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 Tended by St Irene (mk05) | St Sebastian tended by St Irene | Bubende Maria Magdalena | The cheat with the ace of diamonds | Alte |
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David Cox
David Cox [English Painter, 1783-1859] English painter. After taking drawing lessons from Joseph Barber (1757/8-1811) in Birmingham, Cox worked briefly as an apprentice to a painter of lockets and snuff-boxes named Fieldler. This was followed about 1800 by a longer period painting scenery for the New Theatre, Birmingham. On the promise of similar employment at Astley's Amphitheatre in Lambeth, Cox travelled to London in 1804, but when this came to nothing he decided to make his name as a watercolour painter. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1805 and from 1809 until its demise in 1812 with the Associated Artists in Water-Colours, of which he became both member and president in 1810. He was elected an Associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in 1812 and within a month had advanced to full membership.
Johann Koler
(8 March 1826, in Vastemõisa near Suure-Jaani, Viljandi County, Estonia - 22 April 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia) was an Estonian painter. He is considered to have been the first professional Estonian painter. He distinguished himself primarily by his portraiture and to a lesser extent by his landscape paintings. Some of his most notable pictures depict the Estonian rural life in the second half of the 19th Century. Johann Köler was the seventh child born to a peasant family. Despite the poverty of the parents Köler managed to attend the elementary and the district schools in Viljandi. Then he attended a workshop of master painters in Cesis (then in Livonia). In 1846, Köler travelled to St. Petersburg to work as a sign writer, where his talent was soon discovered. From 1848 to 1855 Johan Köler studied drawing and painting at the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts. During 1857 Köler travelled to Paris via Berlin, later returned to Germany then travelled to the Netherlands and Belgium. In 1858, he travelled across the Alps to Milan, Geneva, Florence and Rome. There, he studied in a private academy and devoted his time to watercolor technique. In Rome during 1859 he presented his composition "Christ on the Cross". Answering the call of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Köler returned to the city in 1861. From 1862 to 1874 he was a teacher of the Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna, the daughter of Czar Alexander II of Russia. In 1869-1870, he worked as a lecturer at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. From 1886 to 1889 Johan Köler worked in Vienna, Nice and Paris.
ROELAS, Juan de las
Spanish painter (c. 1560-1625).