Born 1606, Died 1669.One of the great Dutch painters and printmakers of the 17th century, Rembrandt van Rijn is best known for his expressive use of light and shadow (also called chiaroscuro) in his many portraits. Raised in Leiden, he studied with Pieter Lastman (1583-1633) in Amsterdam, then returned to Leiden around 1625 and set up shop as a teacher and portrait artist. Sometime between 1630 and 1632 Rembrandt relocated to Amsterdam, where he spent the rest of his career. Though he had his detractors (some of whom considered him coarse and "low born"), Rembrandt was successful and famous during his lifetime, though he fell on financial hard times in his later years. He was a master printer and produced hundreds of group portraits and historical paintings, including The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632), The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (1642) and Aristotle with a Bust of Homer (1653). His portraits -- including a lifelong trail of intriguing and rather frank self-portraits -- reveal his interest in psychological study and continue to be admired as landmarks in Western art. The Military Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq is also known as "The Night Watch" because it was thought the painting depicted a nighttime scene. When the painting was cleaned in the 1940s it became obvious that it depicted a daytime scene... He married Saskia van Ulenburgh (also Uylenburgh) in 1634.   Related Paintings of REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn :. | Stormy Landscape | Portrait of Nicolaes Ruts | The Abduction of Proserpine | Danae | The Return of the Prodigal Son (detail) |
Related Artists:
August Strindberg
1849-1912 Swedish painter, sculptor and playwright. He had no art training, but learnt from artist friends after abandoning his studies at the University of Uppsala in 1872. The chief influence on him was Per Ekström, whose broken colour-spot technique he attempted to copy during his initial painting period in 1872-4 in Stockholm and on the skerry-islands Kymmendö and Sandhamn. Very little of Strindberg's early painting survives, but he had already found his special motifs: the sea, usually with turbulent waves; solitary trees or flowers on bare cliffs or sandy beaches in the outermost fringe of the skerries. After he stopped painting in 1874 he became Sweden's leading art critic, as well as the ideological leader of the radical Swedish artists' movement, which in 1884 formed the Konstnärsförbund (the Artists' Association) in protest against the Academy of Art. Prominent among the members were the painters Carl Olof Larsson, Karl Nordström and Richard Bergh. During this period, however, he produced sketches in words and pictures as illustrations to his own writings, which Carl Larsson was commissioned to do thereafter. From 1883 he stayed abroad, primarily in France and Switzerland, and belonged during a couple of long periods to the Scandinavian artists' colony in Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau in France. In 1886 in Switzerland he started photography and took a series of self-portraits that were intended for publication
Alfred Rethel
1816 Diepenbend/Aachen-1859 Dusseldorf, was a German history painter. Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen he executed a drawing which procured his admission to the academy of D??sseldorf. Here he studied for several years, and produced, among other works, a figure of St Boniface, which attracted much attention. At the age of twenty, Rethel moved to Frankfurt, and was selected to decorate the walls of the imperial hall in the Rmer with figures of famous men. At the same period he produced a series of designs illustrative of Old Testament history. Four years later, Rethel was the successful competitor for the work of ornamenting the restored council house of his native city with frescoes depicting prominent events in the career of Charlemagne, but the execution of this work was delayed for some six years. Meanwhile Rethel occupied himself with the production of easel pictures and of drawings. In 1842, he began a striking series of designs dealing with the Crossing of the Alps by Hannibal, in which the weird power which animates his later art becomes first apparent. In 1844 Rethel visited Rome, executing, along with other subjects, an altar-piece for one of the churches of his native land. In 1846, he returned to Aachen, and commenced his Charlemagne frescoes.
Peder Monsted
Danish, 1859 - 1941