Dutch Post-Impressionist Painter, 1853-1890 Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ?C 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art. Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief spell as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not embark upon a career as an artist until 1880. Initially, Van Gogh worked only with sombre colours, until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. He incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which was fully developed during the time he spent at Arles, France. He produced more than 2,000 works, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches, during the last ten years of his life. Most of his best-known works were produced in the final two years of his life, during which time he cut off part of his left ear following a breakdown in his friendship with Paul Gauguin. After this he suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, which led to his suicide. The central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. Van Gogh is a pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism. He had an enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists.  Related Paintings of Vincent Van Gogh :. | Still Life with Paintbrushes in a Pot (nn04) | Sunflowers | Vase with Gladioli (nn04) | Flowering Orchards | Olive Picking (nn04) |
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Jacob Grimmer
(ca. 1526-1590) was a Flemish Renaissance landscape painter. Grimmer was born and died in Antwerp. According to Karel van Mander he first learned to paint landscapes from Matthys Cock and later from Christiaen Queburgh, both of Antwerp. He was a very skilled painter of houses, sky, and foreground views. He was a member of the Guild of St. Luke who was active as a rederijker and acted in many plays. According to the RKD his earliest dated work is from 1546 and his latest dated work was 1589. Most of his works are landscapes and he worked together with Gillis Mostaert. Abel Grimmer was his son and pupil.
Francois Bonvin
1817-1887 French Francois Bonvin Location Bonvin was born in humble circumstances in Paris, the son of a police officer and a seamstress. When he was four years old his mother died of tuberculosis and young Francois was left in the care of an old woman who underfed him. Soon his father married another seamstress and brought the child back into the household. Nine additional children were born, putting a strain on the familys resources, and to make matters worse his stepmother took to abusing and undernourishing Francois. The young Bonvin started drawing at an early age. His potential was recognized by a friend of the family, who paid for him to attend a school for drawing instruction at age eleven. This instruction ended after two years, when his father apprenticed him to a printer, and Bonvin was to remain mostly self-taught as an artist. He spent his free time at the Louvre where he especially appreciated the Dutch old masters. Bonvin married a laundress at the age of twenty, at about the same time that he secured a job at the headquarters of the Paris police. It was during this period in his life that he also contracted an illness which would trouble him for the rest of his life. Bonvin exhibited three paintings in the Salon of 1849, where he was awarded a third-class medal. He exhibited in the Salon of 1850 with Courbet, and won recognition as a leading realist, painting truthfully the lives of the poor which he knew at first hand. His paintings were well received by critics and by the public. Although his work had elements in common with Courbets, his modestly scaled paintings were not seen as revolutionary. He was awarded the Legion d honneur in 1870. His subjects were still life and the everyday activities of common people, painted in a style that is reminiscent of Pieter de Hooch and Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin. It is the latter who is especially recalled by Bonvins delicate luminosity. In 1881 he underwent an operation which did not restore him to health, and he became blind. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held in 1886. He died at Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1887.
Henri Leys
(18 February 1815 - 26 August 1869), also known as Henri Leys, was a Belgian painter and printmaker. Henri Leys was born and died in Antwerp. He studied with Mathieu Ignace Van Bree (1773-1839) at the Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp and then with his brother-in-law Ferdinand De Braekeleer (1792-1883). At the start of his career, he worked with the Belgian Romantic painter Egide Charles Gustave Wappers (1803-1874). Both artists were interested in nationalistic subjects painted in styles that owe much to the example of 16th- and 17th-century Flemish painting. In 1835 Leys went to Paris where he visited the studio of Eugene Delacroix and met Paul Delaroche. During the 1840s, Leys began painting scenes set in 16th-century Antwerp, combining details studied from life with a deliberately archaizing style reminiscent of 16th-century German painters like Albrecht Derer and Quinten Matsys. Some of the pictures have specific historical subjects, but others are genre scenes. With these pictures, he earned a following among many younger artists in Belgium as well as a considerable reputation in France, where he won a gold medal at the International Exhibition in Paris in 1855 for his historical painting The Mass of Berthal de Haze (Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels). In 1862 Leys was created a baron by King Leopold I. At the time of his death, he was engaged in decorating the interior of the Antwerp Town Hall with monumental frescoes depicting the city's history (1863-9). There are easel replicas of these in Brussels. Among the artists who studied with him are James Tissot and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. His best-known pupil is his nephew Henri De Braekeleer (1840-1888).