Quentin Matsys : Biography

Quentin Matsys[1] (Dutch: Quinten Matsijs; 1466 – 1530) was a painter in the Flemish tradition and a founder of the Antwerp school. He was born at Leuven, where he was trained as an ironsmith. Near the front of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp is a wrought-iron well, known as the "Matsys Well," which according to tradition was made by the painter-to-be.

During the greater part of the 15th century, the centres in which the painters of the Low Countries most congregated were Tournai, Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. Leuven gained prominence toward the close of this period, employing workmen from all of the crafts. Not until the beginning of the 16th century did Antwerp take the lead which it afterward maintained against Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Mechelen and Leuven. Matsys, as a member of Antwerp's Guild of Saint Luke, was one of its first notable artists.

Early life A legend relates how Matsys, while a smith in Leuven, fell in love with the daughter of a painter; by changing his trade to painting, he hoped that she would love him in return. Less poetic but perhaps more likely is another version of the story: Quentin's father, Josse Matsys, was clockmaker and architect to the municipality of Leuven. The question arose as to which of his sons, Quentin or Josse, should follow in this lucrative business. Josse the son elected to succeed the father. Quentin then took up the study of painting.

Style

We are not told expressly by whom Matsys was taught, but his style seems to have derived from the lessons of Dirk Bouts, who brought to Leuven the influence of Memling and van der Weyden.

When Matsys settled at Antwerp at the age of twenty-five, his own style contributed importantly to reviving Flemish art along the lines of van Eyck and van der Weyden. What characterizes Matsys in particular is a strong religious feeling, an inheritance from earlier schools. This feeling was permeated by a realism which often favored the grotesque. The faces of the boors of Steen or Ostade may well have had predecessors in the pictures of Matsys, though he was not inclined to use them in the same homely way. From the example of van der Weyden comes Matsys' firmness of outline, clear modelling and thorough finish of detail; from the van Eycks and Memling by way of Dirck Bouts, the glowing richness of transparent pigments.

The date of his departure from Leuven is 1491, when he became a master in the guild of painters at Antwerp. His most celebrated picture was executed in 1508 for the joiners' company in the cathedral of his adopted city. Next in importance is the Marys of Scripture round the Virgin and Child, ordered for a chapel in the cathedral of Leuven. Both altarpieces are now in public museums, one at Antwerp and the other at Brussels. They display an earnestness in expression, a minuteness of rendering, and subdued effects of light or shade. Matsys, like the early Flemish painters, lavishes care on jewelry, edgings of garments, and ornament in general.

Not much given to atmosphere, his paintings sometimes rely on the literalness of caricature: emphasizing the melancholy refinement of saints, the brutal gestures and grimaces of gaolers and executioners. Strenuous effort is devoted to the expression of individual character. A satirical tendency may be seen in the pictures of merchant bankers (Louvre and Windsor), revealing their greed and avarice. His other impulse, dwelling on the feelings of tenderness, may be noted in two replicas of the Virgin and Child at Berlin and Amsterdam, where the ecstatic kiss of the mother seems rather awkward. An expression of acute despair may be seen in a Lucretia in the museum at Vienna. The remarkable glow of the colour in these works, however, makes the Mannerist exaggerations palatable.

But on the whole, the best pictures of Matsys are the quietest. His Virgin and Christ, Ecce Homo and Mater Dolorosa (London and Antwerp) display a serene and dignified mastery, gaining in delicacy and nuance in the works of his maturity. It is believed that he may have known the work of Leonardo da Vinci in the form of prints made and circulated among northern artists.

Matsys had considerable skill as a portrait painter. His Ægidius (Peter Gilles) which drew from Thomas More a eulogy in Latin verse, is but one of many, to which one may add the portrait of Maximilian of Austria in the gallery of Amsterdam. In this branch of his practice, Matsys was greatly influenced by his contemporaries Lucas van Leyden and Jan Mabuse.

In his rendering of polished detail, he may lack the subtle modelling of Holbein and Dürer. There is reason, however, to think him well acquainted with these German masters. He probably met Holbein more than once on his way to England. Dürer visited his house at Antwerp in 1520. Matsys also became the guardian of Joachim Patinir's children after the death of that painter, who is believed to have worked on some of the landscapes in Matsys' pictures.

