1478-1534
Flemish
Jan Gossaert Mabuse Galleries Related Paintings of Jan Gossaert Mabuse :. | Portrait of a Man with a Rosary | Virgin and Child | Danae | Neptune and Amphitrite | Neptune and Amphitrite | Related Artists:
William Buelow GouldBotanical artist and Natural history artist
Australian, 1801-1853
John Seymour Lucas(21 December 1849 - 8 May 1923) was a Victorian English historical and portrait painter as well as an accomplished theatrical costume designer. He was born into an artistic London family, and originally trained as a woodcarver, but turned his attention to portrait painting and entered first the St. Martin's Lane Art School and later the Royal Academy Schools. Here he met his French wife, fellow artist Marie Cornelissen, whom he married in 1877. Lucase artistic education included extensive travels around Europe, particularly Holland and Spain, where he studied the Flemish and Spanish Masters. He first started exhibiting in 1872, was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy in 1876 and a full Royal Academician in 1898.
John Seymour Lucas was first and foremost a historical genre painter with a particular talent for realism in the depiction of costumes and interiors. Inspired by van Dyck and particularly Diego Velezquez, he excelled in depicting scenes from the English 16th to 18th century Tudor and Stuart periods, including in particular the Spanish Armada, Preparing for the Voyage, the English Civil War and the Jacobite rebellions.
His first major work to achieve widespread public acclaim was Rebel Hunting after Culloden, executed in 1884. It was praised not only for the obvious tension between the muscular blacksmiths and the redcoated forces of law and order (or repression) but for the extraordinary realism in the depiction of the rough smithy and glowing horsehoe on the anvil. In 1885 his next major work whas "Preparing for the Voyage".
As his reputation grew, Lucas increasingly mixed in society circles, and became firm friends with the famous society portrait painter John Singer Sargent who was his almost exact contemporary. A portrait of Lucas executed by John Singer Sargent is displayed in Tate Britain. Towards the 1890s John Seymour Lucas executed a number of major works for prestigious public buildings or royal clients. These include: The Flight of the Five Members (Houses of Parliament), The Granting of the Charter of the City of London (Royal Exchange), Reception by HM King Edward VII of the Moorish Ambassador (Royal Collection), HRH the Prince of Wales in German Uniform (Royal Collection)
Apart from executing over 100 major oil paintings and a host of drawings, Lucas was renowned as a set and costume designer for the historical dramas popular on the late Victorian and early Edwardian stages. One of his more unusual commissions was the "Duke of Normandy" costume for the ill-fated prince Alfred of Saxe Coburg-Gotha for the Devonshire House Ball in 1897. Lucas was also a prolific watercolour painter and was elected a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1877.
During most of his artistic career, John Seymour Lucas lived in a purpose-built studio in South Hampstead, London, designed for him by his friend and fellow artist, architect Sydney Williams-Lee.
He retired from painting towards the end of World War I, and moved to Blythburgh, Suffolk, where re-designed a house next to the church known as 'The Priory'. Lucas died in 1923 and is interred in Blythburgh church yard. His son, Sydney Seymour Lucas, was also an artist, and illustrator.
Robert Havell Jr Prints1793-1878
Engraver and painter, cousin of William Havell. He learnt the art of aquatint engraving from his father, Robert Havell I. He worked first in the family engraving business and then c. 1825-7 with Colnaghi in London. In 1827 he undertook the execution in aquatint of the plates for John James Audubon Birds of America, published in parts in London between 1827 and 1838. Havell engraved 425 of the plates and reworked the ten that had been engraved by William Home Lizars in Edinburgh. Havell father printed and coloured some of the double elephant folio sheets in 1827-8 after which Havell took on those tasks himself, establishing himself as a master of aquatint. Among his other important works in the medium are the plates for Mrs E. Bury Selection of Hexandrian Plants (London, 1831-4). In 1839, at Audubon invitation, Havell moved with his family to New York and embarked on a new career as a landscape painter in the style of the Hudson River school, while also working as an engraver. He settled in the Hudson River villages of Ossining (1841) and Tarrytown (1857) but painted throughout north-eastern America. View of Deerfield, Massachusetts (1847; Hist. Deerfield, MA) is characteristic of his quietly romantic idealization of his subjects. Niagara Falls from the Chinese Pagoda (1845; New York, Pub. Lib.), engraved by Havell after one of his paintings, is among the best known of his American aquatints. Though his reputation rests largely on his work for Audubon, his original subjects gave him greater opportunities to display the full range of his aquatint technique.
Part of the Havell family