Born 1606, Died 1669.One of the great Dutch painters and printmakers of the 17th century, Rembrandt van Rijn is best known for his expressive use of light and shadow (also called chiaroscuro) in his many portraits. Raised in Leiden, he studied with Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) in Amsterdam, then returned to Leiden around 1625 and set up shop as a teacher and portrait artist. Sometime between 1630 and 1632 Rembrandt relocated to Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his career. Though he had his detractors (some of whom considered him coarse and "low born"), Rembrandt was successful and famous during his lifetime, though he fell on financial hard times in his later years. He was a master printer and produced hundreds of group portraits and historical paintings, including The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632), The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) and Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653). His portraits -- including a lifelong trail of intriguing and rather frank self-portraits -- reveal his interest in psychological study and continue to be admired as landmarks in Western art. The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq is also known as "The Night Watch" because it was thought the painting depicted a nighttime scene. When the painting was cleaned in the 1940s it became obvious that it depicted a daytime scene... He married Saskia van Ulenburgh (also Uylenburgh) in 1634. Related Paintings of REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn :. | St paul at his Writing-Desk (mk33) | An old man asleep at the Hearth (mk33) | Portrait of Jacob Trip | Aristotle with a Bust of Homer | Titus | Related Artists:
bruno liljeforsBruno Andreas Liljefors (1860-1939) was a Swedish artist, the most important and probably the most influential wildlife painter of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.[1] He also drew some sequential picture stories, making him one of the early Swedish comic creators.
Liljefors is held in high esteem by painters of wildlife and is acknowledged as an influence, for example, by American wildlife artist Bob Kuhn.[1] All his life Liljefors was a hunter, and he often painted predator-prey action, the hunts engaged between fox and hare, sea eagle and eider, and goshawk and black grouse serving as prime examples.[1] However, he never exaggerated the ferocity of the predator or the pathos of the prey, and his pictures are devoid of sentimentality.
The influence of the Impressionists can be seen in his attention to the effects of environment and light, and later that of Art Nouveau in his Mallards, Evening of 1901, in which the pattern of the low sunlight on the water looks like leopardskin, hence the Swedish nickname Panterfällen.[1] Bruno was fascinated by the patterns to be found in nature, and he often made art out of the camouflage patterns of animals and birds. He particularly loved painting capercaillies against woodland, and his most successful painting of this subject is the largescale Capercaillie Lek, 1888, in which he captures the atmosphere of the forest at dawn. He was also influenced by Japanese art, for example in his Goldfinches of the late 1880s.[1]
During the last years of the nineteenth century, a brooding element entered his work, perhaps the result of turmoil in his private life, as he left his wife, Anna, and took up with her younger sister, Signe, and was often short of money.[1] This darker quality in his paintings gradually began to attract interest and he had paintings exhibited at the Paris Salon.
He amassed a collection of animals to act as his living models. Ernst Malmberg recalled:
The animals seemed to have an instinctive trust and actual attraction to him...There in his animal enclosure, we saw his inevitable power over its many residents??foxes, badgers, hares, squirrels, weasels, an eagle, eagle owl, hawk, capercaillie and black game.[1]
The greatness of Liljefors lay in his ability to show animals in their environment.[1] Sometimes he achieved this through hunting and observation of the living animal, and sometimes he used dead animals: for example his Hawk and Black Game, painted in the winter of 1883-4, was based on dead specimens, but he also used his memory of the flocks of black grouse in the meadows around a cottage he once lived in at Ehrentuna, near Uppsala. He wrote:
The hawk model??a young one??I killed myself. Everything was painted out of doors as was usually done in those days. It was a great deal of work trying to position the dead hawk and the grouse among the bushes that I bent in such a way as to make it seem lively, although the whole thing was in actuality a still life.[1]
Christen Kobke1810-1848
Danish
Christen Kobke Galleries
He lived in Kastellet until 1833 and made many paintings of the area. His painting "Gården ved bageriet i Kastellet" (ca. 1832) hangs in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum in Copenhagen.
