1785-1847 German Georg Friedrich Kersting Gallery Kersting was a friend of Caspar David Friedrich, the leading German Romantic painter; his style was influenced by Friedrich, and he shared that artist's romantic attitude, although in a more subjective manner. The two friends went on a walking tour of the Riesengebirge in 1810. During his many hikes with Friedrich, the two painted numerous sketches and observations from nature. He may have painted the staffage in some of Friedrich's early work??such as Morning in the Riesengebirge (1810?C11), a result of their walking tour. He was also a friend of the painter Louise Seidler, who described him as "an altogether splendid and comical fellow" and often served as his model. In 1813 Seidler helped Kersting send a number of his works to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Goethe was impressed and recommended that the Grand Duke Charles Augustus purchase his work The Embroiderer. Kersting's most lasting works are his figures in interiors that borrow from seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting. These paintings nevertheless feel contemporary due to the situations depicted and the effect of the artist's personality. The characters are often viewed from the back, as in Friedrich's work, and the scenes provide hints of narrative as the figures engage privately in everyday activities. A number of his works refer to his time in the volunteer corps, the "L??tzow rangers". He drew a full-length self-portrait in 1813, in which he wore the rangers' uniform. The painting On Sentry Duty (1815) depicts three rangers, including the artist Ferdinand Hartmann and the writer Theodor Körner, who fought with Kersting and died in wars against the French.  Related Paintings of Georg Friedrich Kersting :. | Vor dem Spiegel | Portrait of Niccolo Paganini | Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio | Kinder am Fenster | Theodor Korner,Friedrich Friesen and Heinrich Hartmann on Picket Duty |
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Nicolas Lancret
French 1690-1743 Nicolas Lancret (22 January 1690 ?C 14 September 1743), French painter, was born in Paris, and became a brilliant depicter of light comedy which reflected the tastes and manners of French society under the regent Orleans. His first master was Pierre d'Ulin, but his acquaintance with and admiration for Watteau induced him to leave d'Ulin for Gillot, whose pupil Watteau had been. Two pictures painted by Lancret and exhibited on the Place Dauphine had a great success, which laid the foundation of his fortune, and, it is said, estranged Watteau, who had been complimented as their author. Lancret's work cannot now, however, be taken for that of Watteau, for both in drawing and in painting his touch, although intelligent, is dry, hard and wanting in that quality which distinguished his great model; these characteristics are due possibly in part to the fact that he had been for some time in training under an engraver. The number of his paintings (of which over eighty have been engraved) is immense; he executed a few portraits and attempted historical composition, but his favorite subjects were balls, fairs, village weddings, etc. The British Museum possesses an admirable series of studies by Lancret in red chalk, and the National Gallery, London, shows four paintings--the "Four Ages of Man" (engraved by Desplaces and l'Armessin), cited by d'Argenville amongst the principal works of Lancret. In 1719 he was received as Academician, and became councillor in 1735; in 1741 he married a grandchild of Boursault, author of Aesop at Court.
OCHTERVELT, Jacob
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1634-1682 Dutch painter. According to Houbraken, he and Pieter de Hooch were fellow students of the Dutch Italianate Nicolaes Berchem in Haarlem, probably between 1646, when Berchem returned from Italy, and 1655, when Ochtervelt married Dirkje Meesters in the Dutch Reformed Church in Rotterdam. Ochtervelt's earliest known works reveal the influences of a number of Dutch Italianate painters. Landscapes with figures, such as Hunters and Shepherds in a Landscape (1652; Karl-Marx-Stadt, St?dt. Kstsamml.), owe much to Berchem in subject and composition. They may also have been partly inspired by similar landscapes by Jan Baptist Weenix and Ludolf de Jongh. Towards the mid-1650s Ochtervelt began painting garden scenes
Henry Burn
British Painter and Engraver 1807-1884