Leiden 1613-1675 was a Dutch Golden Age painter, whose small, highly-polished paintings are typical of the Leiden fijnschilders. He specialised in genre scenes and is noted for his trompe l'oeil "niche" paintings and candlelit night-scenes with strong chiaroscuro. His first instructor in drawing and design was Bartholomew Dolendo, an engraver; and he afterwards learned the art of glass-painting under Peter Kouwhoorn. At the age of 15 he became a pupil of Rembrandt, with whom he continued for three years. From the great master of the Dutch school he acquired his skill in coloring, and in the more subtle effects of chiaroscuro; and the style of Rembrandt is reflected in several of his earlier pictures, notably in a portrait of himself at the age of 22, in the Bridge-water House gallery, and in the "Blind Tobit going to meet his Son", at Wardour Castle. At a comparatively early point in his career, however, he had formed a manner of his own distinct from, and indeed in some respects antagonistic to, that of his master. Gifted with unusual clearness of vision and precision of manipulation, he cultivated a minute and elaborate style of treatment; and probably few painters ever spent more time and pains on all the details of their pictures down to the most trivial. He is said to have spent five days in painting a hand; and his work was so fine that he found it necessary to manufacture his own brushes. Notwithstanding the minuteness of his touch, however, the general effect was harmonious and free from stiffness, and his color was always admirably fresh and transparent. He was fond of representing subjects in lantern or candle light, the effects of which he reproduced with a fidelity and skill which no other master has equaled. He frequently painted by the aid of a concave mirror, and to obtain exactness looked at his subject through a frame crossed with squares of silk thread. His practice as a portrait painter, which was at first considerable, gradually declined, sitters being unwilling to give him the time that he deemed necessary. His pictures were always small in size, and represented chiefly subjects in still life. Upwards of 200 are attributed to him, and specimens are to be found in most of the great public collections of Europe. His chef-d'oeuvre is generally considered to be The dropsical woman, 1663, and The Dutch Housewife, 1650, both in the Louvre. The Evening School, in the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum, is the best example of the candlelight scenes in which he excelled. In the National Gallery, London, favorable specimens are to be seen in the Poulterer's Shop,   Related Paintings of Gerard Dou :. | Woman Peeling Carrot | The young mother | Eremiten | The Prayer of the Spinner | Woman Pouring Water into a Jar |
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Ridolfo Schadow
1786-1822 Rome,Sculptor, son of Johann Gottfried Schadow. He trained in his father's studio in Berlin, exhibiting statues and reliefs at the Berlin Akademie exhibitions between 1802 and 1810. Work from this period included both mythological and religious subjects, such as the plaster relief The Flood (c. 1804; Berlin, Alte N.G.). In 1810, with his brother Wilhelm Schadow, Ridolfo moved to Rome, in 1811 taking over the Roman sculpture studio of Christian Daniel Rauch. Schadow's first Roman work, a statue of Paris (destr.; several copies, e.g. bronze, 1820; Potsdam, Schloss Charlottenhof) was exhibited at the Berlin Akademie in 1812, and it reveals the influence of the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. Although homesickness and lack of confidence drove Schadow briefly back to Berlin, he soon returned to Rome, along with Rauch. From this point Schadow's work is markedly individual: he brought a realistic, genre treatment to his figures, which drew on both classical tradition and the formal language of idealizing early 19th-century painting. He chose subjects that offered scope for idealization within a realistic context, as in the seated figures of a Woman Fastening her Sandals (marble, 1813; Munich, Bayer. Nmus.), a Woman Spinning (marble, 1816; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.) and a Girl with Doves (Innocence) (marble, 1820; Berlin, Alte N.G.). Under the influence of his brother Wilhelm and of Friedrich Overbeck, Schadow converted to Catholicism in 1814. His early death interrupted work on the plaster model for a sculptural group,
Charles Willson Peale
1741-1827 Painter and museum founder. After serving as a saddler's apprentice in Annapolis, MD, from 1754 to 1761, he worked at various trades, including painting signs and portraits. In 1766 some prominent Marylanders underwrote his studies in London with Benjamin West, from whom he absorbed the fundamentals of the British portrait tradition. Peale probably attended the informal life classes offered at St Martin's Lane Academy, precursor to the Royal Academy Schools, and drew from casts in the Duke of Richmond's collection in Whitehall. He visited the studios of such important British portrait painters as Joshua Reynolds, Francis Cotes and Allan Ramsay and studied the techniques of miniature painting, sculpture and engraving. In London he executed his first major commission
Isaac Fuller
c.1606--72 English painter. He was renowned in his day for large historical, mythological and biblical subjects but was also a very able portrait painter. According to Vertue, he studied under Fran?ois Perrier in France c. 1630, and in 1644 he is documented as working in Oxford, at the same time as William Dobson. There he painted altarpieces, including a Resurrection for All Souls College (a wild imitation of Michelangelo, which John Evelyn considered 'too full of nakeds for a chapel'), a Last Judgement for Magdalen College and a Last Supper for Wadham College. None of these works is known to survive. He also copied Dobson's Beheading of John the Baptist, substituting the heads with portraits of his friends. On moving to London, Fuller worked on decorative schemes for churches, taverns and private houses and continued to paint portraits. In 1654 he published a drawing book, Un libro di disegnare, with 15 etched plates, but there are no known copies. Much of his decorative work was destroyed in the Great Fire in 1666, including that in the Painters' Hall and St Mary Abchurch. Vertue admired his erotic life-size Bacchic figures in the Mitre Tavern in Fenchurch Street. Five crudely painted canvases commemorating the Adventures of Charles II after the Battle of Worcester in 1651 (London, N.P.G.) are his only surviving decorative works. Fuller's reputation as a painter rests mainly on three variants of a Rembrandtesque Self-portrait (1670; Oxford, Bodleian Lib.; Oxford, Queen's Coll