In 1832 he shared a studio with friend, landscape painter Frederik Hansen Sødring. He painted a portrait of Sødring which now hangs in the Hirschsprung Collection.
In 1834 he moved, along with his parents, outside of Copenhagen??s fortifications near Sortedamssøen, a lake area. He painted many views overlooking the lake towards the city and the embankments surrounding the city. His work becomes larger, more monumental.
Like many of his contemporary artists he came under the influence of Niels Lauritz Høyen, art historian, who promoted a nationalistic art. Høyen called for artists to search for subject matter in the folk life of their country instead of searching for themes in other lands, such as Italy (which was at that time considered a requirement for an artist??s training). On a visit to Hillerod in 1835 he painted a romantic picture of Frederiksborg Palace, "Frederiksborg Slot ved Aftenbelysning" ("Frederiksborg Palace in the Evening Light").
At the end of 1837 he married Susanna Cecilie Kobke (1810-1849), and shortly afterwards painted a portrait of his young bride.
One of the Small Towers on Frederiksborg Castle, c.1834-35.In 1838 he received a travel stipend from the Academy, left his new wife and traveled over Dresden and Munich to Italy accompanied by decorative painter Georg Hilker. They arrived in Rome by year??s end where he met brother-in-law Frederik Christopher Krohn, sculptor and medallionist, and many other Danish artists. He traveled, along with Constantin Hansen the following summer to Naples, Sorrento, Pompeii and Capri where he painted out in the open air.
He returned home in 1840 with a large collection of sketches for later use and inspiration. Unfortunately, most his later work with these Italian themes was uninspired, and they found little favor. Kobke even considered at the time becoming a decoration painter, having participated in 1844-1845 in the decoration of the Thorvaldsens Museum, a museum dedicated to the artistic works of Bertel Thorvaldsen.
Two years after his father died in 1843 the family sold the property outside Copenhagen, and Kobke moved back into the city. His application for admission to the Academy, which was accompanied by one of his failed Italian landscapes, was rejected in 1846. He died in 1848 of pneumonia, and is buried in Assistens Kirkegard.
Kobke, a national romantic, painted portraits, landscapes and architectural paintings. Most of Kobke??s portraits show friends, family members and fellow artists. He found most of his motifs in his immediate surroundings. Now he is recognized internationally for his well composed and harmonic paintings, for their coloristic qualities and for his sense of the everyday life. But in his lifetime he was almost forgotten, especially because of his early death and limited production. Despite his talent and the praise of various contemporaries, Kobke had never been inundated with commissions.
Kobke is recognized today as one of the most talented among Denmark??s Golden Age painters and the most internationally renowned Danish painter of his generation. The painterly interpretations he made of his surroundings stand as highpoints of the period.
His works are in the collections of not only Danish museums but also such international museums as the J. Paul Getty Museum
Leonardo Alenza Y Nietob Madrid, 6 Nov 1807; d Madrid, 30 June 1845
Spanish painter and illustrator. He studied at the Real Academia de S Fernando, Madrid, under Juan Antonio Ribera y Fern?ndez and Jos? de Madrazo y Agudo. He worked independently of court circles and achieved some fame but nevertheless died in such poverty that his burial was paid for by friends. He is often described as the last of the followers of Goya, in whose Caprichos and drawings he found inspiration for the genre scenes for which he became best known. Of these scenes of everyday life and customs the more interesting include The Beating (Madrid, Cas?n Buen Retiro) and Galician with Puppets (c. 1835; Madrid, Cas?n Buen Retiro; see SPAIN, fig. 17). Alenza y Nieto's numerous drawings include the illustrations for Alain-Ren? Lesage's Gil Blas (Madrid, 1840), for an edition of the poems of Francisco de Quevedo published by Castello and for the reviews Semanario pintoresco and El Reflejo. The painting Triumph of David