Quentin Matsys : Paintings

Xul Solar : Biography

Xul Solar was the adopted name of Oscar Agustín Alejandro Schulz Solari (born December 14, 1887 – April 9, 1963), Argentine painter, sculptor, writer, and inventor of imaginary languages. Biography He was born in San Fernando, Buenos Aires Province, in the bosom of a cosmopolitan family. His father, Emilio Schulz Riga, of Baltic German origin, was born in the Latvian city of Riga, at that time part of Imperial Russia.He was educated in Buenos Aires, first as a musician, then as an architect (although he never completed his architectural studies). After working as a schoolteacher and holding a series of minor jobs in the municipal bureaucracy, on April 5, 1912, he set out on the ship "England Carrier", supposedly to work his passage to Hong Kong, but he disembarked in London and made his way to Turin. He returned to London to meet up with his mother and aunt, with whom he travelled to Paris, Turin (again), Genoa, and his mother's native Zoagli. Over the following few years, despite the onset of World War I, he would move among these cities, as well as Tours, Marseille, and Florence; towards the end of the war he served at the Argentine consulate in Milan. During the years of the war, he struck up what was to be a lifelong friendship with Argentine artist Emilio Pettoruti, then a young man living in Italy and associated with the futurists. Also around that time, he began to pay more attention to painting, first with watercolor (which would always remain his main medium as a painter), although he gradually began working in tempera and — very occasionally — oils. He also adopted the pen-name of Xul Solar. His first major exhibition of his art was in 1920 in Milan, together with sculptor Arturo Martini. In 1916, Schulz Solari first signed his work “Xul Solar,” ostensibly for the purposes to simplify the phonetics of his name, but an examination of the adopted name reveals that the first name is the reverse of “lux,” which references the measurement of luminous intensity. Combined with “solar,” the name reads as “the intensity of the sun,” and demonstrates the artist’s affinity for the universal source of light and energy.[1] During the years that followed he continued his travels, extending his orbit to Munich and Hamburg. In 1924, his work was exhibited in Paris in a show of Latin American artists. He also struck up an acquaintance with British Mage Aleister Crowley and his mistress Leah Hirsig who held high hopes for his discipleship, but later that year he returned to Buenos Aires, where he promptly became associated with the avant garde "Florida group" (a.k.a. "Martín Fierro group"), a circle that also included Jorge Luis Borges, with whom he was to keep an association and close friendship. It was in this group that he also met poet and novelist Leopoldo Marechal who would immortalize him as the astrologist Schultze in his famous novel Adán Buenosayres. He began to exhibit frequently in the galleries of Buenos Aires, notably in a 1926 exhibition of modern painters that included Norah Borges (sister of Jorge Luis Borges) and Emilio Pettoruti. Throughout the rest of his life, he would exhibit regularly in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Uruguay, but he would not have another major European exhibition until his twilight years: in 1962, a year before his death, he had a major exposition at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris. In 1963 he died in his house at Tigre, Buenos Aires, 5 years before his biography by Emilio Pettoruti was published.

Xul Solar : Paintings

Yaacov Agam : Biography

Yaakov Agam (Gipstein) was born on May 11, 1928 in Rishon LeZion, then Mandate Palestine. His father, Yehoshua Gibstein, was a rabbi and a kabbalist. [1] He trained at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, before moving to Zürich and then to Paris, where he still lives. Agam has two sons and a daughter. His son, Ron, is a photographer. Artistic career Agam's first solo exhibition was at the Galerie Graven in 1953, and in 1955 he established himself as one of the leading pioneers of kinetic art at the Le Mouvement exhibition at the Galerie Denise René, alongside such artists as Jesús Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Díez, Pol Bury, Alexander Calder and Jean Tinguely. Agam's work is usually abstract, kinetic art, with movement, viewer participation and frequent use of light and sound. His best known pieces include "Double Metamorphosis III" (1965), "Visual Music Orchestration" (1989) and fountains at the La Défense district in Paris (1975) and in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv (1986). He is also known for a type of print known as an Agamograph, which uses lenticular printing to present radically different images, depending on the angle from which it is viewed. The lenticular technique was executed in large scale in the 30' x 30' (9.14 M x 9.14 M) "Complex Vision" (1969) which adorns the facade of the Callahan Eye Foundation Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. In 1996 Agam was awarded the Jan Amos Comenius Medal by UNESCO for the "Agam Method" for visual education of young children. His works are held in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art[4] and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Yaacov Agam : Paintings

Zdzislaw Beksinski : Biography

Zdzisław Beksiński (24 February, 1929 – 21 February, 2005) was a renowned Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor who is best known as a fantasy artist. Beksiński executed his paintings and drawings either in what he called a 'Baroque' or a 'Gothic' manner. The first style is dominated by representation, with the best-known examples coming from his 'fantastic realism' period when he painted disturbing images of a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment. The second style is more abstract, being dominated by form, and is typified by Beksiński's later paintings. Beksiński was murdered in 2005.

