American Painter, 1820-1863,American painter. Durrie and his older brother John (1818-98) studied sporadically from 1839 to 1841 with the portrait painter Nathaniel Jocelyn. From 1840 to 1842 he was an itinerant painter in Connecticut and New Jersey, finally settling permanently in New Haven. He produced c. 300 paintings, of which the earliest were portraits (e.g. Self-portrait, 1839; Shelburne, VT, Mus.); by the early 1850s he had begun to paint the rural genre scenes and winter landscapes of New England that are considered his finest achievement. His landscapes, for example A Christmas Party (1852; Tulsa, OK, Gilcrease Inst. Amer. Hist. & A.), are characterized by the use of pale though cheerful colours and by the repeated use of certain motifs: an isolated farmhouse, a road placed diagonally leading the eye into the composition, and a hill (usually the West or East Rocks, New Haven) in the distance. By the late 1850s Durrie's reputation had started to grow, and he was exhibiting at prestigious institutions, such as the National Academy of Design. In 1861 the firm of Currier & Ives helped popularize his work by publishing prints of two of his winter landscapes,  Related Paintings of George Henry Durrie :. | Winter Farmyard and Sleigh | Summer Landscape Near New Haven | Going to Church | he Half-Way House | Gathering Wood for Winter |
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Joseph Stieler
German Painter, 1781-1858,German painter. In 1798 he studied under Christoph Fesel (1737-1805) in Werzburg and in 1800 with Heinrich Feger in Vienna, where his style was strongly influenced by English portraiture. After he studied in Paris (1807-8) with Fran?ois G?rard the influence of Neo-classicism became apparent in his work. He visited Italy in 1809, 1810 and 1812 to do commissioned portraits for various patrons, among them Prince Eugene de Beauharnais (1809; Munich, Bayer. Nmus.) and Joachim Murat, King of Naples (reg 1808-15). In 1812 he went to Munich where he did work for middle-class clients, the nobility and the royal family of Bavaria (e.g. the portrait of Maximilian I Joseph, 1816; Ellingen, Schloss). In 1820 he was appointed court painter to Ludwig I, King of Bavaria (reg 1825-48), and painted several portraits of him. In 1823 he helped co-found the Kunstverein in Munich. He was one of the most important portrait painters in the Neo-classical style, specializing particularly in studies of women, as seen in the 36 portraits commissioned by Ludwig I for the Schenheitsgalerie (1827-42; Munich, Schloss Nymphenburg). In his portraits for the middle classes and for the court he devised certain peculiarities of form. He painted various members of the royal houses of Austria, Prussia and Sweden, as well as members of the nobility in the duchies of Saxe-Altenberg, Saxe-Coburg and Hesse. His sitters also included some of the most important figures in the political and intellectual life of Germany in the first half of the 19th century. He painted the pendant portraits of Franz Brentano and Antonie Brentano (both 1808; Winkel, Brentanohaus), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1828; Munich, Neue Pin.) and Ludwig Tieck (1838; Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg), the geographer and botanist Alexander von Humboldt (1843; Potsdam, Schloss Charlottenhof) and the musician Ludwig van Beethoven (Bonn, Beethoven-Haus). After 1845 the classical elements in his paintings were sometimes combined with an application of colour typical of plein-air studies. He also painted genre pictures and religious scenes.
Ion Georgescu
1856-1898
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.