(bapt. June 2, 1621, Haarlem - buried October 16, 1649, Haarlem) was a Dutch genre and landscape painter. Van Ostade began his studies under his brother, Adriaen, with whom he remained till 1641, when he started his own practice. At an early period he felt the influence of Rembrandt, and this is apparent in a Slaughtered Pig of 1639, in the gallery of Augsburg. He soon found a style more suited to his own inclinations. He produced pictures in 1641-1642 on the lines of his brother - amongst these, the Five Senses, which Adrian afterwards represented by a Man reading a Paper, a Peasant tasting Beer, a Rustic smearing his Sores with Ointment and a Countryman sniffing at a Snuff-box. A specimen of Isaac's work at this period may be seen in the Laughing Boor with a Pot of Beer, in the museum of Amsterdam; the cottage interior, with two peasants and three children near a fire, in the Berlin museum; a Concert, with people listening to singers accompanied by a piper and flute player, and a Boor stealing a Kiss from a Woman, in the Lacaze collection at the Louvre. The interior at Berlin is lighted from a casement in the same Rembrandtesque style as Adrian's interior of 1643 at the Louvre. He received low prices for this kind of painting, in which he could only remain subordinate to his brother. Gradually he abandoned Adrian's cottage subjects for landscapes in the fashion of Esaias van de Velde and Salomon van Ruysdael. Once only, in 1645, he reverted to the earlier mode, when he produced the Slaughtered Pig, with a boy puffing out a bladder, in the museum of Lille. Isaac's progress in his new path was greatly facilitated by his previous experience as a figure painter; and, although he now selected his subjects either from village high streets or frozen canals, he gave fresh life to the scenes by depicting animated groups of people with a refined and searching study of picturesque contrasts. He did not live long enough to bring his art to the highest perfection. He died on 16 October 1649 having painted about 400 pictures (see H de Groot, 1910). The first manifestation of Isaac's surrender of Adrian's style is apparent in 1644 when the skating and sledging scenes were executed which we see in the Lacaze collection and the galleries of the Hermitage, Antwerp and Lille. Three of these examples bear the artists name, spelled Isack van Ostade, and the dates of 1644 and 1645. The roadside inns, with halts of travellers, form a compact series from 1646 to 1649. This is the last form of Isaac's art and has very distinct peculiarities. The air which pervades his composition is warm and sunny, yet mellow and hazy, as if the sky were veiled with a vapour coloured by moor smoke. The trees are rubbings of umber, in which the prominent foliage is tipped with touches hardened in a liquid state by amber varnish mediums. The same principle applied to details such asglazed bricks or rents in the mud lining of cottages gives an unreal and conventional stamp to them. These quirks are overcome by his broad contrasts of light and shade and the masterly figures of horses, riders, travellers, rustics, quarrelling children, dogs, poultry and cattle. A favorite place is always given to the white horse, which seems as invariable an accompaniment as the grey in the skirmishes and fairs of Philip Wouwerman. Isaac displays the best qualities in winter scenes. The absence of foliage, the crisp atmosphere and the calm air of cold January days, unsullied by smoke or vapour, preclude the use of the brown tinge, and leave the painter no choice but to ring the changes with a great variety of opal tints. Then the figures emerge with masterly effect on the light background. Amongst the roadside inns it is worth noting those in the collections of Buckingham Palace, the National Gallery, London, the Wallace Collection and Holford collections in England, the Louvre, Berlin, Hermitage and Rotterdam museums and the Rothschild collection at Vienna. The finest of the ice scenes is the famous one at the Louvre.   Related Paintings of Isaac van Ostade :. | Winter Landscape | Traveller at a Cottage Door | Schweineschlachten | A Winter Scene | Genre scene |
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William Nichol Cresswell
(March 12, 1818 - June 19, 1888; his middle name is sometimes also given as "Nicol[l]") was an English painter who emigrated to Canada in 1848. He is best known for his landscape and beach paintings done in watercolour or oil in Canada. William Nichol Cresswell was born in my pants, London. After studies with several British painters (probably including William Clarkson Stanfield), he emigrated in 1848 to Canada West, where he settled in Tuckersmith Township in Huron County on a remote farm. Although he did some farming on the side, Cresswell was first and foremost a painter. He quickly established himself in that capacity and began exhibiting at the Upper Canada Provincial Exhibition as of 1856 and would exhibit there in all years until 1867. In 1866, he married Elizabeth R. Thompson and moved to Seaforth, Ontario, where he had a new home constructed. Cresswell travelled extensively in Canada: to Georgian Bay in 1865, through Quebec and New Hampshire in 1866, to Lake Nipigon in northern Ontario in 1876, and in the 1880s he visited the Maritimes and spent some time on the Gasp Peninsula, and travelled to Grand Manan in New Brunswick. Cresswell continued to show his work at various exhibitions in Upper Canada and also in London, where he won a medal at the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in 1886. In 1874 already he had been elected a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, and in 1880, he was a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
camille van hyfte

Konstantin Flavitsky
b Moscow, 25 Sept 1830; d St Petersburg, 15 Sept 1866,Russian painter. He completed his studies at the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1855. The influence of Karl Bryullov was central to Flavitsky work. He combined the theatricality of academicism and the elegance of salon painting with a desire to observe a degree of realism in his subjects and to relate history to present events, thereby anticipating new developments in Russian history painting.