmaking was his transformation of the etching process from a relatively new reproductive technique into an art form. His reputation as the greatest etcher in the history of the medium was established in his lifetime. Few of his paintings left the Dutch Republic while he lived, but his prints were circulated throughout Europe, and his wider reputation was initially based on them alone.


title: Rembrandt

text: In his works, he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography. A depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam's Jewish population. Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization". The French sculptor Auguste Rodin said, "Compare me with Rembrandt! What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!"


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July, 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuijtbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker's daughter. Religion is a central theme in Rembrandt's works and the religiously fraught period in which he lived makes his faith a matter of interest. His mother was Catholic, and his father belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. While his work reveals deep Christian faith, there is no evidence that Rembrandt formally belonged to any church. Some scholars, such as Hendrik Willem van Loon, suggest he may have been Mennonite. Five of his children were christened in Dutch Reformed churches in Amsterdam: four in the Oude Kerk (Old Church) and one, Titus, in the Zuiderkerk (Southern Church).


title: Rembrandt

text: As a boy, he attended Latin school. At the age of 13, he was enrolled at the University of Leiden, although according to a contemporary he had a greater inclination towards painting; he was soon apprenticed to a Leiden history painter, Jacob van Swanenburg, with whom he spent three years. After a brief but important apprenticeship of six months with the painter Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam, Rembrandt stayed a few months with Jacob Pynas and then started his own workshop, though Simon van Leeuwen claimed that Joris van Schooten taught Rembrandt in Leiden. Unlike many of his contemporaries who traveled to Italy as part of their artistic training, Rembrandt never left the Dutch Republic during his lifetime.


title: Rembrandt

text: He opened a studio in Leiden in 1624 or 1625, which he shared with friend and colleague Jan Lievens. In 1627, Rembrandt began to accept students, which included Gerrit Dou in 1628.


title: Rembrandt

text: In 1629, Rembrandt was discovered by the statesman Constantijn Huygens (father of the Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens), who procured for Rembrandt important commissions from the court of The Hague. As a result of this connection, Prince Frederik Hendrik continued to purchase paintings from Rembrandt until 1646.


title: Rembrandt

text: At the end of 1631, Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam, a city rapidly expanding as the new business capital of the Netherlands. He began to practice as a professional portraitist for the first time, with great success. He initially stayed with an art dealer, Hendrick van Uylenburgh, and in 1634, married Hendrick's cousin, Saskia van Uylenburgh. Saskia came from a good family: her father had been a lawyer and the "burgemeester" (mayor) of Leeuwarden. When Saskia, as the youngest daughter, became an orphan, she lived with an older sister in Het Bildt. Rembrandt and Saskia were married in the local church of St. Annaparochie without the presence of Rembrandt's relatives. In the same year, Rembrandt became a burgess of Amsterdam and a member of the local guild of painters. He also acquired a number of students, among them Ferdinand Bol and Govert Flinck.


title: Rembrandt

text: In 1635, Rembrandt and Saskia moved into their own house, renting in fashionable Nieuwe Doelenstraat with a view on the Amstel river. In 1639 they moved to a prominent newly built house (now the Rembrandt House Museum) in the upscale 'Breestraat' (eng.: 'Broadway'), today known as Jodenbreestraat in what was becoming the Jewish quarter; then a young up-and-coming neighborhood. The mortgage to finance the 13,000 guilder purchase would be a primary cause for later financial difficulties. Rembrandt should easily have been able to pay the house off with his large income, but it appears his spending always kept pace with his income, and he may have made some unsuccessful investments. It was there that Rembrandt frequently sought his Jewish neighbors to model for his Old Testament scenes. Although they were by now affluent, the couple suffered several personal setbacks; their son Rumbartus died two months after his birth in 1635 and their daughter Cornelia died at just three weeks of age in 1638. In 1640, they had a second daughter, also named Cornelia, who died after living barely over a month. Only their fourth child, Titus, who was born in 1641, survived into adulthood. Saskia died in 1642 soon after Titus's birth, probably from tuberculosis. Rembrandt's drawings of her on her sick and death bed are among his most moving works.


title: Rembrandt

text: During Saskia's illness, Geertje Dircx was hired as Titus' caretaker and nurse and also became Rembrandt's lover. She would later charge Rembrandt with breach of promise (a euphemism for seduction under [breached] promise to marry) and was awarded alimony of 200 guilders a year. Rembrandt worked to have her committed to an asylum or poorhouse (called a "bridewell") at Gouda, after learning she had pawned jewelry he had given her that once belonged to Saskia.


