(2 February 1616 - 8 May 1671) was a French painter and engraver. His chef d'œuvre is The Crucifixion of St. Peter made for the church of Notre Dame. The Finding of Moses, c. 1650 (National Gallery of Art, Washington)Bourdon was born in Montpellier, France, the son of a Protestant painter on glass. He was apprenticed to a painter in Paris. In spite of his poverty he managed to get to Rome in 1636; there he studied the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Caravaggio among his eclectic selection of models, until he was forced to flee in 1638, to escape denunciation by the Inquisition for his Protestant faith. Bourdon's facility rendered him adept at portraiture, whether in a dashing Rubens manner or in intimate, sympathetic bust-length or half-length portraits isolated against plain backgrounds that set a formula for middle-class portraiture for the rest of the century, landscapes in the manner of Gaspar Dughet or cappricci of ruins, mythological "history painting" like other members of Poussin's circle or the genre subjects of the Dutch Bamboccianti who were working in Rome. His eclectic range of styles have given art historians exercise in tracing his adaptation of his models, while the lack of an immediately recognizable "Bourdon style" has somewhat dampened public appreciation. In 1652 Christina of Sweden made him her first court painter. Bourdon spent most of his working career outside France, where, though he was a founding member of the Academie de peinture et de sculpture (1648), he was for long largely dismissed as a pasticheur, a situation partly rebalanced by a comprehensive exhibition in 2000 of his work at the Musee Fabre, where the collection includes a fine Lamentation painted in the last years of his life. His success required the establishment of an extensive atelier, where, among his other pupils worked Nicolas-Pierre Loir and Pierre Mosnier. He died in Paris in 1671.  Related Paintings of Sebastien Bourdon :. | Fall of Simon Magus | Montpellier | Queen Christina of Sweden on Horseback | Queen Christina of Sweden on Horseback | The Mineralogist |
Related Artists:
BRAY, Joseph de
Dutch painter (d. 1664, Haarlem
Albert von Keller
Albert von Keller (April 27, 1844 - July 14, 1920) was a German painter. He was born at Gais, in Switzerland; he studied at the Munich Academy under Lenbach and Ramberg, and must be counted among the leading colorists of the modern German school. Travels in Italy, France, England and Holland, and a prolonged sojourn in Paris, helped to develop his style. His scenes of society life, such as the famous "Dinner" (1890), are painted with thoroughly Parisian esprit, and his portraits are marked by the same elegant distinction. He was particularly successful in the rendering of rustling silk and satin dresses and draperies. His historical and imaginative works were as modern in spirit and as unacademical as his portraits. As of 1911, at the Munich Pinakothek was his painting "Jairi Töchterlein" (1886), while the Königsberg Museum contained his "Roman Bath", and the Liebieg collection in Reichenberg the "Audience with Louis XV", the first picture that drew attention to his talent. Among other important works he painted "Faustina in the Temple of Juno at Praeneste", "The Witches Sleep" (1888), "The Judgment of Paris", "The Happy Sister", "Temptation" (1892), "Autumn" (1893), "An Adventure" (1896), and "The Crucifixion".
Nathaniel Smibert
(January 20, 1734 - November 8, 1756), was an artist in Boston, Massachusetts, in the mid-18th century. Born in Boston in 1734, he trained as a painter with his father, the artist John Smybert, and produced several portraits, notably of Ezra Stiles, architect Peter Harrison, and Dorothy Wendell (in the Collection of Dr John L Hale, Boston).