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 :. | The Rape of the Sabine Women | Rainbow Landscape | Christ at Simon the Pharisee | The Asuncion of Maria al Sky | Apotheosis of Henry IV (mk05) |
Related Artists:
VEEN, Otto van
Flemish painter (b. 1556, Leiden, d. 1629, Bruxelles). Flemish painter and draughtsman of Dutch birth. Although born in Holland, he is regarded as an artist of the Catholic southern Netherlands, where he spent most of his active life. He seems to have been acquainted with most of the Netherlandish scholars of his time, and his works testify to his broad humanistic learning. This and his prominent role in the early manifestations of the Counter-Reformation in Antwerp may have led Rubens to choose him as a teacher. Van Veen's importance as an artist has often been compared to the career of his famous pupil, for whom he was certainly the most important exemplar of the pictor doctus or learned painter. Van Veen obviously represents the older generation's more classicizing and conservative response to the Counter-Reformation. For him, the return to the spiritual values of the past also implied a recovery of the pictorial style of the High Renaissance, with its deliberate borrowings from the paintings of such artists as Raphael and Correggio.
Joseph A Kleitsch
1885-1931 Joseph Kleitsch (1885-1931) was an American painter who holds a high place in the early California School of Impressionism. Born in Banad, Hungary on June 6th, 1885, young Joseph Kleitsch was drawn to paint at the early age of seven, he later pursued his professional art training at Budapest, Munich and Paris. Influenced by his visits to the famous museums of Europe, Kleitsch continued with his love of portrait and figuritive painting after relocating to California. There he rose to the challenge of capturing his new environment's brilliant light and diverse landscape. Living in Los Angeles for a while, Kleitsch fell in love with the rustic artist village of Laguna Beach. There he painted the town's eucalyptus lined streets, the crashing waves of the Pacific coastline and the nearby Mission San Juan Capistrano. Arthur Millier of the Los Angeles Times in 1922 was quoted saying of Kleitsch "he was a born colorist; he seemed to play on canvas with the abandon of a gypsy violinist". Joseph Kleitsch died at the age of forty-nine in Santa Ana, California on November 16th, 1931.
Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk
1782-1810 Dutch Wouter Johannes van Troostwijk Gallery Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. In 1803 he was admitted to the Amsterdam Tekenacademie where he was a pupil of the director, Jurriaan Andriessen. Despite a highly successful student career that culminated in a gold medal from the Felix Meritis Society in 1807, he was unable to establish himself as a professional artist during the remainder of his very short working life in Amsterdam. Andriessen's studies from nature seem to have been an important influence; van Troostwijk was one of the earliest artists to paint en plein air. Although he looked back to 17th-century Dutch landscape art and to the work of his contemporaries, in such paintings as Landscape in Gelderland (c. 1808; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.; see NETHERLANDS, THE, fig. 21) he achieved a totally new lyricism in the rendering of atmospheric effects. The Raampoortje (1809; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) displays a fresh colouristic touch rare in Dutch painting of this period. His Self-portrait (c. 1810; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) is equally original in composition and colour. He also produced animal paintings in the manner of Paulus Potter, drawings and a few etchings towards the end of his life. Van Troostwijk died before his considerable talents could be recognized, and, although he has come to be seen as an important precursor of much late 19th-century Dutch painting, he had little influence on his immediate successors.