title: Rembrandt

text: In the late 1640s Rembrandt began a relationship with the much younger Hendrickje Stoffels, who had initially been his maid. In 1654 they had a daughter, Cornelia, bringing Hendrickje a summons from the Reformed Church to answer the charge "that she had committed the acts of a whore with Rembrandt the painter". She admitted this and was banned from receiving communion. Rembrandt was not summoned to appear for the Church council because he was not a member of the Reformed Church. The two were considered legally wed under common law, but Rembrandt had not married Hendrickje. Had he remarried he would have lost access to a trust set up for Titus in Saskia's will.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt lived beyond his means, buying art (including bidding up his own work), prints (often used in his paintings) and rarities, which probably caused a court arrangement (cessio bonorum) to avoid his bankruptcy in 1656, by selling most of his paintings and large collection of antiquities, but was allowed to keep his tools. The sale list survives and gives a good insight into Rembrandt's collections, which, apart from Old Master paintings and drawings, included busts of the Roman emperors, suits of Japanese armor among many objects from Asia, and collections of natural history and minerals. But the prices realized in the sales in 1657 and 1658 were disappointing. Rembrandt was forced to sell his house and his printing-press and move to more modest accommodation on the Rozengracht in 1660. The authorities and his creditors were generally accommodating to him, except for the Amsterdam painters' guild, which introduced a new rule that no one in Rembrandt's circumstances could trade as a painter. To get around this, Hendrickje and Titus set up a dummy corporation as art dealers in 1660, with Rembrandt as an employee.


title: Rembrandt

text: In 1661 Rembrandt (or rather the new business) was contracted to complete work for the newly built city hall, but only after Govert Flinck, the artist previously commissioned, died without beginning to paint. The resulting work, "The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis", was rejected and returned to the painter; the surviving fragment is only a fraction of the whole work. It was around this time that Rembrandt took on his last apprentice, Aert de Gelder. In 1662 he was still fulfilling major commissions for portraits and other works. In 1662 one of Rembrandt's creditors went to the High Court (Hof van Holland) to contest that Titus had to be paid first. Isaac van Hertsbeeck lost twice and had to pay the money he had already received to Titus, which he did in 1668. When Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany came to Amsterdam in 1667, he visited Rembrandt at his house.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt outlived both Hendrickje, who died in 1663, and Titus, who died in 1668, leaving a baby daughter. He died within a year of his son, on 4 October 1669 in Amsterdam, and was buried as a supposedly rich man as the heirs paid in burial taxes a substantial amount of money, "f" 15. but in a paupers grave in the Westerkerk. It was in a numbered 'kerkgraf' (grave owned by the church) somewhere under a tombstone in the church. After twenty years, his remains were taken away and destroyed, as was customary.


title: Rembrandt

text: In a letter to Huygens, Rembrandt offered the only surviving explanation of what he sought to achieve through his art: "the greatest and most natural movement", translated from "de meeste en de natuurlijkste beweegelijkheid". The word "beweegelijkheid" is also argued to mean "emotion" or "motive". Whether this refers to objectives, material or otherwise, is open to interpretation; either way, critics have drawn particular attention to the way Rembrandt seamlessly melded the earthly and spiritual.


title: Rembrandt

text: Earlier-20th-century connoisseurs claimed Rembrandt had produced well over 600 paintings, nearly 400 etchings and 2,000 drawings. More recent scholarship, from the 1960s to the present day (led by the Rembrandt Research Project), often controversially, has winnowed his oeuvre to nearer 300 paintings. His prints, traditionally all called etchings, although many are produced in whole or part by engraving and sometimes drypoint, have a much more stable total of slightly under 300. It is likely Rembrandt made many more drawings in his lifetime than 2,000, but those extant are more rare than presumed. Two experts claim that the number of drawings whose autograph status can be regarded as effectively "certain" is no higher than about 75, although this is disputed. The list was to be unveiled at a scholarly meeting in February 2010.


title: Rembrandt

text: At one time about ninety paintings were counted as Rembrandt self-portraits, but it is now known that he had his students copy his own self-portraits as part of their training. Modern scholarship has reduced the autograph count to over forty paintings, as well as a few drawings and thirty-one etchings, which include many of the most remarkable images of the group. Some show him posing in quasi-historical fancy dress, or pulling faces at himself. His oil paintings trace the progress from an uncertain young man, through the dapper and very successful portrait-painter of the 1630s, to the troubled but massively powerful portraits of his old age. Together they give a remarkably clear picture of the man, his appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face.


title: Rembrandt

text: In his portraits and self-portraits, he angles the sitter's face in such a way that the ridge of the nose nearly always forms the line of demarcation between brightly illuminated and shadowy areas. A Rembrandt face is a face partially eclipsed; and the nose, bright and obvious, thrusting into the riddle of halftones, serves to focus the viewer's attention upon, and to dramatize, the division between a flood of light—an overwhelming clarity—and a brooding duskiness.


