Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1628-1682 Ruysdael's favorite subjects are simple woodland scenes, similar to those of Everdingen and Hobbema. He is especially noted as a painter of trees, and his rendering of foliage, particularly of oak leaf age, is characterized by the greatest spirit and precision. His views of distant cities, such as that of Haarlem in the possession of the marquess of Bute, and that of Katwijk in the Glasgow Corporation Galleries, clearly indicate the influence of Rembrandt. He frequently painted coast-scenes and sea-pieces, but it is in his rendering of lonely forest glades that we find him at his best. The subjects of certain of his mountain scenes seem to be taken from Norway, and have led to the supposition that he had traveled in that country. We have, however, no record of such a journey, and the works in question are probably merely adaptations from the landscapes of Van Everdingen, whose manner he copied at one period. Only a single architectural subject from his brush is known--an admirable interior of the New Church, Amsterdam. The prevailing hue of his landscapes is a full rich green, which, however, has darkened with time, while a clear grey tone is characteristic of his seapieces. The art of Ruysdael, while it shows little of the scientific knowledge of later landscapists, is sensitive and poetic in sentiment, and direct and skillful in technique. Figures are sparingly introduced into his compositions, and such as occur are believed to be from the pencils of Adriaen van de Velde, Philip Wouwerman, and Jan Lingelbach. Unlike the other great Dutch landscape painters, Ruysdael did not aim at a pictorial record of particular scenes, but he carefully thought out and arranged his compositions, introducing into them an infinite variety of subtle contrasts in the formation of the clouds, the plants and tree forms, and the play of light. He particularly excelled in the painting of cloudscapes which are spanned dome-like over the landscape, and determine the light and shade of the objects. Goethe lauded him as a poet among painters, and his work shows some of the sensibilities the Romantics would later celebrate.  Related Paintings of Jacob van Ruisdael :. | Waterfall in a Rocky Landscape | Cottage under the trees near a Grainfield | View of the Dunes near Bl oemendaal with Bleaching Fields | Landscape with a Sluice Gate | Bentheim Castle |
Related Artists:
George Caleb Bingham
1811-1879 George Caleb Bingham Gallery George Caleb Bingham (March 20, 1811 ?C July 7, 1879) was an American artist, whose work depicted his view of American life in the frontier lands along the Missouri River. Left to languish in obscurity, Bingham's work was rediscovered in the 1930s and he is now widely considered one of the greatest American painters of the 1800s. Born in Augusta County, Virginia, Bingham was the second of seven children born to Henry Vest Bingham and Mary Amend. Upon their marriage, Matthias Amend, Mary's father, gave ownership to the family mill, 1,180 acres of land and several slaves to Henry with the agreement that Matthias could live with the family the rest of his life. Henry offered the land and mill as surety for a friend's debt and, when the friend died in 1818, all was lost. George's family soon moved to Franklin, Missouri "where the land was said to be bountiful, fertile and cheap." Bingham was a self-taught artist. His sole childhood exposure to the field was as a nine-year-old boy, when famed American portraitist Chester Harding visited Franklin looking for business, having recently sketched Daniel Boone in Warren County, Missouri. George assisted Harding during his brief stay, an experience that left a powerful impression. In 1823, Bingham's father, now judge of Howard County Court, died of malaria on December 26 at the age of thirty-eight. To keep the family going, Mary Bingham opened a school for girls and George, then twelve, worked as school janitor to help keep the family afloat. At age sixteen, Bingham apprenticed with cabinet maker Jesse Green. After Green moved, he apprenticed with another cabinet maker, Justinian Williams. Both tradesmen were Methodist ministers and, while under their tutelage, Bingham studied religious texts, preached at camp meetings and thought about becoming a minister himself. Bingham also considered becoming a lawyer. However, by age nineteen, Bigham was painting portraits for $20.00 apiece, often completing the works in a single day. He drummed up work in both Franklin and Arrow Rock and, while his painting abilities were still developing, succeeded in impressing his patrons with his strong draftsmanship and ability to capture the likeness of his subject. Soon Bingham attempted to travel to St. Louis to ply his trade but contracted measles, which left him weak and permanently bald. In 1836, Bingham married Sarah Elizabeth Hutchison, who bore him three children over the subsequent twelve years before dying at the age of twenty-nine. George married twice more, first to Eliza Thomas, who died in a mental institution in 1876, and then to Martha Lykins, who lived until 1890. George's mother, Mary, died in 1851. By 1838, Bingham was already beginning to make a name for himself as a portrait artist in St. Louis, his studio visited by several prominent local citizens and statesmen, including the lawyer James S. Rollins who was to become a life-long friend. To further his education, George spent three months in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania before continuing on to New York City to visit the National Academy of Design exhibition. Bingham was elected to the Missouri General Assembly in 1848. From 1856 to 1859, Bingham studied art with the members of the D??sseldorf School in D??sseldorf, Germany. Critics claim that this caused him to abandon the rustic American style in his art. Upon his return, he began painting less, turning to politics in the post-Civil War years and serving as state treasurer and adjutant general. He was also president of the Board of Police Commissioners for Kansas City, Missouri in 1874, appointing the first chief of police there . Toward the end of his life he was a professor of art at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri.
Jens Birkholm
painted Warmehalle in Berlin in 1908
John Roddam Spencer Stanhope
English Pre-Raphaelite Painter, 1829-1908,English painter. The second son of Yorkshire landed gentry, he was educated at Rugby and Christ Church, Oxford. In 1850 he studied in London with G. F. Watts, through whom he entered the artistic circle at Little Holland House, where he met D. G. Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. In 1857 Rossetti invited him to paint at the Oxford Union (Sir Gawaine and the Damsels at the Fountain), and in 1858 Stanhope occupied a studio next to Rossetti's at Chatham Place, Blackfriars (London), where he painted Thoughts of the Past (London, Tate); a modern-life subject indebted to Rossetti, it shows a prostitute recalling her former life. Stanhope's close friendship with Burne-Jones proved a more decisive influence on his work that, in the 1860s, consisted of dreamlike poetic and mythological subjects often set in quaint, enclosed spaces, as in I Have Trod the Winepress Alone