Paris 1843 - Buzenval 1871.
French Academic Painter, 1843-1871. Studied under Alexandre Cabanel. Specializes in Orientalism. Painter, son of Victor Regnault. He showed exceptional abilities as a draughtsman from an early age. After a traditional classical education he was sent in 1860 to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, where he studied with Louis Lamothe (1822-69) and Alexandre Cabanel. In 1866 he won the Prix de Rome competition with Thetis Giving the Weapons of Vulcan to Achilles (Paris, Ecole N. Sup. B.-A.). In Italy he began several other ambitious history paintings, including Automedon Taming the Horses of Achilles Related Paintings of Henri Regnault :. | Automedon with the Horses of Achilles | Spy | Mme. Mazois ( The Artist s Great-Aunt on Her Deathbed ) | Automedon with the Horses of Achilles | Execution Without Trial | Related Artists:
Franz Eyblpainted Selbstporträt mit Hut. in 1840
Claude LorrainFrench
1600-1682
Claude Lorrain Galleries
In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition.
In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography.
Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno).
John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"
MOLYN, Pieter deEnglish-born Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1595-1661
Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher of English birth and Flemish descent. His father, Pieter de Molijn, came from Ghent and his mother, Lynken van den Bossche, from Brussels. It is not known why they went to England, perhaps for employment rather than to avoid religious persecution. Pieter the younger apparently remained proud of his birthplace throughout his life