title: Rembrandt

text: In a number of biblical works, including "The Raising of the Cross", "Joseph Telling His Dreams" and "The Stoning of Saint Stephen", Rembrandt painted himself as a character in the crowd. Durham suggests that this was because the Bible was for Rembrandt "a kind of diary, an account of moments in his own life".


title: Rembrandt

text: Among the more prominent characteristics of Rembrandt's work are his use of chiaroscuro, the theatrical employment of light and shadow derived from Caravaggio, or, more likely, from the Dutch Caravaggisti, but adapted for very personal means. Also notable are his dramatic and lively presentation of subjects, devoid of the rigid formality that his contemporaries often displayed, and a deeply felt compassion for mankind, irrespective of wealth and age. His immediate family—his wife Saskia, his son Titus and his common-law wife Hendrickje—often figured prominently in his paintings, many of which had mythical, biblical or historical themes.


title: Rembrandt

text: Throughout his career Rembrandt took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he was especially praised by his contemporaries, who extolled him as a masterly interpreter of biblical stories for his skill in representing emotions and attention to detail. Stylistically, his paintings progressed from the early "smooth" manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to the late "rough" treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.


title: Rembrandt

text: A parallel development may be seen in Rembrandt's skill as a printmaker. In the etchings of his maturity, particularly from the late 1640s onward, the freedom and breadth of his drawings and paintings found expression in the print medium as well. The works encompass a wide range of subject matter and technique, sometimes leaving large areas of white paper to suggest space, at other times employing complex webs of line to produce rich dark tones.


title: Rembrandt

text: It was during Rembrandt's Leiden period (1625–1631) that Lastman's influence was most prominent. It is also likely that at this time Lievens had a strong impact on his work as well. Paintings were rather small, but rich in details (for example, in costumes and jewelry). Religious and allegorical themes were favored, as were tronies. In 1626 Rembrandt produced his first etchings, the wide dissemination of which would largely account for his international fame. In 1629 he completed "Judas Repentant, Returning the Pieces of Silver" and "The Artist in His Studio", works that evidence his interest in the handling of light and variety of paint application, and constitute the first major progress in his development as a painter.


title: Rembrandt

text: During his early years in Amsterdam (1632–1636), Rembrandt began to paint dramatic biblical and mythological scenes in high contrast and of large format ("The Blinding of Samson", 1636, "Belshazzar's Feast", c. 1635 "Danaë", 1636 but reworked later), seeking to emulate the baroque style of Rubens. With the occasional help of assistants in Uylenburgh's workshop, he painted numerous portrait commissions both small ("Jacob de Gheyn III") and large ("Portrait of the Shipbuilder Jan Rijcksen and his Wife", 1633, "Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", 1632).


title: Rembrandt

text: By the late 1630s Rembrandt had produced a few paintings and many etchings of landscapes. Often these landscapes highlighted natural drama, featuring uprooted trees and ominous skies ("Cottages before a Stormy Sky", c. 1641; "The Three Trees", 1643). From 1640 his work became less exuberant and more sober in tone, possibly reflecting personal tragedy. Biblical scenes were now derived more often from the New Testament than the Old Testament, as had been the case before. In 1642 he painted "The Night Watch", the most substantial of the important group portrait commissions which he received in this period, and through which he sought to find solutions to compositional and narrative problems that had been attempted in previous works.


title: Rembrandt

text: In the decade following the "Night Watch", Rembrandt's paintings varied greatly in size, subject, and style. The previous tendency to create dramatic effects primarily by strong contrasts of light and shadow gave way to the use of frontal lighting and larger and more saturated areas of color. Simultaneously, figures came to be placed parallel to the picture plane. These changes can be seen as a move toward a classical mode of composition and, considering the more expressive use of brushwork as well, may indicate a familiarity with Venetian art ("Susanna and the Elders", 1637–47).


title: Rembrandt

text: At the same time, there was a marked decrease in painted works in favor of etchings and drawings of landscapes. In these graphic works natural drama eventually made way for quiet Dutch rural scenes.


title: Rembrandt

text: In the 1650s, Rembrandt's style changed again. Colors became richer and brush strokes more pronounced. With these changes, Rembrandt distanced himself from earlier work and current fashion, which increasingly inclined toward fine, detailed works. His use of light becomes more jagged and harsh, and shine becomes almost nonexistent. His singular approach to paint application may have been suggested in part by familiarity with the work of Titian, and could be seen in the context of the then current discussion of 'finish' and surface quality of paintings. Contemporary accounts sometimes remark disapprovingly of the coarseness of Rembrandt's brushwork, and the artist himself was said to have dissuaded visitors from looking too closely at his paintings. The tactile manipulation of paint may hearken to medieval procedures, when mimetic effects of rendering informed a painting's surface. The result is a richly varied handling of paint, deeply layered and often apparently haphazard, which suggests form and space in both an illusory and highly individual manner.