Beksiński was born in the town of Sanok, in southern Poland. After studying architecture in Kraków, he returned to Sanok in 1955. Subsequent to this education, he spent several years as a construction site supervisor, which he hated. At that time, he became interested in artistic photography and photomontage, sculpture and painting. He made his sculptures of plaster, metal and wire. His photography had several themes that would also appear in his future paintings, presenting wrinkled faces, landscapes and objects with a very bumpy texture, which he attempted to emphasize (especially by manipulating lights and shadows). His photography also depicted disturbing images, such as a mutilated baby doll with its face torn off, portraits of people without faces or with their faces wrapped in bandages. Later, he concentrated on painting. His first paintings were abstract art, but throughout the 1960s he made his surrealist inspirations more visible. Technique Beksiński had no formal training as an artist. His paintings were mainly created using oil paint on hardboard panels which he personally prepared, although he also experimented with acrylic paints. He abhorred silence, and always listened to classical music while painting. [edit]

Fantastic realism

A prestigious exhibition in Warsaw in 1964 proved to be his first major success, as all his paintings were sold. Beksiński threw himself into painting with a passion, and worked constantly (always to the strains of classical music). He soon became the leading figure in contemporary Polish art. In the late 1960s, Beksiński entered what he himself called his "fantastic period", which lasted up to the mid-1980s. This is his best-known period, during which he created very disturbing images, showing a surrealistic, post-apocalyptic environment with very detailed scenes of death, decay, landscapes filled with skeletons, deformed figures and deserts. These paintings were quite detailed, painted with his trademark precision. At the time, Beksiński claimed, "I wish to paint in such a manner as if I were photographing dreams".

Despite the grim overtones, Beksiński claimed some of his works were misunderstood; in his opinion, they were rather optimistic or even humorous. For the most part, though, Beksiński was adamant that even he did not know the meaning of his artworks and was uninterested in possible interpretations; in keeping with this, he refused to provide titles for any of his drawings or paintings. Before moving to Warsaw in 1977, he burned a selection of his works in his own backyard, without leaving any documentation on them. He later claimed that some of those works were "too personal", while others were unsatisfactory, and he didn't want people to see them. [edit] Later work

The 1980s marked a transitory period for Beksiński. During this time, his works became more popular in France due to the endeavors of Piotr Dmochowski, and he achieved significant popularity in Western Europe, the United States and Japan. His art in the late 1980s and early 1990s focused on monumental or sculpture-like images rendered in a restricted (and often subdued) color palette, including a series of crosses. Paintings in these style, which often appear to have been sketched densely in colored lines, were much less lavish than those known from his "fantastic period", but just as powerful. In 1994, Beksiński explained "I'm going in the direction of a greater simplification of the background, and at the same time a considerable degree of deformation in the figures, which are being painted without what's known as naturalistic light and shadow. What I'm after is for it to be obvious at first sight that this is a painting I made".

In the latter part of the 1990s, he discovered computers, the Internet, digital photography and photomanipulation, a medium that he focused on until his death.

Zdzislaw Beksinski : Paintings

Washington Allston : Biography

Washington Allston (November 5, 1779 – July 9, 1843) was an American poet and influential painter, born in Waccamaw Parish, South Carolina. Allston pioneered America's Romantic movement of landscape painting. He was well known during his lifetime for his experiments with dramatic subject matter and his bold use of light and atmospheric color.

Biography

Allston was born on a rice plantation on the Waccamaw River near Georgetown, South Carolina. His mother Rachel Moore had married Captain William Allston in 1775, though her husband died in 1781, shortly after the Battle of Cowpens.[1] Moore remarried to Dr. Henry C. Flagg, the son of a wealthy shipping merchant from Newport, Rhode Island.[2]

Named in honor of the leading American general of the Revolution[3], Washington Allston graduated from Harvard College in 1800 and moved to Charleston, South Carolina for a short time before sailing to England in May 1801.[2] He was admitted to the Royal Academy in London in September, when painter Benjamin West was then the president.[4]

From 1803 to 1808 he visited the great museums of Paris and then for several years those of Italy, where he met Washington Irving in Rome,[5] and Coleridge, his lifelong friend. In 1809 Allston married Ann Channing, sister of William Ellery Channing.[2] Samuel F. B. Morse was one of Allston's art pupils and accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811. After traveling throughout western Europe, Allston finally settled in London, where he won fame and prizes for his pictures.

