1629-1684 Dutch Pieter de Hooch Galleries De Hooch was born in Rotterdam to Hendrick Hendricksz de Hooch, a bricklayer, and Annetge Pieters, a midwife. He was the eldest of five children and outlived all of his siblings. He studied art in Haarlem under the landscape painter, Nicolaes Berchem. Beginning in 1650, he worked as a painter and servant for a linen-merchant and art collector named Justus de la Grange. His service for the merchant required him to accompany him on his travels to The Hague, Leiden, and Delft, to which he eventually moved. It is likely that de Hooch handed over most of his works to la Grange during this period in exchange for board and other benefits, as this was a common commercial arrangement for painters at the time, and a later inventory recorded that la Grange possessed eleven of his paintings. De Hooch was married in Delft in 1654 to Jannetje van der Burch, by whom he fathered seven children. While in Delft, de Hooch is also believed to have learned from the painters Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes, who were both early members of the Delft School. He became a member of the painters' guild of Saint Luke in 1655, and had moved to Amsterdam by 1661. The early work of de Hooch, like most young painters of his time, was mostly composed of scenes of soldiers in stables and taverns, though he used these to develop great skill in light, color, and perspective rather than to explore an interest in the subject matter. After beginning his family in the mid-1650s, he switched his focus to domestic scenes and family portraits. His work showed astute observation of the mundane details of everyday life while also functioning as well-ordered morality tales. These paintings often exhibited a sophisticated and delicate treatment of light similar to those of Vermeer, who lived in Delft at the same time as de Hooch. 19th century art historians had assumed that Vermeer had been influenced by de Hooch's work, but the opposite is now believed.   Related Paintings of Pieter de Hooch :. | A Musical Conversation | Hof mit zwei Offizieren und trinkender Frau | Hollandische Familie | Kartenspieler | the courtyard of a house in delft |
Related Artists:
Philip Leslie Hale
1865-1931
MICHELE PANNONIO
Hungarian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1400-1464 Painter, active in Italy. He was one of the most important painters at the court of Ferrara in the mid-15th century and contributed to the creation of an indigenous Ferrarese style of painting. Most of his works have been destroyed. He may have been born in Hungary, as his name implies. There are parallels between his style and that of contemporary painters working in Hungary, but nothing is known of his early career. The suggestion that he can be identified with a Michele dai Unii, paid in 1415 for painting a standard for Leonello d'Este,
Alfred Rethel
1816 Diepenbend/Aachen-1859 Dusseldorf, was a German history painter. Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen he executed a drawing which procured his admission to the academy of D??sseldorf. Here he studied for several years, and produced, among other works, a figure of St Boniface, which attracted much attention. At the age of twenty, Rethel moved to Frankfurt, and was selected to decorate the walls of the imperial hall in the Rmer with figures of famous men. At the same period he produced a series of designs illustrative of Old Testament history. Four years later, Rethel was the successful competitor for the work of ornamenting the restored council house of his native city with frescoes depicting prominent events in the career of Charlemagne, but the execution of this work was delayed for some six years. Meanwhile Rethel occupied himself with the production of easel pictures and of drawings. In 1842, he began a striking series of designs dealing with the Crossing of the Alps by Hannibal, in which the weird power which animates his later art becomes first apparent. In 1844 Rethel visited Rome, executing, along with other subjects, an altar-piece for one of the churches of his native land. In 1846, he returned to Aachen, and commenced his Charlemagne frescoes.