German 1497-1543 Hans Holbein Galleries Holbein always made highly detailed pencil drawings of his portrait subjects, often supplemented with ink and colored chalk. The drawings emphasize facial detail and usually did not include the hands; clothing was only indicated schematically. The outlines of these drawings were then transferred onto the support for the final painting using tiny holes in the paper through which powdered charcoal was transmitted; in later years Holbein used a kind of carbon paper. The final paintings thus had the same scale as the original drawings. Although the drawings were made as studies for paintings, they stand on their own as independent, finely wrought works of art. How many portraits have been lost can be seen from Holbein's book (nearly all pages in the Royal Collection) containing preparatory drawings for portraits - of eighty-five drawings, only a handful have surviving Holbein paintings, though often copies have survived. David Hockney has speculated in the Hockney-Falco thesis that Holbein used a concave mirror to project an image of the subject onto the drawing surface. The image was then traced. However this thesis has not met with general acceptance from art historians. A subtle ability to render character may be noted in Holbein's work, as can be seen in his portraits of Thomas Cromwell, Desiderius Erasmus, and Henry VIII. The end results are convincing as definitive images of the subjects' appearance and personality.  Related Paintings of Hans Holbein :. | John | Portrait of Edward VI as a Child | Portrait of Sir Richard Southwell | With squirrels and birds swept Europe and the portrait of woman | Christina of Denmark Duchess of Milan |
Related Artists:
Henry Gritten
Australian Landscape artist 1818-1873 was an English/Australian artist. Gritten was the son of a London picture dealer, was born probably in 1817. He studied art and was on friendly terms with David Roberts and other leading artists of the period. He began exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1835, and during the next 10 years 12 of his pictures were hung at its exhibitions. He was a more frequent exhibitor at the British Institution, and had 30 of his pictures hung there between 1836 and 1848. In the latter year he went to the United States and in about 1852 arrived in Australia. He went first to the Bendigo goldfields, but soon resumed painting in Victoria and Tasmania; there is a View of Hobart in 1857 by him at the National Library of Australia at Canberra. He was represented at the first exhibition of the Victorian Academy of Art held at Melbourne in 1870. He died suddenly at Melbourne leaving a widow and four children in poor circumstances. Gritten was quite a capable painter of his period who had a hard struggle in Australia.
Willem Claesz Heda
1594-1682 Dutch Willem Claesz Heda Galleries Dutch painter. He was a still-life painter, who, like Pieter Claesz., is noted for his monochrome breakfast-pieces, which are, however, more opulent than those of Claesz. Heda earliest dated work is a Vanitas (1621; The Hague, Mus. Bredius), which shows a still-life from a high viewpoint, composed of various objects bearing vanitas associations (e.g. a bowl of glowing embers, smoker requisites, an overturned glass and a skull); the colouring is in brownish-grey tones and represents one of the earliest examples of a Dutch monochrome still-life (monochrome refers to the range of tones, rather than of colours). Even in this early work Heda skill at painting textures is evident. A more balanced composition is achieved in another Still-life (1629; The Hague, Mauritshuis) and in the Breakfast Table (1631; Dresden, Gemeldegal. Alte Meister), in both of which the objects, set against a neutral background, are linked by a strong diagonal. The Mauritshuis still-life also gives an early indication of Heda interest in painting the effects of light. In 1631 he became a member of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke (of which he served as deacon on several occasions after 1637).
Wybrand Hendriks
(June 24, 1744, Amsterdam - January 28, 1831, Haarlem), was a Dutch painter and the concierge of the Teylers Museum. According to the RKD he learned to paint while working for the decorative wall paper factory of J. Remmers in Amsterdam. From 1786 to 1819 he was the second concierge ("kastelein") of the Teyler's Stichting in Haarlem, where he lived at the "Fundatiehuis" as curator of the art collection, with his studio in the old drawing room of Teyler's drawing academy, which had itself been moved to the city hall. He assumed the position in 1785 after his predecessor Vincent Jansz van der Vinne had left in disagreement with Martin van Marum, the head of the fossil and instrument collections. As curator, he managed to purchase an important collection of Italian drawings from the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden in 1790. He is known for portraits, landscapes, and flower still lifes in the manner of Jan van Huysum.