Allston was also a published writer. In London in 1813, he published The Sylphs of the Seasons, with Other Poems, republished in Boston, Massachusetts later that year.[6] His wife died in February 1815, leaving him saddened, lonely, and homesick for America.[7]

In 1818 he returned to the United States and lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for 25 years. He was the uncle of the artists George Whiting Flagg and Jared Bradley Flagg, both of whom studied painting under him.

In 1841 he published Monaldi, a romance illustrating Italian life, and in 1850, a volume of his Lectures on Art, and Poems.[8]
Allston was buried in the Dana family plot in the Old Burying Ground.

Allston died on July 9, 1843, at age 64. Allston is buried in Harvard Square, in "the Old Burying Ground" between the First Parish Church and Christ Church.

Recognition

Allston was sometimes called the "American Titian" because his style resembled the great Venetian Renaissance artists in their display of dramatic color contrasts. His work greatly influenced the development of U.S. landscape painting. Also, the themes of many of his paintings were drawn from literature, especially Biblical stories.[9]

His artistic genius was much admired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ralph Waldo Emerson was strongly influenced by his paintings and poems, but so were both Margaret Fuller and Sophia Peabody, wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne.[9] The influential critic and editor Rufus Wilmot Griswold dedicated his famous anthology The Poets and Poetry of America to Allston in 1842.[10] Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 17 years after Allston's death, wrote that: "One man may sweeten a whole time. I never pass through Cambridge Port without thinking of Allston. His memory is the quince in the drawer and perfumes the atmosphere."[2]

Boston painter William Morris Hunt was an admirer of Allston's work, and in 1866 founded the Allston Club in Boston, and in his arts classes passed on to his students his knowledge of Allston's techniques.[11]

Washington Allston coined the term "objective correlative," which T. S. Eliot described as a situation or a chain of events that acts as a formula and is used in art to evoke emotion.

The west Boston, Massachusetts neighborhood of Allston is named after him.

Washington Allston: Paintings

Tuvia Beeri : Biography

Tuvia Beeri (Hebrew: טוביה בארי‎, born 1929 in Czechoslovakia) is a Czech-Israeli painter.

Beeri immigrated to Israel in 1948. He studied in 1957 at the Oranim Art Institute in Qiryat Tivon, with Marcel Janco and Yaakov Wexler and from 1961 to 1963 with Johnny Friedlaender at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1963 he returned to Israel to teach at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and from 1964 also etching at the Avni Institute in Tel Aviv.

In 2001 he won the Eli Oshorov Prize for contribution to Israeli Art from the Israeli Painters and Sculptors Association (IPSA).

Tuvia Beeri : Paintings

Sofonisba Anguissola : Paintings

Sofonisba Anguissola : Biography

The Anguissola Family

Sofonisba Anguissola was born in Cremona, Lombardy around 1532, the oldest of seven children, six of whom were daughters. Her father, Amilcare Anguissola, was a member of the Genoese minor nobility. Sofonisba's mother, Bianca Ponzone, was also of an affluent family of noble background.

Over four generations, the Anguissola family had a strong connection to ancient Carthaginian history and they named their offspring after the great general Hannibal, thus the first daughter was named after the tragic Carthaginian figure Sophonisba.

Amilcare Anguissola encouraged all of his daughters (Sofonisba, Elena, Lucia, Europa, Minerva and Anna Maria) to cultivate and perfect their talents. Four of the sisters (Elena, Lucia, Europa and Anna Maria) became painters, but Sofonisba was by far the most accomplished and renowned. Elena became a nun (Sofonisba painted a portrait of her) and therefore had to give up painting. Both Anna Maria and Europa gave up art upon marrying, while Lucia Anguissola, the best painter of Sophonisba's sisters, died young. The other sister, Minerva, became a writer and Latin scholar. Asdrubale, Sophonisba's brother, studied music and Latin but not painting.

