Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Philipp IV from Spain to horse | The Temle of Janus | Drunken Silenus | The Judgement of Paris | Nymphen Satyrn und Hunde |
Related Artists:
Henri Lucien Doucet
France 1856-1895 was a French figure and portrait painter, born in Paris, where he studied under Lefebvre and Boulanger, and in 1880 won the Prix de Rome. His pictures are usually piquant, sparkling representations of modern life, eminently Parisian in style, but the audacious realism of his earlier work is not maintained in his later, which is somewhat characterless. His portraits in pastel are also notable. His most widely known picture is Apres le bal (After the ball, 1889). Other excellent examples are the portraits of Madame Galli-Marie as Carmen (1884, Marseille Museum); the Princesse Mathilde and My Parents (1890, Lyons Museum); A Spanish Woman (Pontoise Museum); and a Nude Figure (1890). He was awarded a first-class medal for pastel in 1889 and the decoration of the Legion of Honor in 1891.
Israel Silvestre
French Baroque Era Engraver, 1621-1691,called the Younger to distinguish him from his father, was a prolific French draftsman, etcher and print dealer who specialized in topographical views and perspectives of famous buildings. Orphaned at an early age, he was taken in by his uncle in Paris, Israel Henriet, an etcher and printseller, and friend of Callot. Between 1630 and 1650 Silvestre travelled widely in France and Italy, which he visited three times, and later worked up his sketches as etchings, which were sold singly and in series. His work, especially of Venetian subjects published in the 1660s, influenced eighteenth-century painters of vedute such as Luca Carlevaris and Canaletto, who adapted his compositions. In 1661 he inherited the stock of plates of his uncle, the printseller Israel Henriet, among which was a large part of the works of Jacques Callot, and many of those of Stefano della Bella. In 1662 he was appointed dessinateur et graveur du Roi and in 1673 he was appointed drawing-master to Louis, le Grand Dauphin. From 1668 he was granted workshop space in the galleries of the Louvre, where the practice of housing eminent artists and craftsmen was a tradition that was originated under Henri IV. Silvestre's atelier was large: he had at least two pupils who had careers as engravers, Franqois Noblesse and Meunier, and In 1670 Charles Le Brun recommended him for membership in the Acadeemie royale de peinture et de sculpture. In 1675 his son, the artist Louis Silvestre, was born at Sceaux.
William Orpen
1870-1943