Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1628-1682 Ruysdael's favorite subjects are simple woodland scenes, similar to those of Everdingen and Hobbema. He is especially noted as a painter of trees, and his rendering of foliage, particularly of oak leaf age, is characterized by the greatest spirit and precision. His views of distant cities, such as that of Haarlem in the possession of the marquess of Bute, and that of Katwijk in the Glasgow Corporation Galleries, clearly indicate the influence of Rembrandt. He frequently painted coast-scenes and sea-pieces, but it is in his rendering of lonely forest glades that we find him at his best. The subjects of certain of his mountain scenes seem to be taken from Norway, and have led to the supposition that he had traveled in that country. We have, however, no record of such a journey, and the works in question are probably merely adaptations from the landscapes of Van Everdingen, whose manner he copied at one period. Only a single architectural subject from his brush is known--an admirable interior of the New Church, Amsterdam. The prevailing hue of his landscapes is a full rich green, which, however, has darkened with time, while a clear grey tone is characteristic of his seapieces. The art of Ruysdael, while it shows little of the scientific knowledge of later landscapists, is sensitive and poetic in sentiment, and direct and skillful in technique. Figures are sparingly introduced into his compositions, and such as occur are believed to be from the pencils of Adriaen van de Velde, Philip Wouwerman, and Jan Lingelbach. Unlike the other great Dutch landscape painters, Ruysdael did not aim at a pictorial record of particular scenes, but he carefully thought out and arranged his compositions, introducing into them an infinite variety of subtle contrasts in the formation of the clouds, the plants and tree forms, and the play of light. He particularly excelled in the painting of cloudscapes which are spanned dome-like over the landscape, and determine the light and shade of the objects. Goethe lauded him as a poet among painters, and his work shows some of the sensibilities the Romantics would later celebrate.  Related Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael :. | Waterfall with Castle Built on the Rock | Sailing vessels in a Fresh Breeze | Dune Landfscape | Grove of Large Oak trees at the Edge of a pond | The Tempest (mk05) |
Related Artists:
Andrea del Castagno
Italian c1421-1457 Andrea del Castagno Location Italian c1421-1457 Andrea del Castagno Location Italian painter. He was the most influential 15th-century Florentine master, after Masaccio, of the realistic rendering of the figure and the representation of the human body as a three-dimensional solid by means of contours. By translating into the terms of painting the statues of the Florentine sculptors Nanni di Banco and Donatello, Castagno set Florentine painting on a course dominated by line (the Florentine tradition of disegno), the effect of relief and the sculptural depiction of the figure that became its distinctive trait throughout the Italian Renaissance, a trend that culminated in the art of Michelangelo.
Anastagio Fontebuoni
Firenze 1571 -1626
Louis Michel van Loo
Louis-Michel van Loo (2 March 1707-20 March 1771) was a French painter. He studied under his father, the painter Jean-Baptiste van Loo, at Turin and Rome, and he won a prize at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris in 1725. With his uncle, the painter Charles-Andre van Loo, he went to Rome in 1727 - 1732, and in 1736 he became court painter to Philip V of Spain at Madrid, where he was a founder-member of the Academy in 1752. He returned to Paris in 1753, and painted many portraits of Louis XV of France. In 1765 he succeeded Charles-Andre as director of the special school of the French academy known as the Ecole Royale des Eleves Proteges. In 1766 he made the portrait of the Portuguese statesman Sebastiao de Melo, Marquis of Pombal. Among his brothers were the painters Francois van Loo (1708 - 1732) and Charles-Amedee-Philippe van Loo (1719 - 1795).