1593-1652 French Georges de La Tour Galleries His early work shows influences from Caravaggio, probably via his Dutch followers, and the genre scenes of cheats??as in The Fortune Teller ??and fighting beggars clearly derive from the Dutch Caravaggisti, and probably also his fellow-Lorrainer, Jacques Bellange. These are believed to date from relatively early in his career. La Tour is best known for the nocturnal light effects which he developed much further than his artistic predecessors had done, and transferred their use in the genre subjects in the paintings of the Dutch Caravaggisti to religious painting in his. Unlike Caravaggio his religious paintings lack dramatic effects. He painted these in a second phase of his style, perhaps beginning in the 1640s, using chiaroscuro, careful geometrical compositions, and very simplified painting of forms. His work moves during his career towards greater simplicity and stillness ?? taking from Caravaggio very different qualities than Jusepe de Ribera and his Tenebrist followers did. He often painted several variations on the same subjects, and his surviving output is relatively small. His son Etienne was his pupil, and distinguishing between their work in versions of La Tour's compositions is difficult. The version of the Education of the Virgin, in the Frick Collection in New York is an example, as the Museum itself admits. Another group of paintings (example left), of great skill but claimed to be different in style to those of de La Tour, have been attributed to an unknown "Hurdy-gurdy Master". All show older male figures (one group in Malibu includes a female), mostly solitary, either beggars or saints. After his death in 1652, La Tour's work was largely forgotten until rediscovered by Hermann Voss, a German scholar, in 1915. In 1935 an exhibition in Paris began the revival in interest among a wider public. In the twentieth century a number of his works were identified once more, and forgers tried to help meet the new demand; many aspects of his œuvre remain controversial among art historians.  Related Paintings of Georges de La Tour :. | The incorrect player | St Jerome | Young Christ with St.Joseph in the Capenter-s shop | Knabe blast in eine Lampe | St Joseph |
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william frederick mitchell
c.1845-1914
MOLA, Pier Francesco
Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1612-1666 Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Giovanni Battista Mola. His most characteristic works are small, intensely romantic scenes from mythology, the Bible, and from works by the poet Torquato Tasso, set in landscapes inspired by Venetian art. Yet he also received important public commissions for frescoes and altarpieces, and in his mature work he achieved an impressive synthesis of 17th-century Roman gran maniera painting with the stronger chiaroscuro and richer palette of the 16th-century Venetian style. He was a prolific and versatile draughtsman, who drew for pleasure as well as in preparation for commissions; he was also a witty caricaturist, who mocked himself and his friends as much as more typical targets
adriaen van ostade
Adriaen van Ostade (baptized as Adriaen Hendricx December 10, 1610 ?C buried May 2, 1685) was a Dutch genre painter. He was the eldest son of Jan Hendricx Ostade, a weaver from the town of Ostade near Eindhoven. Although Adriaen and his brother Isaack were born in Haarlem, they adopted the name "van Ostade" as painters. "Peasants in a Tavern" (c. 1635), at the Alte Pinakothek, MunichAccording to Jacobus Houbraken, he was taught from 1627 by Frans Hals, at that time the master of Adriaen Brouwer and Jan Miense Molenaer. At twenty-six he joined a company of the civic guard at Haarlem, and at twenty-eight he married. His wife died in 1640, and he speedily re-married. He again became a widower in 1666. In 1662 he took the highest honors of his profession with the presidency of the painters Guild of Saint Luke in Haarlem. Among the treasures of the Louvre is a striking picture of a father sitting in state, his wife at his side, surrounded by his son, five daughters, and a young married couple in a handsomely furnished room. By an old tradition, Ostade here painted himself and his children in holiday attire; but the style is much too refined for the painter of boors, and Ostade had but one daughter.