1440-1482 Flemish Hugo van der Goes Galleries Hugo became a member of the painters' guild of Ghent as a master in 1467. In 1468 he was involved in the decoration of the town of Bruges in celebration of the marriage between Charles the Bold and Margaret of York and he provided heraldic decorations for Charles's joyeuse entr??e to Ghent in 1469 and again in 1472. He was elected dean of the Ghent guild in 1473 or 1474. In 1475, or some years later, Hugo entered Rooklooster, a monastery near Brussels belonging to the Windesheim Congregation, and professed there as a frater conversus. He continued to paint, and remained at Rooklooster until his death in 1482 or 1483. In 1480 he was called to the town of Leuven to evaluate the Justice Scenes left unfinished by the painter Dieric Bouts on his death in 1475. Shortly after this, Hugo, returning with other members of his monastery from a trip to Cologne, fell into a state of suicidal gloom, declaring himself to be damned. After returning to Rooklooster, Hugo recovered from his illness, and died there. His time at Rooklooster is recorded in the chronicle of his fellow monk, Gaspar Ofhuys. A report by a German physician, Hieronymus M??nzer, from 1495, according to which a painter from Ghent was driven to melancholy by the attempt to equal the Ghent Altarpiece, may refer to Hugo. His most famous surviving work is the Portinari Triptych (Uffizi, Florence), an altarpiece commissioned for the church of San Egidio in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence by Tommaso Portinari, the manager of the Bruges branch of the Medici Bank. The triptych arrived in Florence in 1483, apparently some years after its completion by van der Goes. The largest Netherlandish work that could be seen in Florence, it was greatly praised. Giorgio Vasari in his Vite of 1550 referred to it as by "Ugo d'Anversa" ("Hugo of Antwerp"). This the sole documentation for its authorship by Hugo; other works are attributed to him based on stylistic comparison with the altarpiece. Hugo appears to have left a large number of drawings, and either from these or the paintings themselves followers made large numbers of copies of compositions that have not survived from his own hand. A drawing of Jacob and Rachel preserved at Christ Church, Oxford is thought to be a rare surviving autograph drawing.  Related Paintings of Hugo van der Goes :. | Sts Margaret and Mary Magdalene with Maria Portinari | The Fall,from a diptych with The Fall of Man and salvation | Monforte Altarpiece | Calvary Triptych | Calvary Triptych |
Related Artists:
Albert Weisgerber
German, 1878-1915 German painter and printmaker. He studied decoration at the Kreisbaugewerksschule in Kaiserlautern (1891-3) and began work in a decorator studio in Frankfurt am Main. However, in 1894 he moved to Munich to resume his studies, first at the Kunstgewerbeschule and later under Franz von Stuck at the Akademie der Bildenden Kenste (1897-1901). For some years he concentrated on poster design and book illustration, contributing a total of 500 drawings to Jungend: Illustrierte Wochenschrift for Kunst und Leben from 1899. His early paintings such as the portrait of Ludwig Scharf II (c. 1905; Munich, Staatsgal. Mod. Kst) were executed in dark-toned academic style, but an exhibition of French Impressionism in Berlin in 1905 so impressed him that he went to Paris for nearly a year (until May 1906). Despite his association with the circle of artists around Matisse, he was more influenced by the work of Cezanne. In 1907 he made a second visit to Paris and joined Phalanx in 1909. In the latter year he was visited by Hans Purrmann and Matisse. By 1911 with a third visit to Paris and travels to Rome and Naples, he had established himself as one of the foremost German Impressionists. As well as such lyrical scenes as Munich Hofgarten (1911; Munich, Lenbachhaus), in common with many of his German contemporaries, Weisgerber reconceived classical scenes in an energetic style, for example in Amazon Camp (1910; Stuttgart, Staatsgal.). In 1912 he had a one-man show in the Kunsthaus, Zurich, and a year later participated in the annual Kunstausstellung in Munich. Although using an Impressionist style, he was equally at home in Expressionist circles, and this undoubtedly influenced his election to the presidency of the Neuen Menchner Sezession (1913). In the last four years of his career he was obsessed with sacrificial subject-matter from the Old and New Testaments, which he had originated in the theme of St Sebastian (e.g. St Sebastian Felled by Arrows, 1910; Munich, Staatsgal. Mod. Kst). While not exclusively tragic (e.g. David and Goliath, 1914; Saarbrecken, Saarland-Mus.), these final works strip away historical references to concentrate upon the fate of the isolated individual, as in Absalom (1914; Hamburg, Ksthalle).
Hannah Palmer
1818-93
Elie Nadelman
Polish-born American Abstract Sculptor, 1882-1946,was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth. Nadelman studied briefly in Warsaw and then visited Munich in 1902 where he became interested in Classical antiquities at the Glytothek. He lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914, closely involved with the avant-guarde, exhibiting at the Societe des Artistes Independants and at the Salon d'Automne from 1905 to 1908. His first solo exhibition in 1909 at the Galerie Druet, Paris, revealed a large series of plaster and bronze classical female heads and full-length standing nudes and mannered Cubist drawings; the latter purchased by Leo Stein, who had brought Picasso to Nadelman's studio in 1908. For the most detailed and accurate studies of Nadelman's work from 1905-12, which was of crucial importance for early 20th c. modern sculpture, see Athena T. Spear in Bibliography. He moved to the United States (becoming an American citizen in 1927) during the outbreak of World War I, married Mrs. Viola Flannery, a wealthy heiress,and assembled a large, museum quality collection of folk sculpture.