1619-1693 Dutch Willem Kalf Galleries Willem Kalf was born in Rotterdam, in 1619. He was previously thought to have been born in 1622, but H. E. van Gelder??s important archival research has established the painter??s correct place and date of birth. Kalf was born into a prosperous patrician family in Rotterdam, where his father, a cloth merchant, held municipal posts as well. In the late 1630s, Willem Kalf travelled to Paris and spent time in the circle of the Flemish artists in Saint-Germain-des-Pr??s, Paris. In Paris he painted mainly small-scale rustic interiors and still-lifes. Kalf??s rustic interiors are typically dominated by groups of vegetables, buckets, pots and pans, which he arranged as a still-life in the foreground (e.g. Kitchen Still-life, Dresden, Gemäldegal; Alte Meister). Figures usually appeared only in the blurred obscurity of the background. Though painted in Paris, those pictures belong to a pictorial tradition practised primarily in Flanders in the early 17th century, by such artists as David Teniers the Younger. The only indication of the French origin of the paintings are a few objects that Flemish exponents of the same genre would not have pictured in their works. Kalf??s rustic interiors had a large influence on French art in the circle of the Le Nain brothers. The semi-monochrome still-lifes which Kalf created in Paris form a link to the banketjes or 'little banquet pieces' painted by such Dutch artists as Pieter Claesz, Willem Claeszoon Heda and others in the 1630s. During the 1640s, Kalf further developed the banketje into a novel form of sumptuous and ornate still-life (known as pronkstilleven), depicting rich groupings of gold and silver vessels. Like other still-lifes of this period, these paintings were usually expressing vanitas allegories.  Related Paintings of Willem Kalf :. | A woman drawing water from a well under an arcade | Still-Life with a Nautilus Cup | Still Life with Chafing Dish, Pewter, Gold, Silver and Glassware | Still Life | Dessert |
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Pehr Hillestrom
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Isaac Cruikshank
English Illustrator, ca.1756-1811 Scottish painter and caricaturist, was born in Edinburgh. His sons Isaac Robert Cruikshank (1789-1856) and George Cruikshank also became artists, and the latter in particular achieved fame as an illustrator and caricaturist. Cruikshank is known for his social and political satire. His parents were Elizabeth Davidson (b. c.1725), daughter of a gardener, and Andrew Crookshanks (c.1725 Cc.1783), a former customs inspector dispossessed for his role in the Jacobite uprising of 1745. He studied with a local artist, possible John Kay (1742 C1826), and travelled with his master to London in 1783. He married Mary MacNaughton (1769 C1853) in 1788 and the couple had five known children, two of whom died in infancy. A daughter, Margaret Eliza, also a promising artist, died at the age of eighteen. Cruikshank's first known publications were etchings of Edinburgh "types", from 1784. He produced illustrations for books about the theatre, did the frontispiece for Witticisms and Jests of Dr Johnson (1791), and illustrated George Shaw's extensive General Zoology (1800 C26). His watercolours were exhibited, but in order to make a living it was more lucritive to produce prints and caricatures. He was responsive to the marketplace but firm in his dislikes of Napoleon and political radicals. He and Gillray developed the figure of John Bull, the nationalistic representation of a solid British yeoman. Publisher John Roach was a friend and patron, and he later worked with print dealer S. W. Fores and Johnny Fairburn. He also collaborated, with G. M. Woodward, and later, with his son George. Cruikshank died of alcohol poisoning at the age of fifty-five as a result of a drinking contest and is buried near his home in London.
Juan de Juanes
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