Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1697-1768
Italian painter, etcher and draughtsman. He was the most distinguished Italian view painter of the 18th century. Apart from ten years spent in England he lived in Venice, and his fame rests above all on his views (vedute) of that city; some of these are purely topographical, others include festivals or ceremonial events. He also painted imaginary views (capriccios), although the demarcation between the real and the invented is never quite clearcut: his imaginary views often include realistically depicted elements, though in unexpected surroundings, and in a sense even his Venetian vedute are imaginary. He never merely re-created reality. He was highly successful with the English, helped in this by the British connoisseur JOSEPH SMITH, whose own large collection of Canaletto works was sold to King George III in 1762. The British Royal Collection has the largest group of his paintings and drawings. Related Paintings of Canaletto :. | Piazza San Marco | Return of the Bucentoro to the Molo on Ascension Day (detail) d | Grand Canal | the Old Horse Guards and Banqueting Hall, from St James-s Park | Perspective fg | Related Artists:
Briton Riviere (14 August 1840 C 1920) was an Irish artist born in London, England.
His father, William Riviere, was for some years drawing-master at Cheltenham College, and afterwards an art teacher at Oxford University. He was educated at Cheltenham College and at Oxford, where he took his degree in 1867. For his art training he was indebted almost entirely to his father, and early in life made for himself a place of importance among the artists of his time.
His first pictures appeared at the British Institution, and in 1857 he exhibited three works at the Royal Academy, but it was not until 1863 that he became a regular contributor to the Academy exhibitions. In that year he was represented by "The Eve of the Spanish Armada", and in 1864 by a "Romeo and Juliet". Subjects of this kind did not, however, attract him long, for in 1865 he began, with a picture of a "Sleeping Deer-hound", a series of paintings of animal-subjects which later occupied him almost exclusively.
Hendrick Goltzius1558-1617 Dutch
Hendrik Goltzius (1558 - January 1, 1617), Dutch printmaker, draftsman, and painter, was born at Millebrecht, in the duchy of Julich. He was the leading Dutch engraver of the early Baroque period, noted for his sophisticated technique.
After studying painting on glass for some years under his father, he was taught the use of the burin by Dirk Volkertszoon Coornhert, a Dutch engraver of mediocre attainment, whom he soon surpassed, but who retained his services for his own advantage. He was also employed by Philip Galle to engrave a set of prints of the history of Lucretia.
At the age of 21 he married a widow somewhat advanced in years, whose money enabled him to establish at Haarlem an independent business; but his unpleasant relations with her so affected his health that he found it advisable in 1590 to make a tour through Germany to Italy, where he acquired an intense admiration for the works of Michelangelo, which led him to emulate that master in the grotesqueness and extravagance of his designs. He returned to Haarlem considerably improved in health, and laboured there at his art till his death.
Goltzius' painting Lot and his daughters (Rijksmuseum Amsterdam) shows Lot being seduced by his two daughters. Sodom and Gomorrah are shown burning in the background, with Lot's wife who had turned into a pillar of salt, in front.Goltzius ought not to be judged chiefly by the works he valued most, his eccentric imitations of Michelangelo. His portraits, though mostly miniatures, are masterpieces of their kind, both on account of their exquisite finish, and as fine studies of individual character. Of his larger heads, the life-size portrait of himself is probably the most striking example. His masterpieces, so called from their being attempts to imitate the style of the old masters, have perhaps been overpraised.
Goltzius brought to an unprecedented level the use of the "swelling line", where the burin is manipulated to make lines thicker or thinner to create a tonal effect from a distance. He also was a pioneer of "dot and lozenge" technique, where dots are placed in the middle of lozenge shaped spaces created by cross-hatching to further refine tonal shading.
A self portraitHollstein credits 388 prints to him, with a further 574 by other printmakers after his designs.
In his command of the burin Goltzius is said to rival that of Durer's; but his technical skill is not equally aided by higher artistic qualities. Even, however, his eccentricities and extravagances are greatly counterbalanced by the beauty and freedom of his execution. He made engravings of Bartholomeus Spranger's paintings, thus increasing the fame of the latter - and his own. Goltzius began painting at the age of forty-two; some of his paintings can be found in the imperial collection at Vienna. He also executed a few chiaroscuro woodcuts. He was the stepfather of engraver Jacob Matham.
Pine, Robert EdgeAmerican, 1720-88
English painter, active also in America. His father, John Pine (1691-1756), was a well-known engraver and printseller of whom William Hogarth painted a portrait (c. 1755; Fredericton, NB, Beaverbrook A.G.). Robert Edge Pine was initially considered to have the potential to rival Joshua Reynolds as a portrait painter, a promise derived from such works as the full-length portrait of George II (1759; Audley End, Essex), painted without a sitting being granted him by the King. In 1760 he won a premium at the Society of Arts, London, for a history painting, the Surrender of Calais to Edward III, also known as the Burghers of Calais (untraced), which was engraved in 1762 by Fran?ois Germain Aliamet (1734-88), and another in 1763 for Canute the Great Reproving his Courtiers for their Impious Flattery (untraced), also engraved by Aliamet. Pine was not invited to become a founder-member of the Royal Academy in 1768, probably because of his radical politics; that year he painted a portrait of the political agitator John Wilkes (London, Westminster Hall). In 1772 he left the Society of Arts following a quarrel over its choice of directors; he moved to Bath, where he joined his brother, Simon Pine (d Aug 1772), a painter of miniatures. Their sister was married to the landscape painter Alexander Cozens. While at Bath Pine painted his most ambitious family group,