Dutch 1495-1562 Jan Van Scorel Galleries Jan van Scorel (1495, Schoorl - December 6, 1562, Utrecht) was an influential Dutch painter credited with the introduction of High Italian Renaissance art to the Netherlands. It is not known whether he began his studies under Jan Gossaert in Utrecht or with Jacob Cornelisz in Amsterdam, but it certain that it was the master painters he would meet later in his life who would have the greatest effect on his technique. Van Scorel began traveling through Europe in his early twenties, first heading to Nuremberg and then to Austria. It was there, in 1520, that he completed his first representative work, the "Sippenaltar" in St. Martin's church in the village of Obervellach. Giorgione served as a considerable influence on van Scorel during a tenure in Venice. Upon leaving Venice, van Scorel passed through Rome and made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His experiences in Jerusalem are depicted in many of his later works. In 1521, van Scorel returned to Rome where he met Pope Adrian VI, who appointed him painter to the Vatican. He himself sat for a portrait. Van Scorel enjoyed the influence of Michelangelo and Raphael, and succeeded Raphael as Keeper of the Belvedere. Upon his return to the Netherlands in 1524, he settled in Haarlem where he began a successful career as a painter and a teacher. Van Scorel was a very educated man and skilled as an engineer and an architect, as well as an artist. He was also multi-lingual, no doubt as a result of his travels. Considered to be the leading Netherlandish Romanist, van Scorel moved to Ghent for painting contracts before moving to Utrecht for the same reason, where he died in 1562, leaving behind a wealth of portraits and altarpieces. Though many of his works fell victim to the Iconoclasm in 1566, some still remain and can be seen primarily at museums in the Netherlands.  Related Paintings of Jan van Scorel :. | huvud av ung flicka | Mary Magdalene. | Head of a Young Girl | Lucretia | Landscape with Bathsheba |
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Alphonse Mucha
1860-1939 Czech Alfons Maria Mucha was born in the town of Ivančice, Moravia (today's region of Czech Republic). His singing abilities allowed him to continue his education through high school in the Moravian capital of Brno, even though drawing had been his first love since childhood. He worked at decorative painting jobs in Moravia, mostly painting theatrical scenery, then in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a leading Viennese theatrical design company, while informally furthering his artistic education. When a fire destroyed his employer's business in 1881 he returned to Moravia, doing freelance decorative and portrait painting. Count Karl Khuen of Mikulov hired Mucha to decorate Hrusovany Emmahof Castle with murals, and was impressed enough that he agreed to sponsor Mucha's formal training at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. Poster of Maude Adams as Joan of Arc, 1909Mucha moved to Paris in 1887, and continued his studies at Academie Julian and Academie Colarossi while also producing magazine and advertising illustrations. Around Christmas 1894, Mucha happened to drop into a print shop where there was a sudden and unexpected demand for a new poster to advertise a play starring Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous actress in Paris, at the Theatre de la Renaissance. Mucha volunteered to produce a lithographed poster within two weeks, and on 1 January 1895, the advertisement for Gismonda appeared on the streets of the city. It was an overnight sensation and announced the new artistic style and its creator to the citizens of Paris. Bernhardt was so satisfied with the success of that first poster that she entered into a 6 years contract with Mucha. Mucha produced a flurry of paintings, posters, advertisements, and book illustrations, as well as designs for jewellery, carpets, wallpaper, and theatre sets in what was initially called the Mucha Style but became known as Art Nouveau. Mucha's works frequently featured beautiful healthy young women in flowing vaguely Neoclassical looking robes, often surrounded by lush flowers which sometimes formed haloes behind the women's heads. In contrast with contemporary poster makers he used paler pastel colors. The 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris diffused the "Mucha style" internationally. He decorated the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pavilion and collaborated in the Austrian one. His Art Nouveau style was often imitated. However, this was a style that Mucha attempted to distance himself from throughout his life; he insisted always that, rather than adhering to any fashionable stylistic form, his paintings came purely from within and Czech art. He declared that art existed only to communicate a spiritual message, and nothing more; hence his frustration at the fame he gained through commercial art, when he wanted always to concentrate on more lofty projects that would ennoble art and his birthplace.
BRAY, Dirck
Dutch painter, Haarlem school (active 1651-1678)
Henry Merwin Shrady
American Sculptor, 1871-1922,was the sculptor of the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in Washington, D.C. Shrady was born in New York City. His father, George Shrady, was one of the physicians who attended former president Ulysses S. Grant during the struggle with throat cancer that led to his death on July 23, 1885. Shrady graduated from Columbia University in 1894 and spent one year thereafter at Columbia's law school. He left law school to join with his brother-in-law, Jay Gould (son of millionaire Edwin Gould, the financier), at the Continental Match Company. The company failed and Shrady contracted typhoid fever which diverted him forever from the business world. His recuperation left spare time to pursue a growing interest in art. Shrady's wife, Harrie Moore, submitted some of his paintings to an exhibition of the National Academy of Design without his knowledge and they sold quickly. He then began to teach himself sculpture using zoo animals and his pets as models. Shrady and architect William Casey Pearce won the competition to build the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial in 1902. In the twelve years Shrady spent executing the memorial, he studied biology at the American Museum of Natural History and dissected horses to gain a better understanding of animal anatomy.