Her aristocratic father made sure that Sofonisba and her sisters received a well-rounded education that included the fine arts. Anguissola was fourteen years old when her father sent her with her sister Elena to study with Bernardino Campi, a respected portrait and religious painter of the Lombard school, also from Cremona, Sofonisba's home town. When Campi moved to another city, Sofonisba continued her studies with the painter Bernardino Gatti (known as Il Sojaro). Sofonisba's apprenticeship with local painters set a precedent for women to be accepted as students of art.

Dates are uncertain, but Anguissola probably continued her studies under Gatti for about three years(1551-1553).

Sophonisba's most important early work is Bernardino Campi Painting Sofonisba Anguissola (c 1550 Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena). The double portrait depicts her art teacher in the act of painting a portrait of her.

In 1554, at age twenty-two, Sofonisba traveled to Rome, where she spent her time sketching various scenes and people. While in Rome, she met Michelangelo through the help of another painter who knew her work well. Meeting Michelangelo was a great honor for Sofonisba and she had the benefit of being informally trained by the great master.

When he made a request for her to draw a weeping boy, Sofonisba drew 'Child bitten by a crab' and sent it back to Michelangelo, who immediately recognized her talent (this sketch would continue to be discussed and copied for the next fifty years among artists and the aristocracy)[citation needed].

Michelangelo subsequently gave Anguissola sketches from his notebooks to draw in her own style and offered advice on the results. For at least two years Sofonisba continued this informal study, receiving substantial guidance from Michelangelo.

The great early art historian Giorgio Vasari wrote this about Sofonisba: ‘Anguissola has shown greater application and better grace than any other woman of our age in her endeavors at drawing; she has thus succeeded not only in drawing, coloring and painting from nature, and copying excellently from others, but by herself has created rare and very beautiful paintings

Oswald Achenbach : Biography

Oswald Achenbach (2 February 1827 – 1 February 1905) was a German landscape painter. Born in Düsseldorf, he received his art education from his brother, Andreas Achenbach. His landscapes generally dwell on the rich and glowing effects of color which drew him to the Bay of Naples and the neighborhood of Rome. From 1863 to 1872 he was Professor of Landscape Painting connected to the Düsseldorf School. He died in Düsseldorf of an inflammation of the lungs. He is represented at most of the important German galleries of modern art.

Oswald Achenbach : Paintings

Kazimierz Alchimowicz : Biography

Kazimierz Alchimowicz (born December 20, 1840 in Dziembrów, Vilnius Region – December 31, 1916 in Warsaw) was a Lithuanian-born Polish romantic painter.

Born in Dziembrów, Vilnius Region Alchimowicz was banished to Siberia for six years for his participation in the January Uprising. After his return, he enrolled in a drawing class in Warsaw taught by Wojciech Gerson. The class had a great influence on his later artistic works. He later studied art in Munich, Germany and Paris, France. While staying in France, Alchimowicz was a craftsmen decorating porcelain and earthenware crafts. He settled permanently in Warsaw in 1880 to paint professionally. His artistic inspiration mainly came from patriotic topics and history. Among his most noted works is a series of twelve tablets entitled Goplana. This was greeted with great enthusiasm by art critics of the time. He died in Warsaw.

Kazimierz Alchimowicz : Paintings

Ivan Generalić : Paintings

Ivan Generalić : Biography

Ivan Generalić (December 21, 1914 – November 27, 1992) was a Croatian naïve art painter. Generalić was born in Hlebine near Koprivnica. In elementary school, painting lessons were his greatest joy and as a child he used to earn money. He mostly drew with pencil on paper bags and some of these sketches were seen by Krsto Hegedušić, at the time (1930) just a student of the art academy, later a professor. Hegedušić was impressed with Generalić's work and organized Generalić's first public art exhibition, held in 1931 in the Zagreb Art pavilion. Positive critiques and contacts at the time led to a new era of not only Croatian, but also world art as well.

After World War II, in 1945 he became a member of ULUH (society of Croatian artists). In 1953 he exhibited in Paris, where he lived and painted for a few months. In 1959 he painted The Deer Wedding - his most valuable work, according to followers of the Croatian naïve art world.

Generalić has a large number of followers, beside his colleagues who form the first generation - Franjo Mraz and Mirko Virius. His second generation followers are Franjo Filipović, Dragan Gaži, Josip Generalić, Ivan Večenaj.

