RA (December 23, 1769 - August 13, 1850) was a British portrait painter and president of the Royal Academy. He was born in Dublin, of an old Catholic Irish family, and his father, a merchant, regarded the profession of a painter as an unsuitable occupation for a descendant of the Shees. Martin Shee nevertheless studied art in the Dublin Society, and came to London. There, in 1788, he was introduced by William Burke to Joshua Reynolds, on whose advice he studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1789 he exhibited his first two pictures, the "Head of an Old Man" and "Portrait of a Gentleman." Over the next ten years he steadily increased in practice. He was chosen an associate of the Royal Academy in 1798, in 1789 he married, and in 1800 he was elected a Royal Academician. He moved to George Romney's former house in Cavendish Square, and set up as his successor. Shee continued to paint with great readiness of hand and fertility of invention, although his portraits were eclipsed by more than one of his contemporaries, and especially by Thomas Lawrence. The earlier portraits of the artist are carefully finished, easy in action, with good drawing and excellent discrimination of character. They show an undue tendency to redness in the flesh painting defect which is still more apparent in his later works, in which the handling is less "square," crisp and forcible. In addition to his portraits he executed various subjects and historical works, such as Lavinia, Belisarius, his diploma picture "Prospero and Miranda", and the "Daughter of Jephthah." In 1805 he published a poem consisting of Rhymes on Art, and a second part followed in 1809. Lord Byron spoke well of it in his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Shee published another small volume of verse in 1814, entitled The Commemoration of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and other Poems, but this was less successful. He also produced a tragedy, Alasco, set in Poland. The play was accepted at Covent Garden, but was refused a licence, on the grounds that it contained treasonable allusions, and Shee angrily resolved to make his appeal to the public. He carried out his threat in 1824, but Alasco was still on the list of unacted dramas in 1911. He also published two novels - "Oldcourt" (1829, in 3 volumes) and "Cecil Hyde" (1834).  Related Paintings of Martin Archer Shee :. | The Third Duke of Portand and his Brother,Lord Edward Bentinck,with Two Horses at a Leaping Bar | The Voice of Evil (mk19) | The Trinity and Mystic Pieta | Call to Arms | San Giovanni Crisostomo Altarpiece |
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JANSSENS, Jan
Flemish painter (b. 1590, Ghent, d. after 1650, ?) Flemish painter, active also in Italy. He became a master in the painters' guild of his native Ghent in 1621, but before that he spent considerable time in Italy, particularly Rome, where he is documented in 1619 and 1620. There he became associated with the international Caravaggesque movement and was especially influenced by the paintings of the Utrecht Caravaggisti, such as Gerrit van Honthorst and Dirck van Baburen. Immediately after his return to Ghent, Janssens introduced the style of Caravaggio there. His altarpieces and other painted compositions with mercilessly realistic representations of biblical and hagiographic themes were particularly sought after for churches in and around Ghent. In these works Janssens achieved a high emotional impact by modelling the figures and objects with a strong light from a hidden source. Typical examples are the Christ Crowned with Thorns (1627; Ghent, St Peter) and the Martyrdom of St Barbara (Ghent, St Michael). Such paintings met the demand that sprang from the Counter-Reformation for strongly emotional representations of religious themes. Janssens also occasionally worked for a public that was more international in outlook, as is demonstrated by his Caritas Romana
GHEERAERTS, Marcus the Younger
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, ca.1561-1636 was an artist of the Tudor court, described as "the most important artist of quality to work in England in large-scale between Eworth and Van Dyck" He was brought to England as a child by his father Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, also a painter. He became a fashionable portraitist in the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth I under the patronage of her champion and pageant-master Sir Henry Lee, introducing a new aesthetic in English court painting that captured the essence of a sitter through close observation. He became a favorite portraitist of James I's queen Anne of Denmark, but fell out of fashion in the later 1610s. Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger was the son of the artist Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder and his wife Johanna. Hardly anything is known of the paintings of the elder Gheeraerts, although his work as a printmaker reached around Europe. Like other Protestant artists, Gheeraerts the Elder fled to England with his son to escape persecution in the Netherlands under the Duke of Alva. His wife was a Catholic and remained behind; she is assumed to have died a few years later. Father and son are recorded living with a Dutch servant in the London parish of St Mary Abchurch in 1568. On 9 September 1571, the elder Gheeraerts remarried. His new wife was Susanna de Critz, a member of an exiled family from Antwerp. It is uncertain by whom young Marcus was trained, although it is likely to have been his father; he was possibly also a pupil of Lucas de Heere. Records suggest that Marcus was active as a painter by 1586 In 1590 he married Magdalena, the sister of his stepmother Susanna and of the painter John de Critz.
LOO, Carle van
French painter (b. 1705, Nice, d. 1765, Paris).