Netherlandish Northern Renaissance Painter, ca.1400-1464 major early Flemish master, known also as Roger de la Pasture. He is believed to have studied with Robert Campin. His early works also show the influence of Jan van Eyck. Van Eyck, however, had been a master at objective rendering of detail, whereas Roger in his work portrayed emotions with an assurance that has not been surpassed. His ability to depict piety is reflected in the early masterpiece Descent from the Cross (c.1435; Prado); he depicted with significant restraint the profound grief of the mourners grouped around the tragic figure of Jesus. His composition strongly affected later representations of the theme. Roger became City Painter in Brussels in 1436. He then produced a series of undated altarpieces including the Last Judgment (hospital, Beaune), the Braque Triptych (Louvre), Crucifixion with Donors (Vienna), and Adoration of the Magi (Berlin), which vary in execution from a stress on sumptuous details to a more sculptural rendering of the figures. Roger is believed to have made a pilgrimage to Italy in the holy year 1450. Whether this supposed excursion had any effect on his style is much debated. It has been shown that his Entombment (Uffizi) bears an affinity to the Tuscan treatment of the subject, particularly by Fra Angelico, and that Roger's Virgin and Child with Saints (Frankfurt) has a strong resemblance to the Italian religious art of the day. His style is, however, highly individual. His religious paintings and his portraits are characterized by a straightforward monumentality. The portraits, such as that of a young lady (National Gall. of Art, Washington, D.C.) and of Francesco d'Este (Metropolitan Mus.) exhibit a simple clarity of contour and psychological penetration. Other notable works are his St. Luke Painting the Virgin, of which a version or replica is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Crucifixion   Related Paintings of WEYDEN, Rogier van der :. | Bladelin Triptych | St John Altarpiece | Braque Family Triptych | The Descent from the Cross | Miraflores Altarpiece |
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Charles Howard Hodges
(1764, Portsmouth - July 24, Amsterdam), was a British painter active in the Netherlands during the French occupation of 18th and early 19th century. Charles Howard Hodges had visited Amsterdam in 1788; after a two-year stay in Dublin, he moved with his family to The Hague in 1792. In Amsterdam, he worked as an artist, specialized in the mezzotint technique and pastel. In 1797, he and his family moved to Amsterdam, where he lived with his teacher Johann Friedrich August Tischbein at the Prinsengracht Ne 205. There, he became a famous painter of portraits; he painted over 700 portraits of the rich and famous of that time. He was also an engraver, printer, art dealer and a member of the Amsterdam art club Felix Meritis. He is well-known for the fact that he painted all the leaders of the Netherlands during the Napoleonic Period, -a turbulent period in Dutch history, since the Netherlands went through 5 different political systems: stadtholder Willem V of the Republic of the United Netherlands, Grand Pensionary Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck of the Batavian Republic, King Louis Bonaparte (King of Holland), Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and king William I of the Netherlands. The only known portrait of Sebald Justinus Brugmans was made by him. A design for the honorary cross of the Order of the Union was rejected by Louis Bonaparte. Hodges advised the Dutch government in 1815 with the return of thousands of works of art, which were confiscated by the French in 1795 from several collections, including the Gallery of Prince William V (the first museum open to the public in the Netherlands), and the several collections of the previous stadtholders. Not all the stolen art was returned from Paris, and it is said that several pieces are still held in the Louvre up to this day. Most of the over 700 portraits by Hodges are made in the early 19th century, the earlier works in pastel, and later work in oil paint. Several of these portraits can be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, in museums and castles and in royal and private collections. Charles Howard Hodges was father and teacher to James Newman Hodges, een lesser painter who worked in the Rijksmuseum when it was still located in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam.
Alexander Nasmyth
Scottish Painter, 1758-1840 was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the father of Scottish landscape painting". Edinburgh Castle and Nor'Loch, circa 1780.Born in Edinburgh, he studied at the Royal High School and the Trustees Academy under Alexander Runciman, and, having been apprenticed as an heraldic painter to a coachbuilder, he, at the age of sixteen, attracted the attention of Allan Ramsay, who took the youth with him to London, and employed him upon the subordinate portions of his works. Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh in 1778, and was soon largely patronized as a portrait painter. He also assisted Mr Miller of Dalswinton, as draughtsman, in his mechanical researches and experiments; and, this gentleman having generously offered the painter a loan to enable him to pursue his studies abroad, he left in 1782 for Italy, where he remained two years. Robert Burns, 1787.On his return he painted the excellent portrait of Robert Burns, now in the Scottish National Gallery, well known through Walker's engraving. Political feeling at that time ran high in Edinburgh, and Nasmyth's pronounced Liberal opinions, which he was too outspoken and sincere to disguise, gave offence to many of his aristocratic patrons, and led to the diminution of his practice as a portraitist. In his later years, accordingly, he devoted himself mainly to landscape work, and did not disdain on occasion to set his hand to scene-painting for the theatres. He has been styled, not unjustly, the father of Scottish landscape arte His subjects are carefully finished and coloured, but are wanting in boldness and freedom.
Charles Robert Leslie
1794 - 1859 was born in London on 19 October 1794. His parents were American, and when he was five years of age he returned with them to their native country. They settled in Philadelphia, where their son was educated and afterwards apprenticed to a bookseller. He was, however, mainly interested in painting and the drama, and when George Frederick Cooke visited the city he executed a portrait of the actor from recollection of him on the stage, which was considered a work of such promise that a fund was raised to enable the young artist to study in Europe. He left for London in 1811, bearing introductions which procured for him the friendship of West, Beechey, Allston, Coleridge and Washington Irving, and was admitted as a student of the Royal Academy, where he carried off two silver medals. At first, influenced by West and Fuseli, he essayed high art, and his earliest important subject depicted Saul and the Witch of Endor; but he soon discovered his true aptitude and became a painter of cabinet-pictures, dealing, not like those of David Wilkie, with the contemporary life that surrounded him, but with scenes from the great masters of fiction, from Shakespeare and Cervantes, Addison and Moli??re, Swift, Sterne, Fielding and Smollett. Of individual paintings we may specify Sir Roger de Coverley going to Church (1819); May-day in the Time of Queen Elizabeth (1821); Sancho Panza and the Duchess (1824); Uncle Toby and the Widow Wadman (1831); La Malade Imaginaire, act iii. sc. 6 (1843); and the Dukes Chaplain Enraged leaving the Table, from Don Quixote (1849). Many of his more important subjects exist in varying replicas. He possessed a sympathetic imagination, which enabled him to enter freely into the spirit of the author whom he illustrated, a delicate perception for female beauty, an unfailing eye for character and its outward manifestation in face and figure, and a genial and sunny sense of humour, guided by an instinctive refinement which prevented it from overstepping the bounds of good taste. In 1821 Leslie was elected A.R.A., and five years later full academician. In 1833 he left for America to become teacher of drawing in the military academy at West Point, but the post proved an irksome one, and in some six months he returned to England.