Francesco Albani : Paintings

Francesco Albani : Biography

Francesco Albani or Albano (March 17 or August 17, 1578–October 4, 1660) was an Italian Baroque painter of Albanian origin.

Early years in Bologna

Born at 1572 Bologna, his father was a silk merchant who intended to instruct his son in the same trade; but by age twelve, Albani became an apprentice under the competent mannerist painter Denis Calvaert, where he met Guido Reni. Soon he followed Reni to the so-called "Academy" run by the Carracci family: Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico. This studio fostered the careers of many painters of the Bolognese school, including Domenichino, Massari, Viola, Lanfranco, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, Pietro Faccini, Remigio Cantagallina, and Reni.

Mature work in Rome

In the year 1600, Albani moved to Rome to work in the fresco decoration of the gallery of the Palazzo Farnese, being completed by the studio of Annibale Carracci. Rome, under Clement VIII Aldobrandini (1592-1605) was exhibiting some degree of administrative stability and renewed artistic patronage. While pope Clement was born from a Florentine family residing in Urbino, his family was allied by marriage to the Emilia-Romagna and the Farnese, since Ranuccio I Farnese, Duke of Parma had married Margherita Aldobrandini. Parma, like Bologna, are part of the Region of Emilia-Romagna. Thus it was not surprise that Cardinal Odoarde Farnese, Ranuccio's brother, chose the Carraccis from Bologna for patronage, thereby establishing Bolognese predominance of Roman fresco painting for nearly two decades. Albani became one of Annibale's most prominent apprentices. Using Annibale's designs and assisted by Lanfranco and Sisto Badalocchio, Albani completed frescoes for the San Diego Chapel in San Giacomo degli Spagnoli between 1602-1607. In 1606-7, Albani completed the frescoes in the Palazzo Mattei di Giove in Rome. He later completed two other frescoes in the same palace, also on the theme of Life of Joseph. In 1609, he completed the ceiling of a large hall with Fall of Phaeton and Council of the Gods for the Palazzo Giustiniani (now Palazzo Odescalchi) at Bassano (di Sutri) Romano. This work was commissioned by the Marchese Vicenzo Giustiniani, famous for also being patron to Caravaggio. During 1612-14, Albani completed the Choir frescoes at the newly remodeled (by Pietro da Cortona) church of Santa Maria della Pace. In 1616 he painted ceiling frescoes of Apollo and the Seasons at Palazzo Verospi in Via del Corso for the cardinal Fabrizio Verospi. In later years, Albani developed a mutual, though respectful, rivalry with the more successful Guido Reni, who was also heavily patronized by the Aldobrandini, and under whom Albani had worked under at the chapel of the Palazzo del Quirinale. Albani's best fresco masterpieces are those on mythological subjects. Among the best of his sacred subjects are a St Sebastian and an Assumption of the Virgin, both in the church of San Sebastiano fuori le Mura in Rome. He was among the Italian painters to devote himself to painting cabinet pictures. His mythological subjects include The Sleeping Venus, Diana in the Bath, Danaë Reclining, Galatea on the Sea, and Europa on the Bull. A rare etching, the Death of Dido, is attributed to him. Carlo Cignani, Andrea Sacchi, Francesco Mola, and Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi were some of his students. On the death of his wife he returned to Bologna, where he married a second time and resided till his death.

Legacy

Albani never acquired the monumentality or tenebrism that was quaking the contemporary world of painters, and in fact, is derided often for his lyric, cherubim-filled sweetness, which often has not yet shaken the mannerist elegance. While Albani's thematic would have appealed to Poussin, he lacked the Frenchman's muscular drama. His style sometimes appears to befit the decorative Rococo more than of his time. Among the pupils of Albani were his brother Giovanni Battista Albani, and others including Giacinto Bellini, Girolamo Bonini, Giacinto Campagna, Antonio Catalani, Carlo Cignani, Giovanni Maria Galli, Filippo Menzani, Andrea Sacchi, Andrea Sghizzi, Giovanni Battista Speranza, Antonio Maria del Sole, Emilio Taruffi, and Francesco Vaccaro[

David Allan : Paintings

David Allan : Biography

David Allan (13 February 1744 – 6 August 1796) was a Scottish painter, best known for historical subjects. He was born at Alloa in central Scotland. On leaving Foulis's academy of painting at Glasgow (1762), after seven years' successful study, he obtained the patronage of Lord Cathcart and of Erskine of Mar, on whose estate he had been born. Erskine made it possible for him to travel to Rome (1764), where he remained for several years engaged principally in copying the old masters.

