Italian Early Renaissance Painter, ca.1300-1366
Italian painter active in Florence. He was the son of a painter and mosaicist and a student of Giotto. His best-known works are frescoes in the church of Santa Croce in Florence. He directed a flourishing workshop for three decades, producing pictures in the style of Giotto but featuring more vivid picturesque effects with narrative detail. His son and pupil Agnolo (c. 1350 C 96) was an influential and prolific artist who likewise produced a notable series of frescoes for Santa Croce, The Legend of the True Cross Related Paintings of GADDI, Taddeo :. | Life of the Virgin (detail) sdg | General view of the Baroncelli Chapel sg | Life of the Virgin dgss | Saint Eligius in the Goldsmith's Shop (nn03) | Life of the Virgin | Related Artists:
BACKHUYSEN, LudolfDutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1631-1708
Ludolf Backhuysen (or Bakhuizen) (Dec 28, 1630 - Nov 17, 1708) was a Dutch painter, born in Emden, Hanover.
Bakhuysen started his career as a bookkeeper. He had a very nice handwriting and loved arithmetic. Working for a wealthy merchant at Amsterdam, he discovered so strong a genius for painting that he relinquished the business and devoted himself to art. He studied first under Allart van Everdingen and then under Hendrik Dubbels, two eminent masters of the time, and soon became celebrated for his sea-pieces.
He was an ardent student of nature, and frequently exposed himself on the sea in an open boat in order to study the effects of storms. His compositions, which are numerous, are nearly all variations of one subject, the sea, and in a style peculiarly his own, marked by intense realism or faithful imitation of nature. In his later years Backhuysen employed his skills in etching and calligraphy.
During his life Backhuysen was visited by Cosimo III de' Medici and Peter the Great. In 1699 he opened a gallery on the topfloor of the famous Amsterdam townhall. After a visit to England he died in Amsterdam on November 17, 1708.
SCHALCKEN, GodfriedDutch Baroque Era Painter, 1643-1706
Dutch painter and etcher, active also in England. He was the second son of Cornelis Schalcken from Heusden, a clergyman in Made, and Aletta Lydius, who came from a famous clerical family in Dordrecht. In 1654 the family moved to Dordrecht, where Cornelis was appointed headmaster of the Latin school. There Godfried was apprenticed to Samuel van Hoogstraten. He completed his training in Leiden with Gerrit Dou and by 1665 had returned to Dordrecht. Schalcken's earliest known works, for example the Doctor's Visit (1669; Germany, priv. col., on loan to Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Mus.), are dominated by the influence of Dou and the Leiden 'fine painters'. Like Dou, Schalcken painted small genre pieces with a wealth of painstakingly rendered detail, and his themes and frequent use of artificial lighting are strongly reminiscent of the Leiden master. The six prints known by him, including a portrait of Gerrit Dou and a few portraits after van Hoogstraten, must also originate from this period. Possibly under the influence of Caspar Netscher and Frans van Mieris, Schalcken soon afterwards adopted a freer touch with gentler transitions and a lighter palette and applied himself to painting genre pieces with elegant figures.
Helen Thomas DrangaHelen Thomas Dranga (1866-1940), who is also known as Carrie Helen Dranga, was a painter who was born Carrie Helen Tufts in Oxford, England. She lived in Oakland, California from 1894 until 1900, when she moved to Hilo, Hawaii. Her paintings regularly appeared on the cover of Paradise of the Pacific magazine in the 1920s and 1930s. She lived in Hilo until shortly before her death in 1940.
The Honolulu Academy of Arts and the Lyman House Memorial Museum (Hilo, Hawaii) are among the public collections holding works by Helen Thomas Dranga