German 1480-1538 Albrecht Altdorfer Galleries He most often painted religious 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. 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.  Related Paintings of Albrecht Altdorfer :. | Augustiner | Flight into Egypt | View of the Danube Valley near Regensburg | Christ takes farval of their mother | Kalvarienberg |
Related Artists:
John Shackleton
was a British painter and draughtsman who produced history paintings and portraits. His parents and origins are unknown. Shackleton painted several surviving portraits, for example of Henry Pelham (National Portrait Gallery), William Windham (1717 - 1761; now at Felbrigg Hall, Norfolk), and of John Bristowe, steward to the first duke of Newcastle (now in the Reitlinger Museum of Fine Art, Maidenhead). From 1749 he was Principal Painter in Ordinary to George II and George III. He continued to be paid for portraits of the king and queen up even during 1765 - 6, when their official portraits were being done by Allan Ramsay. Several examples of his and his studio's output of royal portraits survive - one of George II dated 1755 is in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; another of George II in Room 2 of the British Museum, London (commissioned by the museum in 1759 - the Museum also holds engravings after his paintings), along with two more of George II in the Royal Collection and others in Fishmongers' Hall, London, and Maidenhead Museum.
Francis Hayman
English Painter, 1708-1776,English painter and illustrator. He was in London at the age of 10, and from 1718 until c. 1725 he was apprenticed to Robert Brown (d 1753), a decorative painter. From 1732 Hayman was employed as a scene painter at Goodman's Fields Theatre, where he painted allegorical works such as The King Attended by Peace, with Liberty and Justice Trampling on Tyranny and Oppression on the pit ceiling (destr.). He moved to Drury Lane Theatre in 1736, shortly before the Licensing Act closed Goodman's Fields. At Drury Lane he painted scenery for Thomas Arne's masque The Fall of Phaeton (1736) and was praised for his naturalistic landscapes. From the late 1730s he began accepting commissions for portraits and conversation pieces. His success in the field of portraiture rested on the dearth of good portrait painters in England at the time and his exploitation of a growing middle-class clientele. Hayman painted portraits of doctors, literary men and actors.
Vasily Polenov
1844 - 1927,Painter. He began a systematic study of drawing in 1856, first with the landscape painter Pavel Cherkasov (1834-1900), then from 1859 to 1861 with Pavel Chistyakov (1832-1919). He also took lessons with Chistyakov, whom he considered his most important teacher, in 1871 and early 1872, after finishing his academic course. From 1863 to 1871 Polenov studied at the St Petersburg Academy of Art, where he met members of the progressive wing of the Russian artistic intelligentsia, and occasionally in the faculty of law at St Petersburg University. The classical education he received at home, his academic training and lessons with Chistyakov led Polenov towards an exalted history painting, although he personally inclined towards landscape. This dualism remained in Polenov work for the duration, and not until the late 1880s and early 1890s did he achieve a stable relationship between the two forms. The whole of his student career and the initial postgraduate, scholarship period was largely taken up with historical works: from academic compositions, for example the Resurrection of Jairus Daughter (1871; Pskov, Mus. Hist., Archit. & A.), for which he received the Grand Gold Medal and a travel bursary (in Germany and Italy, 1872-3, and France, 1873-6), to numerous pictures and sketches on subjects from antiquity and medieval history, executed in France or shortly after his departure from there, under the perceptible influence of Paul Delaroche (e.g. The Master Right, 1874; Moscow Tret yakov Gal.). At the same time he produced his first independent works, in the 1860s and early 1870s: landscapes in the surroundings of the Imochentsy estate in Karelia (e.g. Mountains, 1870; Moscow Tret yakov Gal.), and landscape studies and pictures executed from nature in Normandy in 1874 (e.g. Fishing Boat, Etretat; Moscow, Tret'yakov Gal.). In 1876 he became an Academician