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 :. | The Harbor of Baiae with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl | Egeria beweint Numa | Deer-Hunt (mk17) | Seaport at Sunrise (mk08) | St Peter's,Rome (mk17) |
Related Artists:
Peder Balke
Peter Andersen was born on the island of Helgøya, in Hedmark county, Norway. He grew up Ringsaker, but stayed in the 1820s on the Balke farm in Toten in Oppland county. Farmers in Toten paid his education, and as thanks he decorated several of the farms in Toten on his return. They actively encouraged his painting activities and later supported him in higher education. In the autumn of 1827, Balke served as an apprentice to Heinrich August Grosch. he was also a student at the Tegneskole under Grosch and Jacob Munch. Balke signed a two year contract as an apprentice at the Danish decoration and artist Jens Funch. From autumn 1829 to spring 1833, he was a pupil of Carl Johan Fahlcrantz at the art academy in Stockholm. Balke was also a pupil of Johan Christian Dahl from 1843 to 1844. During the summer of 1830 he walked through Telemark, Rjukan, Vestfjorddalen over Røldal and Kinsarvik to Bergen, and then back over Vossevangen to Gudvangen, further over Fillefjell to Valdres and thence across the mountains to Hallingdal. All the way he painted and drew small sketches that were later developed into paintings. He also traveled to Germany, and Russia. He visited Paris and London. In Stockholm, he completed several of the paintings he had outlined of his Finnmark tour. Some of these were sold to the royal family. In 1846 he sold thirty of his paintings to Louis-Philippe of France for Versailles. Besides the 17 paintings in the National Gallery in Oslo, Peder Balke also is represented at several major art collections in Norway and Sweden.
Walter Granville Smith
Illustrator and Painter American 1870-1938
David Bailly
(1584-1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter. Bailly was born at Leyden in the Dutch Republic, the son of a Flemish immigrant, calligrapher and fencing master, Peter Bailly. As a draftsman, David was pupil of his father and the copper engraver Jacques de Gheyn. David Bailly apprenticed with a surgeon-painter Adriaan Verburg in Leiden and then with Cornelius van der Voort (1576-1624), a portrait painter in Amsterdam. According to Houbraken, in the winter of 1608, Bailly took his Grand Tour, travelling to Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Augsburg Hamburg, and via Tirol to Venice, and from there to Rome. On his return he spent five months in Venice, all the while working as a journeyman where he could, before crossing the alps again in 1609. On his return voyage, Bailly worked for several German princes including the Duke of Brunswick. Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1613, Bailly began painting still-life subjects and portraits, including self-portraits and portraits of his students and professors at the University of Leiden. He is known for making a number of vanities paintings depicting transience of this life, with such ephemeral symbols as flowers and candles. Bailly taught his nephews Harmen and Pieter Steenwijck.