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 :. | Portrait of Susanne Florment | Jesus on the cross | The Prodigal Son | The Triumph of Truth (mk05) | The Fall of Phaethon (mk27) |
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Ferdinand von Rayski
1806-1890 was a German painter noted for his portraits. Rayski was born in 1806 in Pegau. From 1816 to 1821 he studied drawing under Traugott Faber at the Freimaurerinstitut in Dresden and from 1823 to 1825 studied at Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf. He began his career as a professional artist in 1829, painting portraits of his noble relatives in Hannover and Silesia. From 1831 to 1834 he lived in Dresden, where he received numerous portrait commissions. He traveled to Paris in 1834-35, and was influenced by the works of Delacroix, Gericault and Gros. Rayski gained a reputation as a distinguished portrait painter, but also produced animal and hunting scenes, as well as, yet less frequently, military, historical and mythological paintings.
Jan Preisler
Czechoslovakian, 1872-1918 Bohemian painter. He studied at the School of Applied Arts in Prague (1887-95). In 1906 he visited Belgium, the Netherlands and Paris. He taught at the Academy of Arts in Prague from 1913. He was a pioneer in modern Bohemian art, and his work developed from pure Art Nouveau and Symbolism towards Expressionism, in three phases. The period 1887-1900 is represented by the triptych Spring (1900; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.): with its lack of scales of tonal value or Impressionist instantaneousness, it is a skilful use of colour and composition. The figure of the boy with autobiographical features is symbolic of a whole generation. The period 1901-7 culminated in Painting from a Bigger Cycle (1901-2; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), which balances vertical and horizontal lines and employs bright colour combinations. In Black Lake (1904; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), which deals with the misery and excitement of first love, the contrast of black and white and the figure of the boy with a horse and a girl evoke the transitive moment between reality and dream. Spring (1906; Prague, Trade Fair Pal.), a testament to Preisler admiration for the work of Gauguin, develops the resonant contrast of green, yellow and white. In 1908-18 Preisler returned to monumental decoration: of the Palacky Room in the Municipal House in Prague, 1910-12, in the style of Puvis de Chavannes. At this time he was approaching the Expressionism of the younger generation from the Eight (ii), especially in the three versions of the painting Good Samaritan (1910-13; all priv. col., see Kotalok, pl. 41), which shows the influence of Daumier and Munch.
william a.thornbery
fl.1883-1886