Among the original works which he then painted was the "Origin of Portraiture", now in the National Gallery at Edinburgh--representing a Corinthian maid drawing her lover's shadow--well known through Domenico Cunego's excellent engraving. This won him the gold medal given by the Academy of St Luke in the year 1773 for the best specimen of historical composition.

Returning from Rome in 1777, he lived for a time in London, and occupied himself with portrait-painting. In 1780 he removed to Edinburgh, where, on the death of Alexander Runciman in 1786, he was appointed director and master of the Academy of Arts. There he painted and etched in aquatint a variety of works, those by which he is best known--such as "Scotch Wedding", "Highland Dance", "Repentance Stool" and his "Illustrations of the Gentle Shepherd"--being remarkable for their comic humour. He was sometimes called the "Scottish Hogarth".

His grave can be found at the Old Calton Burial Ground in Edinburgh. The headstone, which features a portrait relief, was paid for and erected by the Royal Scottish Academy.

Christoph Ludwig Agricola : Paintings

Christoph Ludwig Agricola : Biography

Christoph Ludwig Agricola (November 5, 1667 - 1719) was a German landscape painter. He was born and died at Regensburg (Ratisbon). He spent a great part of his life in travel, visiting England, the Netherlands and France, and residing for a considerable period at Naples. His numerous landscapes, chiefly cabinet pictures, are remarkable for fidelity to nature, and especially for their skilful representation of varied phases of climate. In composition his style shows the influence of Caspar Poussin, while in light and colour he imitates Claude Lorrain. His pictures are to be found in Dresden, Braunschweig, Vienna, Florence, Naples and many other towns of both Germany and Italy.

Albrecht Altdorfer : Paintings

Albrecht Altdorfer : Biography

Albrecht Altdorfer (c. 1480 near Regensburg – 12 February 1538 in Regensburg) was a German painter, printmaker and architect of the Renaissance era, the leader of the Danube School in southern Germany, and a near-contemporary of Albrecht Dürer. He is best known as a significant pioneer of landscape in art.

Painting

He most often painted religous scenes, but is mainly famous as the first frequent painter of pure landscape, and also compositions dominated by their landscape. Taking and developing the landscape style of Lucas Cranach the Elder, he shows the hilly landscape of the Danube valley with thick forests of drooping and crumbling firs and larches hung with moss, and often dramatic colouring from a rising or setting sun. His Landscape with footbridge (National Gallery, London) of 1518-20 is claimed to be the first pure landscape in oil. [1] He also made many fine finished drawings, mostly landscapes, in pen and watercolour. His best religious scenes are intense, sometimes verging on the expressionistic, and often depict moments of intimacy between Christ and his mother, or others. His most famous religious artwork is the The Legend of St. Sebastian and the Passion of Christ that decorated the altar in the St. Florian monastery in Linz, Austria. He often distorts perspective to subtle effect. His donor figures are often painted completely out of scale with the main scene, as in paintings of the previous centuries. He also painted some portraits; overall his painted oeuvre was not large.

Paintings in Munich

His rather atypical Battle of Issus (or of Alexander) of 1529 was commissioned by William IV, Duke of Bavaria as one of a suite by various artists. It is his most famous, and certainly one of his best works. He renounced the office of Major of Regensburg to accept the commission. Few of his other paintings resemble this apocalyptic scene of two huge armies dominated by an extravagant landscape seen from a very high viewpoint, which looks south over the whole Mediterranean from modern Turkey to include the island of Cyprus and the mouths of the Nile and the Red Sea (behind the isthmus to the left) on the other side. However his style here is a development of that of a number of miniatures of battle-scenes he had done much earlier for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor in his illuminated manuscript Triumphal Procession in 1512-14. [2] It is thought to be the earliest painting to show the curvature of the Earth from a great height. The Battle is now in the Alte Pinakothek, which has the best collection of Altdorfer's paintings, including also his small St George and the Dragon,(1510) in oil on parchment, where the saint and the dragon are small figures almost submerged in the dense forest that towers over them. A Susanna and the Elders (1526) set outside an Italianate skyscraper of a palace shows his interest in architecture.[3] Another small oil on parchment, Danube Landscape with Castle Wörth (c 1520) is one of the earliest accurate topographical paintings of a particular building in its setting, of a type that was to become a cliché in later centuries.

