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 :. | The man lift arm | Helena Fourment in a Fur Wrap or Het Pelsken (mk01) | The Stone Carters | A Peasant Dance | Romulus and Remus |
Related Artists:
Alexei Venetsianov
1780 - 1847
BACKER, Jacob de
Flemish painter (b. 1555/60, Antwerpen, d. 1585/90, Antwerpen) Flemish painter and draughtsman. According to van Mander, as a young boy de Backer was abandoned by his father, also a painter, who had to flee Antwerp because of an impending court trial. Jacob then worked for several years in the studio of Antonio van Palermo (1503/13-before 1589) and later entered the workshop of Hendrick van Steenwijck. Van Mander further claimed that the strenuous labour that van Palermo had imposed on the young man had so wrecked his health that he died at the age of 30, in the arms of his former master's daughter. This, van Mander added, happened a long time ago, thus implying that de Backer died before van Steenwijck left Antwerp in 1586. This is confirmed by other evidence, including the age of van Palermo's daughter Lucretia, who was baptized in Antwerp on 25 July 1561. She lived until 1626 and at the time of her death still possessed six paintings by de Backer.
John Atkinson Grimshaw
(6 September 1836 - 13 October 1893) was a Victorian-era artist, a "remarkable and imaginative painter" known for his city night-scenes and landscapes. His early paintings were signed "JAG," "J. A. Grimshaw," or "John Atkinson Grimshaw," though he finally settled on "Atkinson Grimshaw." John Atkinson Grimshaw was born 6 September 1836 in Leeds. In 1856 he married his cousin Frances Hubbard (1835-1917). In 1861, at the age of 24, to the dismay of his parents, he left his job as a clerk for the Great Northern Railway to become a painter. He first exhibited in 1862, mostly paintings of birds, fruit and blossom, under the patronage of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society. He became successful in the 1870s and rented a second home in Scarborough, which became a favourite subject. Several of his children, Arthur Grimshaw (1864-1913), Louis H Grimshaw (1870-1944), Wilfred Grimshaw (1871-1937) and Elaine Grimshaw (1877-1970) became painters.