1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | St Sebastian Attended by St Irene | Petrus | Hurdy-Gurdy Player (mk08) | Frau mit dem Floh | St Sebastian Attended by St Irene (mk08) |
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Theodor Kalide
1801 Konigshutte-1863 Gleiwitz,German sculptor. At the age of 15 he was apprenticed at the K?nigliche Eisengiesserei in Gleiwitz, where he soon began sculpting cast-iron plaques. In 1819 Johann Gottfried Schadow summoned him to Berlin, where he was instructed in chasing by Cou? and worked in the Berlin Eisengiesserei. In 1821 he transferred to the studio of Christian Daniel Rauch. Following Rauch's example and under his influence, Kalide produced such large animal sculptures as the Resting Lion and the Sleeping Lion (several casts, e.g. zinc, 1824; Berlin, Schloss Kleinglienicke). From 1826 to 1830 Kalide worked on equestrian statuettes, including those of Frederick William II (zinc), after the model by Emanuel Bardou (1744-1818), and Frederick William III (e.g. cast iron; both Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, Schinkel-Pav.). In 1830 he became a member of the Berlin Akademie. His most popular works included the life-size bronze group Boy with a Swan (1836), which was installed on the Pfaueninsel in Berlin as a fountain (several casts, all untraced). Kalide achieved wide recognition and aroused violent controversy with his almost life-size marble figure Bacchante on the Panther (1848; Berlin, Schinkelmus., badly damaged). This work transgressed the accepted boundaries of classical art, above all in the figure's provocative pose, and was perceived as shocking. In its uninhibited sensuality and its blending of the human and the animal, it offended the conservative Berlin public, and consequently Kalide received few new commissions. He had no success with competition designs and became increasingly embittered. He spent his last years at Gleiwitz, where he died.