Printmaking

He was a significant printmaker with numerous engravings and about ninety-three woodcuts. These included some for the Triumphs of Maximilian, where he followed the overall style presumably set by Hans Burgkmair, although he was able to escape somewhat from this in his depictions of the more disorderly baggage-train, still coming through a mountain landscape. However most of his best prints are etchings, many of landscapes; in these he was able most easily to use his drawing style.[5] He was one of the most successful early etchers, and was unusual for his generation of German printmakers in doing no book illustrations. He often combined etching and engraving techniques in a single plate, and produced about 122 intaglio prints altogether.

Public life

He was a member of the ruling town council in Regensburg for many years, as well as the city architect and worked on improving the city walls. He presumably participated in the Council's decision to expel the city's Jewish community in 1519 , as well as making two famous etchings of the synagogue just before it was destroyed after the expulsion, to be replaced with a church, which Altdorfer designed, at least in part.[6] [7] Later he became a Protestant, and helped to steer Regensburg to Lutheranism. Albrecht's brother, Erhard Altdorfer, was also a painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving, and a pupil of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard : Paintings

Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard : Biography

Nikolaj Abraham Abildgaard (September 11, 1743 – June 4, 1809), Danish artist, was born in Copenhagen, the son of Søren Abildgaard, an antiquarian draughtsman of repute, and Anne Margrethe Bastholm.

Training as an artist

He trained under a painting master before coming to the new Royal Danish Academy of Art (Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi) in Copenhagen, studying under Johan Edvard Mandelberg and Johannes Wiedewelt.

He won medallions at the Academy from 1764 to 1767. The large gold medallion from the Academy won in 1767 included a travel stipend, which he waited five years to receive.

He assisted Professor Mandelberg of the Academy as an apprentice ca. 1769, painting decorations for the royal palace at Fredensborg. These paintings are classical, influenced by French classical artists such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin. Mandelberg had studied in Paris under François Boucher

Student travels
The Wounded Philoctetes (1775)

Although artists of that time typically traveled to Paris for further study, he chose to travel to Rome, where he stayed during the years 1772-1777. He took a side trip to Naples in 1776 with Jens Juel. His ambitions lay in the genre of history painting. While in Rome, he studied Annibale Carracci's frescoes at the Palazzo Farnese and the paintings of Rafael, Titian, and Michaelangelo. In addition he studied various other artistic disciplines (sculpture, architecture, decoration, wall paintings) and developed his knowledge of mythology, antiquities, anatomy, and perspective.

In the company of Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel and painter Johann Heinrich Füssli, he began to move away from the classicism he had learned at the Academy. He developed an appreciation for the literature of Shakespeare, Homer, and Ossian, the legendary Gaelic poet. He worked with themes from Greek as well as Norse mythology, which placed him at the forefront of Nordic romanticism.

He left Rome in June 1777 with the hope of becoming professor at the Academy in Copenhagen. He stopped for a stay in Paris, and arrived in Denmark in December of the same year.

Works

Though he won immense fame in his own generation and helped lead the way to the period of art known as the Golden Age of Danish Painting, his works are scarcely known outside of Denmark.

He was a cold theorist, inspired not by nature but by art. His style was classical, though with a romantic trend. He had a remarkable sense of colour. As a technical painter he attained remarkable success, his tone being very harmonious and even, but the effect, to a foreigner's eye, is rarely interesting.

A portrait of him painted by Jens Juel was made into a medallion by his friend Johan Tobias Sergel. August Vilhelm Saabye sculpted a statue of him in 1868 based on contemporary portraits.

Josef Abel : Paintings

Josef Abel : Biography

Josef Abel (1768 – 4 October 1818) was an Austrian historical painter and etcher.

Abel was born in Aschach an der Donau. He visited the Academy in Vienna, which was at the time directed by Friedrich Heinrich Füger, and was one of his best scholars. Abel developed an interest for the ancient world, reflecting a popular direction in the art of the beginning of the XIX century in Germany and France. During the years 1801–1807, he studied in Italy, then returned to Vienna where he became member of the Academy on 8 February 1815 and remained till his death in 1818.

Among his famous works are paintings and etchings of Klopstock in Elysium, Orestes and Electra, Socrates and Theramenes as well as Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. He also painted the figural part of the Burgtheater under directions of Füger.