title: Rembrandt

text: In later years biblical themes were still depicted often, but emphasis shifted from dramatic group scenes to intimate portrait-like figures ("James the Apostle", 1661). In his last years, Rembrandt painted his most deeply reflective self-portraits (from 1652 to 1669 he painted fifteen), and several moving images of both men and women ("The Jewish Bride", c. 1666)—in love, in life, and before God.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt produced etchings for most of his career, from 1626 to 1660, when he was forced to sell his printing-press and practically abandoned etching. Only the troubled year of 1649 produced no dated work. He took easily to etching and, though he also learned to use a burin and partly engraved many plates, the freedom of etching technique was fundamental to his work. He was very closely involved in the whole process of printmaking, and must have printed at least early examples of his etchings himself. At first he used a style based on drawing, but soon moved to one based on painting, using a mass of lines and numerous bitings with the acid to achieve different strengths of line. Towards the end of the 1630s, he reacted against this manner and moved to a simpler style, with fewer bitings. He worked on the so-called "Hundred Guilder Print" in stages throughout the 1640s, and it was the "critical work in the middle of his career", from which his final etching style began to emerge.


title: Rembrandt

text: Although the print only survives in two states, the first very rare, evidence of much reworking can be seen underneath the final print and many drawings survive for elements of it.


title: Rembrandt

text: In the mature works of the 1650s, Rembrandt was more ready to improvise on the plate and large prints typically survive in several states, up to eleven, often radically changed. He now used hatching to create his dark areas, which often take up much of the plate. He also experimented with the effects of printing on different kinds of paper, including Japanese paper, which he used frequently, and on vellum. He began to use "surface tone," leaving a thin film of ink on parts of the plate instead of wiping it completely clean to print each impression. He made more use of drypoint, exploiting, especially in landscapes, the rich fuzzy burr that this technique gives to the first few impressions.


title: Rembrandt

text: His prints have similar subjects to his paintings, although the twenty-seven self-portraits are relatively more common, and portraits of other people less so. There are forty-six landscapes, mostly small, which largely set the course for the graphic treatment of landscape until the end of the 19th century. One third of his etchings are of religious subjects, many treated with a homely simplicity, whilst others are his most monumental prints. A few erotic, or just obscene, compositions have no equivalent in his paintings. He owned, until forced to sell it, a magnificent collection of prints by other artists, and many borrowings and influences in his work can be traced to artists as diverse as Mantegna, Raphael, Hercules Seghers, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione.


title: Rembrandt

text: Drawings by Rembrandt and his pupils/followers have been extensively studied by many artists and scholars through the centuries. His original draughtsmanship has been described as an individualistic art style that was very similar to East Asian old masters, most notably Chinese masters: a "combination of formal clarity and calligraphic vitality in the movement of pen or brush that is closer to Chinese painting in technique and feeling than to anything in European art before the twentieth century".


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt was interested in Mughal miniatures, especially around the 1650s. He drew versions of some 23 Mughal paintings, and may have owned an album of them. These miniatures include paintings of Shah Jahan, Akbar, Jahangir and Dara Shikoh. They may also have influenced the costumes and other aspects of his works.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt painted the large painting "The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq" between 1640 and 1642. This picture was called "De Nachtwacht" by the Dutch and "The Night Watch" by Sir Joshua Reynolds because by the 18th century the picture was so dimmed and defaced that it was almost indistinguishable, and it looked quite like a night scene. After it was cleaned, it was discovered to represent broad day—a party of musketeers stepping from a gloomy courtyard into the blinding sunlight.


title: Rembrandt

text: The piece was commissioned for the new hall of the "Kloveniersdoelen", the musketeer branch of the civic militia. Rembrandt departed from convention, which ordered that such genre pieces should be stately and formal, rather a line-up than an action scene. Instead he showed the militia readying themselves to embark on a mission (what kind of mission, an ordinary patrol or some special event, is a matter of debate).


title: Rembrandt

text: Contrary to what is often said, the work was hailed as a success from the beginning. Parts of the canvas were cut off (approximately 20% from the left hand side was removed) to make the painting fit its new position when it was moved to Amsterdam town hall in 1715; the Rijksmuseum has a smaller copy of what is thought to be the full original composition; the four figures in the front are at the centre of the canvas. The painting is now in the Rijksmuseum.


