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 :. | Equestrian Portrait of the Duke of Lerma, | Apotheose des Herkules | Fustus Lipsius and his Pupils or The Four Pbilosopbers (mk01) | Return from the Fields | The Garden of Love |
Related Artists:
Daniel Mijtens
(Delft, c. 1590 - The Hague, 1647/48), known in England as Daniel Mytens the Elder, was a Dutch portrait painter who spent the central years of his career working in England. He was born in Delft into a family of artists and trained in The Hague, possibly in the studio of Van Mierevelt. He was the nephew of the painter Aert Mijtens, the older brother of the painter Isaac Mijtens, and the father of the painter Daniel Mijtens the Younger. No known work survives from his first Dutch period. By 1618, he had moved to London where his initial patron was the leading art collector Thomas Howard, 21st Earl of Arundel. Mijtens painted the Earl and his Countess, and was soon commissioned to paint King James I and his son Charles, Prince of Wales. In 1625 he became painter to Charles I. After the prince's accession to the throne as Charles I in 1625 Mijtens produced such a large number of full length portraits of Charles I and his courtiers, including duplicates, that it is assumed that he had workshop assistance. Two of his finest portraits are of the same man, James Hamilton later 1st Duke of Hamilton, whom he painted as a seventeen year old in 1623 and again in 1629. Mijtens made visits to the Netherlands in 1626 and 1630, perhaps to study the latest developments in his field, more particularly the works of Rubens and Van Dyck. Mijtens introduced a new naturalism into the English court portrait, but after the arrival in England of the far more distinguished Anthony Van Dyck in 1632 he was superseded as the leading court portraitist, and around 1634 he appears to have returned to the Netherlands permanently. He subsequently worked primarily as an art dealer in The Hague, acquiring works for the Earl of Arundel among others. Only four paintings survive from this final period. Some of Mijtens' works are still owned by the Royal Family. Mitjens also made copies of old portraits of royal sitters including; James IV of Scotland, his wife Margaret Tudor, and Mary, Queen of Scots.
Wilhelm Leibl
German Realist Painter, 1844-1900 German painter, draughtsman and etcher. In 1861 he abandoned his apprenticeship as a locksmith in order to train as a precision instrument maker, though a month or so later he decided to train as an artist, at first under the Cologne history painter and writer Hermann Becker (1817-85). In 1863 he moved to Munich; he studied there from March 1864, at the Akademie der Bildenden K?nste, initially under Philipp von Foltz and Alexander Straehuber, drawing from plaster casts, and later in Hermann Ansch?tz's painting class. Here, Arthur von Ramberg (1819-75) stimulated Leibl's sensitivity to colour; and Karl Theodor von Piloty encouraged him to observe reality and incorporate its lessons boldly into compositions on historical themes. From the start, however, Leibl tended to think of his pictures in terms of form rather than content. While at the Akademie he first reached a standard of excellence with his draughtmanship, which is notable for its directness and objectivity. As an artist, Leibl's early works were not especially promising. However, as occurred throughout his career, a long period of mediocrity was crowned by an unexpected masterpiece, such as his portrait drawing of Aunt Josepha (c. 1864; Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.). This is particularly striking for Leibl's use of the hands to add to the expression of the sitter's character and mood, a device he was to use frequently in later work. In Munich, Leibl supplemented the teaching of the Akademie by studying the works of the Old Masters in the Alte Pinakothek: he paid particular attention to painters of the Baroque period such as van Dyck, Cornelis de Vos and Rubens, and also to other great masters of portraiture such as Frans Hals and Vel?zquez. The presentation of the subject found in such works is reflected in Leibl's portrait of Frau Gedon (1869; Munich, Neue Pin.). When the work was shown at the Grossen Internationale Kunstausstellung in Munich in 1869 it was singled out as the best oil painting of the exhibition by Gustave Courbet and, as a result, Leibl was honoured with an invitation to Paris, where he arrived on 13 November 1869.
Hermon Atkins Macneil
American Sculptor, 1866-1947,American sculptor, b. Chelsea, Mass., studied in Paris and in Rome. His first work of importance was for the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, but he is perhaps best known for his Native Americans and Western pioneers. Among his monuments are The Coming of the White Man (Portland, Oreg.); the McKinley Memorial (Columbus, Ohio); the Soldiers and Sailors Monument (Albany, N.Y.); and the Marquette Memorial (Chicago). Among smaller sculptures is The Sun Vow (Metropolitan Mus.).