French Pointillist Painter, 1859-1891 Georges-Pierre Seurat (2 December 1859 ?C 29 March 1891) was a French painter and draftsman. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, his most famous painting, altered the direction of modern art by initiating Neo-impressionism, and is one of the icons of 19th century painting Seurat took to heart the color theorists' notion of a scientific approach to painting. Seurat believed that a painter could use color to create harmony and emotion in art in the same way that a musician uses counterpoint and variation to create harmony in music. Seurat theorized that the scientific application of color was like any other natural law, and he was driven to prove this conjecture. He thought that the knowledge of perception and optical laws could be used to create a new language of art based on its own set of heuristics and he set out to show this language using lines, color intensity and color schema. Seurat called this language Chromoluminarism. His letter to Maurice Beaubourg in 1890 captures his feelings about the scientific approach to emotion and harmony. He says "Art is Harmony. Harmony is the analogy of the contrary and of similar elements of tone, of color and of line, considered according to their dominance and under the influence of light, in gay, calm or sad combinations". Seurat's theories can be summarized as follows: The emotion of gaiety can be achieved by the domination of luminous hues, by the predominance of warm colors, and by the use of lines directed upward. Calm is achieved through an equivalence/balance of the use of the light and the dark, by the balance of warm and cold colors, and by lines that are horizontal. Sadness is achieved by using dark and cold colors and by lines pointing downwards.  Related Paintings of Georges Seurat :. | Le Pecheur | The Sunday of Port en bessin | Impression Figure | Sunday Afternoon on the island of the Grande Jatte (nn03) | Two Stonebreakers |
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Giovanni Antonio Canal
(28 October 1697 - 19 April 1768) better known as Canaletto, was a Venetian painter famous for his landscapes, or vedute, of Venice. He was also an important printmaker in etching. He was born in Venice as the son of the painter Bernardo Canal, hence his mononym Canaletto ("little Canal"), and Artemisia Barbieri. His nephew and pupil Bernardo Bellotto was also an accomplished landscape painter, with a similar painting style, and sometimes used the name "Canaletto" to advance his own career, particularly in countrieseGermany and Polandewhere his uncle was not active.
Jan Josef Horemans the Elder
1682-1759 Dutch Jan Josef Horemans Galleries He was a pupil of the sculptor Michiel van der Voort I and then of the Dutch painter Jan van Pee (before 1640-1710), who was active in Antwerp. Horemans joined the Guild of St Luke in 1706-7. He appears to have followed in the footsteps of the 17th-century Flemish genre painters, executing a few portraits and a large number of small anecdotal pictures that were highly prized on the market. In paintings such as the Village School and the Cobbler's Shop (both 1712; Vienna, Ksthist. Mus.), the Musical Company (1715; Brunswick, Herzog Anton Ulrich-Mus.) and the Card-players (Florence, Uffizi) he represented scenes from contemporary everyday life that combine observation with a certain degree of stiffness. Most of his paintings are signed. In 1746, together with his son Jan Josef Horemans II, he painted the Abbot of St Michel Visiting the Order of the Fencing Oath (Antwerp, Kon. Mus. S. Kst.).
SAFTLEVEN, Cornelis
Dutch painter (b. 1607, Gorinchem, d. 1681, Rotterdam).Painter and draughtsman. After training as a painter in Rotterdam, he may have visited Antwerp c. 1632-4. From c. 1634 he was in Utrecht, where his brother (2) Herman the younger had settled, and they collaborated on a portrait of Godard van Reede and his Family (1634-5; Maarssen, Slot Zuylen). In 1637 Cornelis was back in Rotterdam, where in 1648 he married Catharina van der Heyden (d Rotterdam, 1654). The year after her death, he married Elisabeth van der Avondt. He became dean of the Guild of St Luke in Rotterdam in 1667.