French
1420-1479
Jean Fouquet Locations
French painter and illuminator. He is regarded as the most important French painter of the 15th century and was responsible for introducing Italian Renaissance elements into French painting. Little is known of his life, and, apart from a signed self-portrait medallion (Paris, Louvre), his only authenticated work is the Antiquit?s judaeques (Paris, Bib. N., MS. fr. 247). A corpus of works by Fouquet has therefore been established on the basis of stylistic criteria, but its exact chronology is uncertain. Related Paintings of Jean Fouquet :. | Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Faithful | Rose window, northern transept, cathedral of Chartres, France | The death of the Virgin, of The golden book of the gentleman | Portrait of Charles VII of France | The Battle between the Romans and the Carthaginians (mk05) | Related Artists:
MIERIS, Frans van, the ElderDutch painter (b. 1635, Leiden, d. 1681, Leiden).
was a Dutch genre and portrait painter. The leading member of a Leiden family of painters, his sons Jan (1660-1690) and Willem (1662?C1747) and his grandson Frans van Mieris the Younger (1689?C1763) were also accomplished genre painters. Frans was the son of Jan Bastiaans van Mieris, a goldsmith, carver of rubies and diamond setter at Leiden. His father wished to train him to his own business, but Frans preferred drawing, and took service with Abraham Toorenvliet, a glazier who kept a school of design. In his father's shop he became familiar with the ways and dress of people of distinction. His eye was fascinated in turn by the sheen of jewelry and stained glass; and, though he soon gave up the teaching of Toorenvliet for that of Gerard Dou and Abraham van den Tempel, he acquired a manner which had more of the finish of the exquisites of the Dutch school than of the breadth of the disciples of Rembrandt. It should be borne in mind that he seldom chose panels of which the size exceeded 12 to 15 inches, and whenever his name is attached to a picture above that size we may surely assign it to his son Willem or to some other imitator. Unlike Dou when he first left Rembrandt, or Jan Steen when he started on an independent career, Mieris never ventured to design figures as large as life. Characteristic of his art in its minute proportions is a shiny brightness and metallic polish. The subjects which he treated best are those in which he illustrated the habits or actions of the wealthier classes; but he sometimes succeeded in homely incidents and in portrait, and not unfrequently he ventured on allegory. He repeatedly painted the satin skirt which Ter Borch brought into fashion, and he often rivalled Ter Borch in the faithful rendering of rich and highly-coloured woven tissues. But he remained below Ter Borch and Metsu, because he had not their delicate perception of harmony or their charming mellowness of touch and tint, and he fell behind Gerard Dou, because he was hard and had not his feeling for effect by concentrated light and shade. In the form of his composition, which sometimes represents the framework of a window enlivened with greenery, and adorned with bas-reliefs within which figures are seen to the waist, his model is certainly Dou. It is a question whether Houbraken has truly recorded this master's birthday. One of his best-known pieces, a party of ladies and gentlemen at an oyster luncheon, in the Hermitage at St Petersburg, bears the date of 1650. Celebrated alike for composition and finish, it would prove that Mieris had reached his prime at the age of fifteen. Another beautiful example, the "Doctor Feeling a Lady's Pulse" in the gallery of Vienna, is dated 1656; and Waagen, in one of his critical essays, justly observes that it is a remarkable production for a youth of twenty-one. In 1657 Mieris was married at Leiden in the presence of Jan Potheuck, a painter, and this is the earliest written record of his existence on which we can implicitly rely. Of the numerous panels by Mieris, twenty-nine at least are dated--the latest being an allegory, long in the Ruhl collection at Cologne, illustrating what he considered the kindred vices of drinking, smoking and dicing, in the year 1680. Mieris had numerous and distinguished patrons. He received valuable commissions from Archduke Leopold, the elector-palatine, and Cosimo III de' Medici, grand-duke of Tuscany. His practice was large and lucrative, but never engendered in him either carelessness or neglect. If there be a difference between the painter's earlier and later work, it is that the former was clearer and more delicate in flesh, whilst the latter was often darker and more livid in the shadows. When he died his clients naturally went over to his son Willem, who in turn bequeathed his painting-room to his son Frans. But neither Willem nor Frans the younger equalled Frans the elder.
Marie-Guillemine BenoistParis 1768-1826
was a French neoclassical, historical and genre painter. She was born in Paris, the daughter of a civil servant. Her training as an artist began in 1781 under Élisabeth Vigee Le Brun, and she entered Jacques-Louis David's atelier in 1786 along with her sister Marie-Élisabeth Laville-Leroux. The poet Charles-Albert Demoustier, who met her in 1784, was inspired by her in creating the character Émile in his work Lettres Émilie sur la mythologie (1801). In 1791 she exhibited for the first time in the Salon de Paris, displaying her mythology-inspired picture Psych faisant ses adieux sa famille. Another of her paintings of this period, L'Innocence entre la vertu et le vice, is similarly mythological and reveals her feminist interests in this picture, vice is represented by a man, although it was traditionally represented by a woman. In 1793, she married the lawyer Pierre-Vincent Benoist. Her work, reflecting the influence of Jacques-Louis David, tended increasingly toward history painting by 1795. In 1800, she exhibited Portrait d'une negresse in the Salon. Six years previously, slavery had been abolished, and this image became a symbol for women's emancipation and black people's rights. This picture was acquired by Louis XVIII for France in 1818. An important commission, for a full-length portrait of Napol on Bonaparte Premier Consul Français in this period was awarded to her in 1803. This portrait was to be sent to the city of Ghent, newly ceded to France by the Treaty of Luneville in 1801. Other honors came to her; she was awarded a Gold Medal in the Salon of 1804, and received a governmental allowance. During this time she opened an atelier for the artistic training of women. Her career was harmed by political developments, however, when her husband, the convinced royalist count Benoist, was nominated in the Conseil d'État during the post-1814 monarchy come-back called the Bourbon Restoration.
Antonin Chittussi(1 December 1847 - 1 May 1891) was a Czech Impressionist landscape painter.
He was born in Ronov nad Doubravou to a Czech mother and a father of Italian descent. He was fascinated by the landscape of South Bohemia and of the Bohemian and Moravian Highlands. In particular, his smaller pictures replete with quick, easy brushstrokes are among the most admired of Czech landscape painting. He died in Prague.