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 :. | The Hunt | View of Naarden | Le Coup de Soleil | Extensive Landscape with a Ruined | The Castle at Bentheim |
Related Artists:
TORRENTIUS, Johannes
Dutch painter (b. 1589, Amsterdam, d. 1644, Amsterdam). Dutch painter. He was active in Amsterdam, Leiden and Haarlem. In Haarlem in 1627 he was condemned, after severe torture, to 20 years of imprisonment for impiety, blasphemy and his membership of the outlawed Society of Rosicrucians. After having been notified by Sir Dudley Carleton, the British ambassador in The Hague, Charles I of England intervened and brought about Torrentius's release in 1629. Torrentius was subsequently active from 1629 to 1632 in London, which he nevertheless had to leave, again on account of his purportedly immoral mode of life; he returned to Amsterdam. There he was again involved in a trial and died after suffering torture in 1644. His erotic pictures, some of which depicted masterful nudes in mythological settings and are now known only through literary sources, were publicly burnt. A few still-lifes (e.g. Emblematic Still-life, 1614; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) have survived. These carefully composed works, mostly set before a dark background, recall the work of Jan van de Velde II and the circle of Willem Claesz. Heda.
Francisco Camilo
Spanish painter (b. 1615, Madrid, d. 1673, Madrid) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period. He was born at Bassano del Grappa near Venice, the eldest son of Jacopo Bassano and grandson of Francesco da Ponte the Elder. He studied with his father and worked in the Bassano family workshop along with his three brothers, including Giambattista and Girolamo. He moved to Venice where he ran the branch of the family business, and where he was employed to paint a series of historical pictures in the Doge's Palace, but prone to hypochondria and other ailments, committed suicide by throwing self-defenestration soon after his father's death in 1592.
Arnold Genthe
German-born American Photographer, 1869-1942,German-born American photographer who received a doctorate in philology and linguistics from Jena University in 1894. As a photographer he was self-taught, and is probably best known for his pictures of Chinatown in San Francisco (1896-1906), where he opened a portrait studio in 1897, two years after arriving in America. Although his studio and equipment were destroyed in the 1906 earthquake, his prints survived and the Chinatown photographs were published in 1908. In that year he also started making autochromes. Genthe travelled widely in South America, Japan, and Germany, photographing landscapes and architecture, and in 1910 exhibited at the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography in Buffalo organized by Alfred Stieglitz. Relocating to New York in 1911, he flourished as a celebrity portraitist. He also became celebrated for his dance photographs, published in The Book of Dance (1916) and Impressions of Isadora Duncan (1929). His autobiography,