Austrian Art Nouveau Painter, 1862-1918 Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 ?C February 6, 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau (Vienna Secession) movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects, many of which are on display in the Vienna Secession gallery. Klimt's primary subject was the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism--nowhere is this more apparent than in his numerous drawings in pencil. Klimt's work is distinguished by the elegant gold or coloured decoration, often of a phallic shape that conceals the more erotic positions of the drawings upon which many of his paintings are based. This can be seen in Judith I (1901), and in The Kiss (1907?C1908), and especially in Danaë (1907). One of the most common themes Klimt utilized was that of the dominant woman, the femme fatale. Art historians note an eclectic range of influences contributing to Klimt's distinct style, including Egyptian, Minoan, Classical Greek, and Byzantine inspirations. Klimt was also inspired by the engravings of Albrecht D??rer, late medieval European painting, and Japanese Rimpa school. His mature works are characterized by a rejection of earlier naturalistic styles, and make use of symbols or symbolic elements to convey psychological ideas and emphasize the "freedom" of art from traditional culture.  Related Paintings of Gustav Klimt :. | Landscape Garden (Meadow in Flower) (mk20) | Water Serpents I (mk20) | The golden knight | hoppet | The Park (mk20) |
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Giovanni Gerolamo Savoldo
Italian Mannerist Painter , c. 1480 - aft.1548 was an Italian High Renaissance painter. Savoldo was born in Brescia, but little is known about his early years. Some sources claim he was known as Girolamo Bresciano. By 1506 he was in Parma, and by 1508, he had joined the Florentine painter??s guild. In this period he finished the Rest at the Flight from Egypt (Augsburg), the Elijah Harassed by a Crow (National Gallery of Art, Washington), and a Deposition. In 1515 he painted the Portrait of a Clad Warrior, wrongly identified with Gaston de Foix. Also from the same period his the Temptings of St. Anthony, which appears to show the influence of the Flemish Hieronymus Bosch. The works was appreciated by the commissioners from Venice, where Savoldo relocated before 1520. On June 15, 1524 he signed a contract for an altarpiece for the church of San Domenico in Pesaro (now in the Brera, Milan). In 1527, he completed a St. Hieronymus for the Brescian family Averoldi, probably the one at National Gallery of London. From the 1530s dates a Nativity at the National Gallery in Washington DC, which seems influenced by the lambent contemporary, Correggio painting on the same topic. In 1533 Savoldo painted a Madonna with Four Saints in the church of Santa Maria in Organo, while in 1537-1538 he executed the altarpiece for the main altar of Santa Croce, Brescia.
Gabriel Metsu
Gabriël Metsu Gabriël Metsu (January 1629 - buried 24 October 1667) was a Dutch painter of history paintings, genre works and portraits. Metsu was the son of the Flemish painter Jacques Metsu (c.1588-1629), who lived most of his days at Leiden, and Jacomijntje Garniers, his third wife, whom he married in 1625. Jacomijntje was the widow of a painter with three children of her own. Two months after Gabriël's birth, his father died. According to Jacobus Houbraken, Metsu was taught by Gerard Dou, though his early works do not lend colour to this assertion. He was influenced by painters of Leiden such as Jan Steen, and later by Frans van Mieris the Elder. Metsu was registered among the first members of the painters' corporation at Leiden; and the books of the guild also tell us that he remained a member in 1649. In Leiden, it was alleged that Metsu left a brothel at six in the morning and took a prostitute to the Academy. In 1650 he ceased to subscribe, and works bearing his name and the date of 1653 support the belief that he had moved. Metsu was trained in Utrecht by Jan Baptist Weenix and Nicolaus Knepfer. In Amsterdam Metsu lived in an alley on Prinsengracht, where he kept chickens. He got into an argument with a neighbor and moved to a house on the canal side, where a daily vegetable market was held. In 1658 he married Isabella de Wolff, whose father was a potter and mother a painter. The Speed Art Museum has a portrait of the couple. Pieter de Grebber, a religious painter from Haarlem, was her uncle. At the onset of the 1660s Metsu turned for inspiration to the art of the "fijnschilders" from his native Leiden. Metsu was responding to the market of Dou's paintings, who sold his paintings all over for exorbitant prices. Metsu may have also influenced Pieter de Hoogh. Around the year 1661, Metsu won the patronage of the Amsterdam cloth merchant Jan J. Hinlopen and painted his family more than once in a fashionable surrounding. The Poultry-Seller, 1662 At least thirteen of paintings show carpets and he probably used the same model. He included several fine examples of minutely depicted floral and cloudband carpets in his works and even a silk Oriental rug, as well as so-called "Lotto" rugs which he for some reason, in contrast to his meticulous rendering of the floral carpets, depicted only in a very sketchy fashion. After Metsu died, his widow left for Enkhuizen, to live with her mother.
Arnold Houbraken
(28 March 1660 - 14 October 1719) was a Dutch painter and writer from Dordrecht, now remembered mainly as a biographer of artists from the Dutch Golden Age. He had ten children. His son Jacobus Houbraken (1698-1780) was an engraver of portraits and book illustrations, including books by his father. His daughter Antonina Houbraken also became an engraver for an Amsterdam publisher, and is known today for her embellishment of cityscapes and buildings with animals and people. Houbraken was sent first to learn threadtwisting from Johannes de Haan, who introduced him to engraving. After two years he then studied art with Willem van Drielenburch, who he was with during the rampjaar, the year 1672. He then studied 9 months with Jacobus Leveck and finally, four years with Samuel van Hoogstraten. In 1685 he married Sara Sasbout, and around 1709 he moved from Dordrecht to Amsterdam. Arnold Houbraken painted mythological and religious paintings, portraits and landscapes.