title: Rembrandt

text: In 1968 the Rembrandt Research Project began under the sponsorship of the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Scientific Research; it was initially expected to last a highly optimistic ten years. Art historians teamed up with experts from other fields to reassess the authenticity of works attributed to Rembrandt, using all methods available, including state-of-the-art technical diagnostics, and to compile a complete new catalogue raisonné of his paintings. As a result of their findings, many paintings that were previously attributed to Rembrandt have been removed from their list, although others have been added back. Many of those removed are now thought to be the work of his students.


title: Rembrandt

text: One example of activity is "The Polish Rider", in New York's Frick Collection. Rembrandt's authorship had been questioned by at least one scholar, Alfred von Wurzbach, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but for many decades later most scholars, including the foremost authority writing in English, Julius S. Held, agreed that it was indeed by the master. In the 1980s, however, Dr. Josua Bruyn of the Foundation Rembrandt Research Project cautiously and tentatively attributed the painting to one of Rembrandt's closest and most talented pupils, Willem Drost, about whom little is known. But Bruyn's remained a minority opinion, the suggestion of Drost's authorship is now generally rejected, and the Frick itself never changed its own attribution, the label still reading "Rembrandt" and not "attributed to" or "school of". More recent opinion has shifted even more decisively in favor of the Frick, with Simon Schama (in his 1999 book "Rembrandt's Eyes") and the Rembrandt Project scholar Ernst van de Wetering (Melbourne Symposium, 1997) both arguing for attribution to the master. Those few scholars who still question Rembrandt's authorship feel that the execution is uneven, and favour different attributions for different parts of the work.


title: Rembrandt

text: A similar issue was raised by Simon Schama in his book "Rembrandt's Eyes" concerning the verification of titles associated with the subject matter depicted in Rembrandt's works. For example, the exact subject being portrayed in "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer" (recently retitled by curators at the Metropolitan Museum) has been directly challenged by Schama applying the scholarship of Paul Crenshaw. Schama presents a substantial argument that it was the famous ancient Greek painter Apelles who is depicted in contemplation by Rembrandt and not Aristotle.


title: Rembrandt

text: Another painting, "Pilate Washing His Hands", is also of questionable attribution. Critical opinion of this picture has varied since 1905, when Wilhelm von Bode described it as "a somewhat abnormal work" by Rembrandt. Scholars have since dated the painting to the 1660s and assigned it to an anonymous pupil, possibly Aert de Gelder. The composition bears superficial resemblance to mature works by Rembrandt but lacks the master's command of illumination and modeling.


title: Rembrandt

text: The attribution and re-attribution work is ongoing. In 2005 four oil paintings previously attributed to Rembrandt's students were reclassified as the work of Rembrandt himself: "Study of an Old Man in Profile" and "Study of an Old Man with a Beard" from a US private collection, "Study of a Weeping Woman", owned by the Detroit Institute of Arts, and "Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet", painted in 1640. The "Old Man Sitting in a Chair" is a further example: in 2014, Professor Ernst van de Wetering offered his view to "The Guardian" that the demotion of the 1652 painting "Old Man Sitting in a Chair" "was a vast mistake...it is a most important painting. The painting needs to be seen in terms of Rembrandt's experimentation". This was highlighted much earlier by Nigel Konstam who studied Rembrandt throughout his career.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt's own studio practice is a major factor in the difficulty of attribution, since, like many masters before him, he encouraged his students to copy his paintings, sometimes finishing or retouching them to be sold as originals, and sometimes selling them as authorized copies. Additionally, his style proved easy enough for his most talented students to emulate. Further complicating matters is the uneven quality of some of Rembrandt's own work, and his frequent stylistic evolutions and experiments. As well, there were later imitations of his work, and restorations which so seriously damaged the original works that they are no longer recognizable. It is highly likely that there will never be universal agreement as to what does and what does not constitute a genuine Rembrandt.


title: Rembrandt

text: Technical investigation of Rembrandt's paintings in the possession of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister and in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Kassel) was conducted by Hermann Kühn in 1977. The pigment analyses of some thirty paintings have shown that Rembrandt's palette consisted of the following pigments: lead white, various ochres, Vandyke brown, bone black, charcoal black, lamp black, vermilion, madder lake, azurite, ultramarine, yellow lake and lead-tin-yellow. One painting (Saskia van Uylenburgh as Flora) reportedly contains gamboge. Rembrandt very rarely used pure blue or green colors, the most pronounced exception being "Belshazzar's Feast" in the National Gallery in London. The book by Bomford describes more recent technical investigations and pigment analyses of Rembrandt's paintings predominantly in the National Gallery in London. The entire array of pigments employed by Rembrandt can be found at ColourLex. The best source for technical information on Rembrandt's paintings on the web is the Rembrandt Database containing all works of Rembrandt with detailed investigative reports, infrared and radiography images and other scientific details.


