Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1613-1675 Dutch painter. The first and most famous member of the group of artists referred to as the LEIDEN 'FINE' PAINTERS, he specialized in small-format paintings, the details and surfaces of which are carefully observed and meticulously rendered. He was greatly praised as a painter of artificial light by Samuel van Hoogstraten in 1678, and he was responsible for popularizing both the night scene and the 'niche' format, pictorial devices ultimately derived from the art of his famous master, Rembrandt.   Related Paintings of DOU, Gerrit :. | The Evening School sf | Officer of the Marksman Society in Leiden fg | The Prayer of the Spinner s | Portrait of a Young Woman | Old Woman with a Candle df |
Related Artists:
CARRIERA, Rosalba fg
Italian Rococo Era Painter, 1675-1757
Fedor Rokotov
Russian Painter, ca.1735-1808 Fyodor Stepanovich Rokotov (Fedor Rokotov) (Russian: ?????????? ??????????́?????????? ????́??????????) (1736?C1809) was a distinguished Russian painter who specialized in portraits. Fyodor Rokotov was born into a family of peasant serfs, belonging to the Repnins. Much in his biography is obscure. He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom in the end of 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress (1770s, illustration, right). Rokotov avoided painting formal portraits with lots of adornments and decorations. Instead he was one of the first Russian painters advancing a psychological portrait with attention to optical and atmospheric effects.
George Scharf
1820-1895 British art critic, was born in London, the son of George Scharf, a Bavarian miniature painter who settled in England in 1816 and died in 1860. He studied in the schools of the Royal Academy. In 1840 he accompanied Sir Charles Fellows to Asia Minor, and in 1843 acted as draughtsman to a government expedition to the same country. After his return he devoted himself with great industry and success to the illustration of books relating to art and antiquity, of which the best known are Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome (1847); Milman's Horace, (1849); Kugler's Handbook of Italian Painting (1851); and Dr Smith's classical dictionaries. He also engaged largely in lecturing and teaching, and took part in the formation of the Greek, Roman and Pompeian courts at the Crystal Palace. He acted as art secretary to the great Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition of 1857, and in that year was appointed secretary and director to the newly founded National Portrait Gallery. The remainder of his life was given to the care of that institution. Scharf acquired an unrivalled knowledge of all matters relating to historic portraiture, and was the author of many learned essays on the subject. In 1885