1420-1475 Flemish Dieric Bouts Locations Dirk Bouts whose real name was Theodorik Romboutszoon, was probably born in Haarlem, where he may have studied under the painter Albert van Ouwater. Sometime before 1450 Bouts took up residence in the Flemish city of Louvain. His name appeared in the records of Louvain in 1457 and again in 1468, when he was appointed "city painter." It is likely that Bouts spent some time in Bruges, as his earliest work, the Infancy Altarpiece shows the distinct and strong influence of Petrus Christus, the leading master of that city after the death of Jan van Eyck. The slightly later Deposition Altarpiece (ca. 1450) displays strong connections with the style of Rogier van der Weyden in both the figure types and the composition. About 1460, the period of the Entombment in London, the early, formative influence of Petrus Christus had been almost totally displaced by that of Rogier, though Bouts personal vision began to emerge in the fluid and continuous landscape background. The great Last Supper Altarpiece (1464-1467) marks the high point of Bouts career. In this solemn and dignified masterpiece the painter achieved spiritual grandeur in the context of convincing physical reality. The central panel of the altarpiece is the most emphatically significant treatment of the theme of the Last Supper in Northern European art. The wings, which contain Old Testament prefigurations of the central theme, are freer and more loosely organized. Eschewing the symmetry and rigid axial construction of the main panel, Bouts produced rhythmic foreground compositions in combination with fluid and dramatic spatial recessions. In 1468 Bouts was commissioned to paint four panels on the subject of justice for the Town Hall of Louvain. At the painter death in 1475 only two of the paintings had been completed; they are among the most remarkable productions of his career. The unusual subjects, taken from the chronicles of a 12th-century historian, concern the wrongful execution by Emperor Otto III of one of his counts and the subsequent vindication of the nobleman by his wife. The finer of the panels represents the dramatic trial by fire which the wife was obliged to undergo to prove her husband innocence. Rich draperies and sumptuous colors are applied to tall angular forms to create a work of rare formal elegance and high decorative appeal. In order to dignify the event, however, the artist has employed restrained gestures and expressions as well as a completely rationalized spatial setting. As in the Last Supper Altarpiece, a sense of solemn and hieratic importance is expressed by means of an austere and rigid geometry in the construction of both persons and places. The late productions of Bouts workshop, such as the well-known Pearl of Brabant Altarpiece, are characterized by the close collaboration of the painter two sons, Dirk the Younger (1448-1491) and Aelbrecht (1455/1460-1549). In the paintings of his less gifted sons, the master distinctive figure style was appreciably altered, though Dirk the Younger appears to have retained much of his father sensitivity to the landscape. In addition to his innovations in the depiction of landscape, Bouts made a substantial contribution to the development of the portrait. His Portrait of a Man (1462) localizes the sitter in an enlarged architectural setting while permitting the interior space to merge with the exterior through an open window. For the first time in Northern painting a common bond was forged between a particularized individual and the universal world of nature.  Related Paintings of Dieric Bouts :. | The Capture of Christ | Saint Christopher | The Way to Paradise | Ecce agnus Dei | Mansportratt |
Related Artists:
BEYEREN, Abraham van
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1620-1690 Dutch painter. He painted seascapes as well as fruit, flower, fish, game and banquet still-lifes. He almost always signed these works with his monogram AVB, but he dated only a few. This, together with the fact that he painted diverse subjects simultaneously and his style changed little, makes it difficult to establish a chronology. He became a master in The Hague in 1640 and was related by marriage to the fish painter Pieter de Putter (before 1600-59). Van Beyeren lived in Delft from 1657 to 1661 and was again in The Hague between 1663 and 1669.
Maria Oakey Dewing
American Painter, 1845-1927
Dwight William Tryon
(August 13, 1849 ?C July 1, 1925) was an American landscape painter in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His work was influenced by James McNeill Whistler, and he is best-known for his landscapes and seascapes painted in a tonalist style. Tryon was born in Hartford, Connecticut. His father was killed in a gun accident before Tryon reached four years of age, and Tryon was raised by his mother on his grandparent's farm in East Hartford. His interest in art evolved naturally. As a young man Tryon took a job at a prominent Hartford bookstore and studied art instruction manuals from the store shelves. He also took to sketching the surrounding countryside during his off hours Tryon sold his first painting in 1870. After exhibiting and selling work locally, he successfully exhibited at the National Academy of Design in 1873. His artistic convictions affirmed, Tryon married, quit his job at the bookstore and became a full-time artist. Some of his first works from this period are seascapes and harbor views executed in a luminist manner. Soon after, however, Tryon's style shifted towards the Barbizon school, which was then becoming popular among American artists. He may have been influenced by the works of George Inness and Alexander Helwig Wyant. In 1876 Tryon decided to advance his skills through a formal study of art. He sold all of his paintings at auction and, with the help of a benefactor, traveled to France with his wife. He enrolled in the atelier of Jacquesson de la Chevreuse, and took classes at the École des Beaux-Arts. He also received instruction from Charles-François Daubigny, Henri Harpignies, and Jean Baptiste-Antoine Guillemet. Impressionism was blossoming in France all around Tryon, but he was not swayed by the new style and remained comfortably within the realm of the Barbizon school. Tryon traveled and sketched Europe with his wife, and met Abbott Handerson Thayer and his wife with whom he became friends. He returned to the United States in 1881 and settled in New York City where he taught and painted landscapes. In New York, Tryon became friends with artists Robert Swain Gifford and Thomas Dewing. He became an early member of the Society of American Artists and continued to exhibit paintings to the National Academy of Design. He also became a member of the American Water Color Society and the National Institute of Arts and Letters (now The American Academy of Arts and Letters). On the advice of Gifford, Tryon and his wife built a summer house in South Dartmouth, Massachusetts in 1887. Though he would continue to spend each winter in New York City, South Dartmouth became Tryon's home for the rest of his life. The coastal area appealed to Tryon's aesthetic sensibilities and allowed him to indulge in fishing, his favorite pastime. By the late 1880s Tryon began painting landscapes in what would become his mature and iconic style. Working most often in oil, Tryon's paintings typically feature a group or broken row of trees in the middle distance, often colored in an autumnal hue, separating a glowing sky above and a foreground marsh or pasture below. He also continued to paint the sea in his mature career, often employing pastel to show a bare expanse of water, sky and beach in various weather and light. He exhibited his works nationally but tended to favor The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia and the Montross Gallery in New York. A Detroit industrialist, Charles Lang Freer, first bought a painting by Tryon in 1889 and became Tryon's most important patron. Freer eventually bought dozens of Tryon's paintings, including many of his best works, and worked closely with Tryon in the interior design of his Detroit home. Freer, a major collector of Asian art and works by James McNeill Whistler, went on to establish the Freer Gallery of Art, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, where many works by Tryon can be seen today. Took the coveted First Prize for his painting Salt-Marsh, December at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition that was held in Nashville, Tennessee in 1897. He is described in the "Fine Art Catalogue" which is copyrighted by Theodore Cooley as follows: William Tryon is an American landscape painter whose pictures are greatly sought for their delicacy of coloring and refinement of feeling. A pupil of Daubdigny, he is, like that artist, a painter of country life - the idyllic rusticity of apple trees in bloom, of waving cornfields, of shining valleys and streams rippling gently to the sea. He is especially fine in the silvery-gray atmosphere. In addition to his painting, Tryon taught at Smith College from 1886 to 1923, visiting part time to critique students' work and, late in his career, establishing the Tryon Gallery of Art. He died of cancer in South Dartmouth on July 1, 1925.