Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Bathseba am Brunnen | Flemisb Kermis or Kermesse Flamande (mk01) | Coronation of Marie de'Medici (mk05) | The Wonder of Frances | The Village Wedding (mk05) |
Related Artists:
Edwin Roffe
British,fl.Mid-nineteenth century
Mellery, Xavier
Belgian Symbolist Painter, 1845-1921 Belgian painter, decorative artist and draughtsman. A gardener's son, he was brought up in a quiet suburb of Brussels, bordering the Parc Royal. He studied under the decorative artist Charles Albert (1821-89) and then, between 1860 and 1867, took a course in decorative design at the Brussels Acad?mie. In 1864 he joined the studio of Jean-Fran?ois Portaels to learn the techniques of modelling, painting from life and history painting. Having won the Belgian Prix de Rome in 1870, he travelled to Italy, where he was inspired by the work of Mantegna. His early work treated the working lives of the Belgian poor in a social realist manner influenced by Charles de Groux
Moran, Edward
English-born American, 1829-1901 American painter of marine and historical subjects, b. England. He came to the United States with his family in 1844. In 1899 he completed a series of 13 paintings illustrating epochs in the maritime history of America from the landing of Leif Ericsson to the return of Admiral Dewey's fleet from the Philippines in 1899 (Pennsylvania Mus. of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia). His brother Thomas Moran, 1837?C1926, was an American landscape painter, illustrator, and etcher. He accompanied the exploring expeditions of Professor F. V. Hayden to the Yellowstone River (1871) and of Major J. W. Powell down the Colorado River (1873). Subsequently, he made the illustrations on wood for both expeditions' reports and the sketches from which he painted the two large canvases now in the Capitol at Washington, D.C., The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Chasm of the Colorado. In 1884 he became a member of the National Academy of Design. As a painter Moran was strongly influenced by the art of Turner. Other examples of his painting are Bringing Home the Cattle (Buffalo, N.Y., Mus.); The Grand Canal, Venice; The Dream of the Orient; and Tower of Cortez, in Mexico, a watercolor. He also produced many etchings and magazine illustrations on wood.