1580-1666 Frans Hals Galleries In the field of group portraiture his work is equalled only by that of Rembrandt. Hals's portraits, both individual and group, have an immediacy and brilliance that bring his sitters to life in a way previously unknown in the Netherlands. This effect, achieved by strong Baroque designs and the innovative use of loose brushstrokes to depict light on form, was not to the taste of critics in the 18th century and the early 19th, when his work was characterized as lazy and unfinished. However, with the rise of Realism and, later, Impressionism, Hals was hailed as a modern painter before his time. Since then his works have always been popular.  Related Paintings of Frans Hals :. | Portrait of a Man | Portrait of a woman | Portrait of a woman | Jacobus Zaffius WGA | Banquet of the Officers of the St George Civic Guard in Haarlem (mk08) |
Related Artists:
LA TOUR, Maurice Quentin de
French Rococo Era Painter, 1704-1788 French pastellist. He was one of the greatest pastellists of the 18th century, an equal of Jean-Simeon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Perronneau. Unlike them, however, he painted no works in oils. Reacting against the stately portraits of preceding generations and against the mythological portraits of many of his contemporaries, La Tour returned to a more realistic and sober style of work. The fundamental quality of his art lies in his ability to suggest the temperament and psychology of his subjects by means of their facial expression, and thereby to translate their fugitive emotions on to paper: 'I penetrate into the depths of my subjects without their knowing it, and capture them whole', as he himself put it. His considerable success led to commissions from the royal family, the court, the rich bourgeoisie and from literary, artistic and theatrical circles.
Largillierre
Paris 1656-1746 French painter. Following his early training in Antwerp and London, he established himself in Paris, becoming one of the most successful portrait painters of the second half of Louis XIV's reign. Although Largillierre was patronized by the Court, most of his sitters came from the wealthy middle classes; by the end of his career he had produced (by conservative estimates) some 1500 portraits. In 1734-5 and again in 1738-42 he was Directeur of the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture.
Karl Hagemeister
German, 1848-1933,German painter. He studied from 1871 at the Kunstschule in Weimar under Friedrich Preller, who introduced him to the principles of classical landscape painting. In 1873 he began to develop a more modern approach when he met Carl Schuch at the Hintersee, near Berchtesgaden; he immediately became his pupil and later wrote Schuch's biography. Schuch introduced Hagemeister to the Leibl circle (see LEIBL, WILHELM). He travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium (1873-4), Italy (1876) and France (1884-5), often accompanying Schuch and, in the early journeys, Wilhelm Trebner. His approach to landscape changed from classical Naturalism to 'pure painting', a more formalist approach in which purely pictorial qualities were given priority over naturalistic representation, as in Lake Shore (c. 1900; Schweinfurt, Samml. Schefer). His brushwork became broader, his depiction of objects became increasingly summary, and his colours lighter and cooler. Absorbing the influence of Japanese art through the interpretations of the French Impressionists, and following trends in international Art Nouveau, Hagemeister developed an individual variant of Jugendstil. His pictures were composed in accordance with decorative rather than naturalistic principles and became primarily ornamental, as in White Poppy