German-born American Hudson River School Painter, 1830-1902 Bierstadt was born in Solingen, Germany. His family moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts, in 1833. He studied painting with the members of the D??sseldorf School in D??sseldorf, Germany from 1853 to 1857. He taught drawing and painting briefly before devoting himself to painting. Bierstadt began making paintings in New England and upstate New York. In 1859, he traveled westward in the company of a Land Surveyor for the U.S. government, returning with sketches that would result in numerous finished paintings. In 1863 he returned west again, in the company of the author Fitz Hugh Ludlow, whose wife he would later marry. He continued to visit the American West throughout his career. Though his paintings sold for princely sums, Bierstadt was not held in particularly high esteem by critics of his day. His use of uncommonly large canvases was thought to be an egotistical indulgence, as his paintings would invariably dwarf those of his contemporaries when they were displayed together. The romanticism evident in his choices of subject and in his use of light was felt to be excessive by contemporary critics. His paintings emphasized atmospheric elements like fog, clouds and mist to accentuate and complement the feel of his work. Bierstadt sometimes changed details of the landscape to inspire awe. The colors he used are also not always true. He painted what he believed is the way things should be: water is ultramarine, vegetation is lush and green, etc. The shift from foreground to background was very dramatic and there was almost no middle distance Nonetheless, his paintings remain popular. He was a prolific artist, having completed over 500 (possibly as many as 4000) paintings during his lifetime, most of which have survived. Many are scattered through museums around the United States. Prints are available commercially for many. Original paintings themselves do occasionally come up for sale, at ever increasing prices.  Related Paintings of Albert Bierstadt :. | Four Indians | Western Kansas | The_Wave | Salmon Fishing on the Cascapediac River | Bahamas Harbour |
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Dyck, Anthony van
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1599-1641 Flemish painter and draughtsman, active also in Italy and England. He was the leading Flemish painter after Rubens in the first half of the 17th century and in the 18th century was often considered no less than his match. A number of van Dyck's studies in oil of characterful heads were included in Rubens's estate inventory in 1640, where they were distinguished neither in quality nor in purpose from those stocked by the older master. Although frustrated as a designer of tapestry and, with an almost solitary exception, as a deviser of palatial decoration, van Dyck succeeded brilliantly as an etcher. He was also skilled at organizing reproductive engravers in Antwerp to publish his works, in particular The Iconography (c. 1632-44), comprising scores of contemporary etched and engraved portraits, eventually numbering 100, by which election he revived the Renaissance tradition of promoting images of uomini illustri. His fame as a portrait painter in the cities of the southern Netherlands, as well as in London, Genoa, Rome and Palermo, has never been outshone; and from at least the early 18th century his full-length portraits were especially prized in Genoese, British and Flemish houses,
Maron, Anton von
Austrian, 1733-1808 Austrian painter. He studied at the Vienna Akademie and, in 1755, he went to Rome, where he was based for the rest of his life. From 1756 to 1761 he was first the pupil then the assistant of Anton Raphael Mengs. In 1765 he married Mengs's sister, the miniature painter Theresia Concordia Mengs. After collaborating on Mengs's fresco paintings in Rome (at S Eusebio and the Villa Albani; both in situ), Maron, working independently in Rome, spent some time on altar pictures (S Maria dell'Anima) and on various decorative projects. Mengs's influence is evident in Maron's ceiling pictures in the casino of the Villa Borghese (1784; in situ), where five paintings tell the Story of Aeneas and Dido in the style of quadri riportati, using clear construction, sharply defined drawing and a historical concept based on antiquity. Although he received many commissions for this type of work, Maron's true gifts lay in the field of portraiture. Along with Pompeo Batoni, Maron was the most celebrated portrait painter in 18th-century Rome, and he received an enormous number of commissions from princes, diplomats and church dignitaries and from English aristocrats visiting Rome as part of their Grand Tour. Maron painted such sitters in the same style as did Batoni, usually full-length and life-size, in elegantly fashionable dress, against backgrounds of Classical sculptures and views of Rome. Portraits such as those of Francis, Prince of Anhalt Dessau
GAROFALO
Italian Painter, ca.1481-1559