b.Jan. 8, 1836, Dronrijp, Netherlands. d.June 25, 1912, Wiesbaden, Germany. Painter and designer of Dutch birth. The son of a notary, Alma-Tadema demonstrated an early artistic ability. In 1852 he entered the Antwerp Academy, where he studied under Gustaf, Baron Wappers, and Nicaise de Keyser. An important influence at this time was Louis De Taye, Professor of Archaeology at the academy and a practising artist. Alma-Tadema lived and worked with De Taye from 1857 to 1859 and was encouraged by him to depict subjects from the early history of France and Belgium. This taste for historical themes increased when Alma-Tadema entered Baron Henri Leys studio in 1859 and began assisting him with his monumental frescoes for the Antwerp Town Hall. While in Leys studio, Alma-Tadema produced several major paintings, for example the Education of the Children of Clovis (1861; ex-Sir John Pender priv. col., see Zimmern, p. 3) and Venantius Fortunatus Reading his Poems to Radagonda (1862; Dordrecht, Dordrechts Mus.), which are characterized by their obscure Merovingian subject-matter, rather sombre colouring and close attention to detail.  Related Paintings of Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence :. | A Difference of Opinion (mk23) | The Triumph of Titus: AD 71 (mk23) | Edward Poynter (mk23) | The Education of the Children of Clovis (mk23) | Joseph Overseer of Pharoah's Granaries (mk24) |
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Arkady Rylov
(Russian: 29 January 1870 - June 22, 1939) was a Russian and Soviet Symbolist painter. Rylov was born in the village Istobenskoye, Vyatka gubernia. He was brought in the family of his stepfather, a notary (Rylov's father had a psychiatric illness). He moved to Saint Petersburg and studied at the Technical Design School of Baron Schtiglitz (1888-1891), then at the Imperial Academy of Arts under Arkhip Kuindzhi (1894-1897). Rylov was a member of the Mir iskusstva movement and its spin-off Union of Russian Artists also a member of the Association of Artists of the Revolutionary Russia. He was a chairman of the Kuindzhi Society. He started as a historical painter (his graduation work in the Imperial Academy of Arts was Assault of Pechenegs on a Slav village but became a predominately landscape painter. Still many of his paintings have some allusions with Russian history. Many of his landscapes painted after the October Revolution were seen as symbols of the revolutionary Freedom. At that time he also painted some typical Socialist Realism compositions like Lenin in Razliv. He taught in the Academy of Arts. In his studio he created almost a small nature reserve. There lived squirrels, rabbits, monkey Manka and many wild birds (without cages) and two anthills. According to Mikhail Nesterov wild animals and birds loved Rylov and often came to his studio.
Franz von Defregger
(after 1883 Franz von Defregger) (30 April 1835 - 2 January 1921) was an Austrian artist known mostly for his genre and history paintings. He was born in Ederhof at Stronach, in Tyrol, the son of a prosperous farmer. In 1860, following his father's death, Franz sold the family's farm and went to Innsbruck, where he studied with the sculptor Michael Stolz. He went to Munich in 1861 to study under Hermann Dyck and Hermann Anschetz. In 1863 he travelled to Paris, where he continued his artistic education autodidactically by a routine of figure drawing and a thorough study of the museums, art collections and studios. On 8 July 1865 he returned to Munich, where from 1867 to 1870 he studied alongside Hans Makart and Gabriel Max in the studio of history painter Karl von Piloty. Defregger became one of the leading genre painters in Munich, and became a professor of history painting at the Munich Academy, where he continued to teach until 1910. He died in Munich in 1921.
Gerard van Honthorst
(November 4, 1592 - April 27, 1656), also known as Gerrit van Honthorst and Gherardo della Notte, was a Dutch painter of Utrecht. He was brought up at the school of Abraham Bloemaert, who exchanged the style of the Franckens for that of the pseudo-Italians at the beginning of the 16th century. Margareta Maria de Roodere and Her Parents by Gerrit van Honthorst (1652) Oil on canvas, 140 x 170 cm. Centraal Museum, UtrechtInfected thus early with a mania which came to be very general in the Netherlands, Honthorst went to Italy in 1616, where he copied the naturalism and eccentricities of Michelangelo da Caravaggio. Home again about 1620, after acquiring a considerable practice in Rome, he set up a school at Utrecht which flourished exceedingly. Together with his colleague Hendrick ter Brugghen, he represented the so-called Dutch Caravaggisti. In 1623 he was president of his gild at Utrecht, where he had married his cousin. He soon became so fashionable that Sir Dudley Carleton, then English envoy at The Hague, recommended his works to the earl of Arundel and Lord Dorchester. In 1626 he received a visit from Rubens, whom he painted as the honest man sought for and found by Diogenes.