French 1600-1682 Claude Lorrain Galleries In Rome, not until the mid-17th century were landscapes deemed fit for serious painting. Northern Europeans, such as the Germans Elsheimer and Brill, had made such views pre-eminent in some of their paintings (as well as Da Vinci in his private drawings or Baldassarre Peruzzi in his decorative frescoes of vedute); but not until Annibale Carracci and his pupil Domenichino do we see landscape become the focus of a canvas by a major Italian artist. Even with the latter two, as with Lorrain, the stated themes of the paintings were mythic or religious. Landscape as a subject was distinctly unclassical and secular. The former quality was not consonant with Renaissance art, which boasted its rivalry with the work of the ancients. The second quality had less public patronage in Counter-Reformation Rome, which prized subjects worthy of "high painting," typically religious or mythic scenes. Pure landscape, like pure still-life or genre painting, reflected an aesthetic viewpoint regarded as lacking in moral seriousness. Rome, the theological and philosophical center of 17th century Italian art, was not quite ready for such a break with tradition. In this matter of the importance of landscape, Lorrain was prescient. Living in a pre-Romantic era, he did not depict those uninhabited panoramas that were to be esteemed in later centuries, such as with Salvatore Rosa. He painted a pastoral world of fields and valleys not distant from castles and towns. If the ocean horizon is represented, it is from the setting of a busy port. Perhaps to feed the public need for paintings with noble themes, his pictures include demigods, heroes and saints, even though his abundant drawings and sketchbooks prove that he was more interested in scenography. Lorrain was described as kind to his pupils and hard-working; keenly observant, but an unlettered man until his death. The painter Joachim von Sandrart is an authority for Claude's life (Academia Artis Pictoriae, 1683); Baldinucci, who obtained information from some of Claude's immediate survivors, relates various incidents to a different effect (Notizie dei professoni del disegno). John Constable described Claude Lorrain as "the most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw", and declared that in Claude??s landscape "all is lovely ?C all amiable ?C all is amenity and repose; the calm sunshine of the heart"  Related Paintings of Claude Lorrain :. | Port Scene with the Departure of Ulysses from the Land of the Feaci fdg | The Rest on the Flight into Egypt | Landscape with Abraham Expelling Hagar (mk17) | The Disembarkation of Cleopatra at Tarsus dfg | Landschaft mit der Nymphe Egeria und Konig Numa |
Related Artists:
Simon de Vos
Simon de Vos (Antwerp, 20 October 1603-15 October 1676, Antwerp) was a Flemish Baroque painter of genre and cabinet pictures. De Vos studied with Cornelis de Vos (1603-76), to whom he is not related, from 1615 until 1620. In 1620 he joined Antwerp's guild of St. Luke, and then he probably travelled to Rome where he came under the influence of the "low-life" genre paintings of the Bentvueghels and the bambocciate. A Caravaggesque influence, by way of the German painter Johann Liss active in Italy during the 1620s is discernible in De Vos's paintings from this time on. In contrast to the earlier "low-life" paintings, works from the late 1620s until around 1640, which were made after returning to Antwerp, are mostly small "merry company" and courtly genre scenes reminiscent of contemporary Dutch painters Dirck Hals and Pieter Codde. After 1640, De Vos turned away from genre scenes altogether and painted mostly small cabinet paintings of history subjects, influenced stylistically at first by Peter Paul Rubens and then increasingly by Anthony van Dyck. Examples include The Beheading of St. Paul (1648) in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp. He married Catharina van Utrecht, the sister of Adriaen van Utrecht, in 1628.
James McDougal Hart
(May 10, 1828 - October 24, 1901), was a Scottish-born American landscape and cattle painter of the Hudson River School. His older brother, William Hart, was also a Hudson River School artist, and the two painted similar subjects. Hart was born in Kilmarnock, Scotland, and was taken to America with his family in early youth. In Albany, New York he trained with a sign and carriage maker possibly the same employer that had taken on his brother in his early career. Unlike his brother, however, James returned to Europe for serious artistic training. He studied in Munich, and was a pupil of Friedrich Wilhelm Schirmer in Dusseldorf. Hart returned to America in 1853. He exhibited his first work at the National Academy of Design in 1848, became an associate in 1857 and a full member in 1859. James Hart was particularly devoted to the National Academy, exhibiting there over a period of more than forty years, and serving as vice president late in his life from 1895 to 1899. Like his brother, James also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association (he lived for a time in Brooklyn) and at major exhibitions around the country. Along with most of the major landscape artists of the time, Hart based his operations in New York City and adopted the style of the Hudson River School. While James Hart and his brother William often painted similar landscape subjects, James may have been more inclined to paint exceptionally large works. An example is The Old Homestead (1862), 42 x 68 inches, in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. James may have been exposed to large paintings while studying in D??sseldorf, a center of realist art pedagogy that also shaped the practices of Albert Bierstadt and Worthington Whittredge. William Hart, who did not seek academic European training, seems to have been more comfortable painting small and mid-sized works. Like his brother William, James excelled at painting cattle. Kevin J. Avery writes, "the bovine subjects that once distinguished [his works] now seem the embodiment of Hart's artistic complacency." In contrast with the complacency of some of his cattle scenes, his major landscape paintings are considered important works of the Hudson River School.
Francis Grant
Scottish Painter, 1803-1878 Scottish portrait painter. He was self-taught in painting, for which he abandoned a career in law. He began as a painter of hunting scenes (The Melton Hunt and The Cottesmore Hunt) but gained success as a fashionable portrait painter. Among his sitters were Scott, Macaulay, Disraeli, Palmerston, and Landseer. Sir Francis was president (1866 C 78) of the Royal Academy.