title: Rembrandt

text: "Rembrandt" is a modification of the spelling of the artist's first name that he introduced in 1633. "Harmenszoon" indicates that his father's name is Harmen. "van Rijn" indicates that his family lived near the Rhine.


title: Rembrandt

text: Roughly speaking, his earliest signatures (c. 1625) consisted of an initial "R", or the monogram "RH" (for Rembrant Harmenszoon), and starting in 1629, "RHL" (the "L" stood, presumably, for Leiden). In 1632, he used this monogram early in the year, then added his family name to it, "RHL-van Rijn", but replaced this form in that same year and began using his first name alone with its original spelling, "Rembrant". In 1633 he added a "d", and maintained this form consistently from then on, proving that this minor change had a meaning for him (whatever it might have been). This change is purely visual; it does not change the way his name is pronounced. Curiously enough, despite the large number of paintings and etchings signed with this modified first name, most of the documents that mentioned him during his lifetime retained the original "Rembrant" spelling. (Note: the rough chronology of signature forms above applies to the paintings, and to a lesser degree to the etchings; from 1632, presumably, there is only one etching signed "RHL-v. Rijn," the large-format "Raising of Lazarus," B 73). His practice of signing his work with his first name, later followed by Vincent van Gogh, was probably inspired by Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo who, then as now, were referred to by their first names alone.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt ran a large workshop and had many pupils. The list of Rembrandt pupils from his period in Leiden as well as his time in Amsterdam is quite long, mostly because his influence on painters around him was so great that it is difficult to tell whether someone worked for him in his studio or just copied his style for patrons eager to acquire a Rembrandt. A partial list should include Ferdinand Bol,


title: Rembrandt

text: The most notable collections of Rembrandt's work are at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, including "The Night Watch" and "The Jewish Bride", the Mauritshuis in The Hague, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the National Gallery in London, Gemäldegalerie in Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, The Louvre, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and Schloss Wilhelmshöhe in Kassel. The Royal Castle in Warsaw displays two paintings by Rembrandt.


title: Rembrandt

text: Notable collections of Rembrandt's paintings in the United States are housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Frick Collection in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.


title: Rembrandt

text: The Rembrandt House Museum in central Amsterdam in the house he bought at the height of his success, has furnishings that are mostly not original, but period pieces comparable to those Rembrandt might have had, and paintings reflecting Rembrandt's use of the house for art dealing. His printmaking studio has been set up with a printing press, where replica prints are printed. The museum has a few Rembrandt paintings, many loaned, but an important collection of his prints, a good selection of which are on rotating display. All major print rooms have large collections of Rembrandt prints, although as some exist in only a single impression, no collection is complete. The degree to which these collections are displayed to the public, or can easily be viewed by them in the print room, varies greatly.


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt is one of the most famous and the best expertly researched visual artists in history. His life and art have long attracted the attention of interdisciplinary scholarship such as art history, socio-political history, cultural history, education, humanities, philosophy and aesthetics, psychology, sociology, literary studies, anatomy, medicine, religious studies, theology, Jewish studies, Oriental studies (Asian studies), global studies, and art market research. He has been the subject of a vast amount of literature in genres of both fiction and nonfiction. Research and scholarship related to Rembrandt is an academic field in its own right with many notable connoisseurs and scholars and has been very dynamic since the Dutch Golden Age.


title: Rembrandt

text: According to art historian and Rembrandt scholar Stephanie Dickey: [Rembrandt] earned international renown as a painter, printmaker, teacher, and art collector while never leaving the Dutch Republic. In his home city of Leiden and in Amsterdam, where he worked for nearly forty years, he mentored generations of other painters and produced a body of work that has never ceased to attract admiration, critique, and interpretation. (...) Rembrandt's art is a key component in any study of the Dutch Golden Age, and his membership in the canon of artistic genius is well established, but he is also a figure whose significance transcends specialist interest. Literary critics have pondered "Rembrandt" as a "cultural text"; novelists, playwrights, and filmmakers have romanticized his life, and in popular culture, his name has become synonymous with excellence for products and services, ranging from toothpaste to self-help advice.


title: Rembrandt

text: Francisco Goya, often considered to be among the last of the Old Masters, said, "I have had three masters: Nature, Velázquez, and Rembrandt." ("Yo no he tenido otros maestros que la Naturaleza, Velázquez y Rembrandt.") In the history of the reception and interpretation of Rembrandt's art, it was the significant Rembrandt-inspired 'revivals' or 'rediscoveries' in 18th–19th century France, Germany, and Britain that decisively helped in establishing his lasting fame in subsequent centuries. When a critic referred to Auguste Rodin's busts in the same vein as Rembrandt's portraits, the French sculptor responded: "Compare me with Rembrandt? What sacrilege! With Rembrandt, the colossus of Art! What are you thinking of, my friend! We should prostrate ourselves before Rembrandt and never compare anyone with him!” Vincent van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo (1885), "Rembrandt goes so deep into the mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. It is with justice that they call Rembrandt—magician—that's no easy occupation."


