Italian Byzantine Style Painter, ca.1290-1348 Ambrogio Lorenzetti (or Ambruogio Laurati; c. 1290 ?C June 9, 1348) was an Italian painter of the Sienese school. He was active between approximately from 1317 to 1348. His elder brother was the painter Pietro Lorenzetti. His work shows the influence of Simone Martini, although more naturalistic. The earliest dated work of the Sienese painter is a Madonna and Child (1319, Museo Diocesano, San Casciano). His presence was documented in Florentine up until 1321. He would return there after spending a number of years in Siena. The frescoes on the walls of the Hall of the Nine (Sala dei Nove) or Hall of the Peace (Sala della Pace) in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena are one of the masterworks of early renaissance secular painting. The "nine" was the oligarchal assembly of guild and monetary interests that governed the republic. Three walls are painted with frescoes consisting of a large assembly of allegorical figures of virtues in the Allegory of Good Government . In the other two facing panels, Ambrogio weaves panoramic visions of Effects of Good Government on Town and Country, and Allegory of Bad Government and its Effects on Town and Country (also called "Ill-governed Town and Country"). The better preserved "well-governed town and country" is an unrivaled pictorial encyclopedia of incidents in a peaceful medieval "borgo" and countryside. The first evidence of the existence of the hourglass can be found in one of his paintings. Like his brother, he is believed to have died of bubonic plague 1348. Giorgio Vasari includes a biography of Lorenzetti in his Lives.  Related Paintings of Ambrogio Lorenzetti :. | St Nicholas is Elected Bishop of Mira | Annunciation | St Michael | Life in the City | Madonna Enthroned with Angels |
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Wijnand Nuyen
Dutch Painter, 1813-1839, Dutch painter and printmaker who specialised in landscapes, and was greatly influenced by the French Romantics. Born to a baker father who recognised his son's talent, Nuijen was apprenticed at age twelve to Andreas Schelfhout in Den Haag. Between 1825 and 1829 he studied at the Den Haag Tekenacademie, under Bartholomeus Johannes van Hove. In his short lifespan Nuijen turned into a prolific painter of rural and marine landscapes, spending much time on the Normandy and northern French coasts. Here he fell under the spell of painters who were working in France, such as Richard Parkes Bonington (1802-1828) and Eugene Isabey (1803-1886), both of whom painted picturesque villages, Normandy harbours and seascapes, with a spontaneity Nuijen admired and adopted. His preoccupation with ruins is typically Romantic and his use of colour and texture is reminiscent of the watercolours of Turner. The Felix Meritis society of Amsterdam awarded him a medal in 1829 for his watercolour of a forest landscape. On completion of his tuition he travelled to Belgium, France and Germany, at times with his painting companion Antonie Waldorp [1803-1866]. Nuijen became a member of the Koninklijke Akademie in Amsterdam in 1836, and just before his death he married the daughter of Schelfhout, his former tutor. Nuijen was unusual among Dutch painters of the period, his theatricality and liberal style contrasting with the near photographic depiction that was then the norm. King William II greatly admired Nuijen's work and bought the "Shipwreck" in 1843,
Bonaventura Peeters
(Antwerp, 23 July 1614 - Hoboken (Antwerp), 25 July 1652) was a Flemish Baroque painter who specialized in seascapes and shipwrecks, known as Zeekens (small seascapes). Peeters, brother of the seascape painters Jan Peeters I, Gillis Peeters, and Catharina Peeters, learned to paint from his father, who became a master in Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1607 - 1608, and his earlier works are related to the tonal phase of Dutch landscape painting. Later paintings, however, reflect the stronger colors of Italianate classicism. This shift follows the general changes in artistic style at the time. Like his brother Jan, dramatic shipwrecks with dark billowy clouds, form a significant part of his oeuvre, as do serene ports and "portraits" of ships.Also, while many of Peeters's paintings reflect actual locations, and he may have even travelled along the coast of Scandinavia, his many views of far-away Mediterranean and Middle Eastern ports reflect a growing taste for the exotic and are probably inspired from fantasy and from prints. This tradition developed simultaneously in Flemish painting and in Dutch Golden Age painting, with many artists, including Peeters, working in both Antwerp and in the Dutch Republic.
William Lees Judson
1842-1928 William Lees Judson was born in 1842 in Manchester, England, and moved to the United States with his parents when he was ten years old. After serving four years with the Illinois volunteers during the American Civil War, Judson studied art in New York and Paris. He settled in London, Ontario, where he became a successful portrait painter and art teacher. He moved to Chicago in 1890 but, suffering from failing health, he moved to Los Angeles in 1893. He settled on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in the Garvanza section of Los Angeles. A 1937 radio program noted that it was ??love at first sight?? when Judson saw the Arroyo Seco, and the area became his home for the rest of his life. Soon after his arrival, Judson was at the forefront of the Arroyo Guild of Craftsmen, an influential group of artists, sculptors and architects who fueled Southern California??s Arts and Crafts Movement. The beauty of the area stirred Judson to switch from portrait painting to landscapes, and his work attracted such favorable attention that in 1896 he was offered a professorship in drawing and painting at the University of Southern California. In the late 1890s, he founded the Los Angeles College of Fine Arts at his home in Garvanza (the present location of Judson Studios). In 1901, Judson's art college became USC??s College of Fine Arts, with Judson serving as dean from 1901 until his retirement in 1922. He died at his home in the studio building in October 1928.