title: Rembrandt

text: Although Rembrandt was not Jewish, he has had a considerable influence on many modern Jewish artists, writers and scholars (art critics and art historians in particular). The German-Jewish painter Max Liebermann said, "Whenever I see a Frans Hals, I feel like painting; whenever I see a Rembrandt, I feel like giving up." Marc Chagall wrote in 1922, "Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don't understand me. I am a stranger to them," and he added, "I'm certain Rembrandt loves me."


title: Rembrandt

text: Rembrandt has also been one of the most controversial (visual) artists in history. Several of Rembrandt's notable critics include Constantijn Huygens, Joachim von Sandrart, (who called Rembrandt "the first heretic in the art of painting"), Samuel van Hoogstraten, Arnold Houbraken, Filippo Baldinucci, Gerard de Lairesse, Roger de Piles, John Ruskin, and Eugène Fromentin.


title: Rembrandt

text: While shooting "The Warrens of Virginia" (1915), Cecil B. DeMille had experimented with lighting instruments borrowed from a Los Angeles opera house. When business partner Sam Goldwyn saw a scene in which only half an actor's face was illuminated, he feared the exhibitors would pay only half the price for the picture. DeMille remonstrated that it was Rembrandt lighting. "Sam's reply was jubilant with relief," recalled DeMille. "For Rembrandt lighting the exhibitors would pay double!"


title: Americans

text: Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America. Although direct citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many dual citizens, expatriates, and permanent residents could also legally claim American nationality. The United States is home to people of many racial and ethnic origins; consequently, American culture and law do not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and an oath of permanent allegiance.


title: Americans

text: The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to the United States or are descended from people who were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands, who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, additionally America expanded into American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.


title: Americans

text: Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can also be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists, settlers, and immigrants. It also includes influences of African-American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America has also had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics.


title: Americans

text: In addition to the United States, Americans and people of American descent can be found internationally. As many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, and make up the American diaspora.


title: Americans

text: The United States of America is a diverse country, racially, and ethnically. Six races are officially recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes: Alaska Native and American Indian, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, White and people of two or more races. "Some other race" is also an option in the census and other surveys.


title: Americans

text: The United States Census Bureau also classifies Americans as "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino", which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse "ethnicity" that comprises the largest minority group in the nation.


title: Americans

text: People of European descent, or White Americans (also referred to as European Americans and Caucasian Americans), constitute the majority of the 331 million people living in the United States, with 191,697,647 people or 57.8% of the population in the 2020 United States Census. They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 45 states. There are five minority-majority states: California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia and the five inhabited U.S. territories have a non-white majority. The state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine.


title: Americans

text: Europe is the largest continent that Americans trace their ancestry to, and many claim descent from various European ethnic groups.


title: Americans

text: The Spaniards were the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the continental United States in 1565.


title: Americans

text: Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida then a part of New Spain, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the continental United States. Virginia Dare, born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the original Thirteen Colonies to English parents. The Spaniards also established a continuous presence in what over three centuries later would become a possession of the United States with the founding of the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1521.


title: Americans

text: In the 2017 American Community Survey, German Americans (13.2%), Irish Americans (9.7%), English Americans (7.1%) and Italian Americans (5.1%) were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 35.1% of the total population. However, the English Americans and British Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as they tend to self-report and identify as simply "Americans" (since the introduction of a new "American" category in the 1990 census) due to the length of time they have inhabited America. This is highly over-represented in the Upland South, a region that was settled historically by the British.


title: Americans

text: Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, and median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation.


title: Americans

text: According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, the first Middle Easterners and North Africans (viz. Jews and Berbers) to arrive in the Americas landed in the late 15th to mid-16th centuries. Many fled ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition; a few were taken to the Americas as slaves.


title: Americans

text: In 2014, The United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of people of Middle Eastern and North African ("MENA") origins. According to the Arab American Institute (AAI), Arab Americans have family origins in each of the 22 member states of the Arab League. Following consultations with MENA organizations, the Census Bureau announced in 2014 that it would establish a new MENA ethnic category for populations from the Middle East, North Africa and the Arab world, separate from the "white" classification that these populations had previously sought in 1909. The expert groups, felt that the earlier "white" designation no longer accurately represents MENA identity, so they successfully lobbied for a distinct categorization. This new category would also include Israeli-Americans. The Census Bureau does not currently ask about whether one is Sikh, because it views them as followers of a religion rather than members of an ethnic group, and it does not combine questions concerning religion with race or ethnicity. As of December 2015, the sampling strata for the new MENA category includes the Census Bureau's working classification of 19 MENA groups, as well as Turkish, Sudanese, Djiboutian, Somali, Mauritanian, Armenian, Cypriot, Afghan, Azerbaijani and Georgian groups. In January 2018, it was announced that the Census Bureau would not include the grouping in the 2020 Census.


title: Americans

text: Hispanic or Latino Americans constitute the largest ethnic minority in the United States. They form the second largest group in the United States, comprising 62,080,044 people or 18.7% of the population according to the 2020 United States Census.


title: Americans

text: Hispanic and Latino Americans are not considered a race in the United States census, instead forming an ethnic category.


title: Americans

text: People of Spanish or Hispanic and Latino descent have lived in what is now United States territory since the founding of San Juan, Puerto Rico (the oldest continuously inhabited settlement on American soil) in 1521 by Juan Ponce de Leon, and the founding of St. Augustine, Florida (the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in the continental United States) in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés. In the State of Texas, Spaniards first settled the region in the late 1600s and formed a unique cultural group known as Tejanos.


title: Americans

text: Black and African Americans are citizens and residents of the United States with origins in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Office of Management and Budget, the grouping includes individuals who self-identify as African American, as well as persons who emigrated from nations in the Caribbean and Sub-Saharan Africa. The grouping is thus based on geography, and may contradict or misrepresent an individual's self-identification since not all immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa are "Black". Among these racial outliers are persons from Cape Verde, Madagascar, various Arab states and Hamito-Semitic populations in East Africa and the Sahel, and the Afrikaners of Southern Africa. African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans or Afro-Americans, and formerly as American Negroes) are citizens or residents of the United States who have origins in any of the black populations of Africa. According to the 2020 United States Census, there were 39,940,338 Black and African Americans in the United States, representing 12.1% of the population. Black and African Americans make up the third largest group in the United States, after White and European Americans, and Hispanic and Latino Americans. The majority of the population (55%) lives in the South; compared to the 2000 Census, there has also been a decrease of African Americans in the Northeast and Midwest.


title: Americans

text: Most African Americans are the direct descendants of captives from West Africa and Central Africa, from ancestral populations in countries like Nigeria, Benin, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal and Angola, who survived the slavery era within the boundaries of the present United States.As an adjective, the term is usually spelled "African-American". Montinaro et al. (2014) observed that around 50% of the overall ancestry of African Americans traces back to the Niger-Congo-speaking Yoruba of southwestern Nigeria and southern Benin (before the European colonization of Africa this people created the Oyo Empire), reflecting the centrality of this West African region in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Zakharaia et al. (2009) found a similar proportion of Yoruba associated ancestry in their African-American samples, with a minority also drawn from Mandenka populations (founders of the Mali Empire), and Bantu populations (who had a varying level of social organization during the colonial era, while some Bantu peoples were still tribal, other Bantu peoples had founded kingdoms such as the Kingdom of Kongo)..


title: Americans

text: The first West African slaves were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619. The English settlers treated these captives as indentured servants and released them after a number of years. This practice was gradually replaced by the system of race-based slavery used in the Caribbean. All the American colonies had slavery, but it was usually the form of personal servants in the North (where 2% of the people were slaves), and field hands in plantations in the South (where 25% were slaves); by the beginning of the American Revolutionary War 1/5th of the total population was enslaved. During the revolution, some would serve in the Continental Army or Continental Navy, while others would serve the British Empire in Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, and other units. By 1804, the northern states (north of the Mason–Dixon line) had abolished slavery. However, slavery would persist in the southern states until the end of the American Civil War and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Following the end of the Reconstruction Era, which saw the first African American representation in Congress, African Americans became disenfranchised and subject to Jim Crow laws, legislation that would persist until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act due to the Civil Rights Movement.


title: Americans

text: According to US Census Bureau data, very few African immigrants self-identify as African American. On average, less than 5% of African residents self-reported as "African American" or "Afro-American" on the 2000 US Census. The overwhelming majority of African immigrants (~95%) identified instead with their own respective ethnicities. Self-designation as "African American" or "Afro-American" was highest among individuals from West Africa (4%-9%), and lowest among individuals from Cape Verde, East Africa and Southern Africa (0%-4%). African immigrants may also experience conflict with African Americans.


title: Americans

text: Another significant population is the Asian American population, comprising 19,618,719 people in 2020, or 5.9% of the U.S. population. California is home to 5.6 million Asian Americans, the greatest number in any state. In Hawaii, Asian Americans make up the highest proportion of the population (57 percent). Asian Americans live across the country, yet are heavily urbanized, with significant populations in the Greater Los Angeles Area, New York metropolitan area, and the San Francisco Bay Area.