Polish Painter, 1838-1893 He studied from 1852 to 1858 at the School of Fine Arts in Krakew and, during this time, started exhibiting historical paintings with the Society of Friends of the Fine Arts there (e.g. Sigismund I Bestowing Nobility on the Professors of the University of Krakew in 1535 (1858; Krakew, Jagiellonian U., Mus. F.A.). After studying in Munich (1859) under the history painter Hermann Anschetz (1802-80) and then briefly and less successfully in Vienna, Matejko returned to Krak?w, where he was based for the rest of his life. In 1860 Matejko issued an illustrated album, Ubiory w Polsce (later editions 1875 and 1901), a project reflecting his intense interest in historical records of all kinds and his desire to promote such interest among the Polish people in an effort to intensify their patriotic feelings. This role first became widely associated with Matejko with his painting of Stanczyk (1862; Warsaw, N. Mus.), the court jester to King Sigismund I (1437-1548), to whom Matejko gave his own features. The jester is presented as a symbol of the nation's conscience  Related Paintings of Jan Matejko :. | Koronacja Chrobrego Matejko | Fragment of Lwow Oath by Jan Matejko | Stephen Bethory at Pskov | Astronomer Copernicus | Coronation of the First King of Poland |
Related Artists:
Nuzi, Allegretto
Italian, 1320-1373 .Italian painter. He was probably trained in Fabriano by local masters who introduced him indirectly to Giottesque and Sienese influences. Familiarity with the work of an anonymous artist responsible for the frescoes (Urbino, Pal. Ducale) from S Biagio in Caprile also contributed to his early style. Nuzi's first signed and dated work is a Maest? of 1345, believed to have been painted for S Domenico (formerly S Lucia) in Fabriano. This altarpiece is a close contemporary of two frescoes in the sacristy of the same church, which have been ascribed to his hand following their restoration in the mid-1970s (Donnini, 1975).
SEGHERS, Gerard
Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1591-1651 Flemish painter, dealer and collector, active also in Italy and Spain. He grew up in Antwerp, a city that had only recently been liberated from the rebels by the Spanish troops. His father, a keeper of a wine tavern, originally had Calvinist sympathies but returned to the Catholic faith after 1585. Gerard possibly trained, as did afterwards his younger brother Jan Baptist Seghers, who later became a goldsmith, with Gaspar de Crayer (b 1551), the father of the well-known painter of the same name. At the age of 12 Seghers was listed as a pupil in the Guild of St Luke in Antwerp; the documents, unfortunately, fail to mention the name of his teacher. Florent Le Comte (1699) called him a pupil of Abraham Janssen
Peter Birmann
Swiss, 1758-1844,He began his career as a portrait painter in Basle and Pruntrut but in 1775 moved to Berne, where he took up landscape painting. From 1777 to 1781 he worked with Johann Ludwig Aberli and was also a colour-printer with the publisher Abraham Wagner (1734-82). In 1781 he went to Rome, where he remained for ten years working for Louis Ducros and for Giovanni Volpato. While in Rome he painted landscapes in watercolour and drew in bistre, using a soft brush and making little use of the pen. He also sketched in the Alban Hills, being particularly attracted to the waterfalls at Tivoli and Terni. He became a member of Goethe's circle in Rome, and, under the influence of its members, he adopted Claude as his model. His watercolours and bistre drawings, enlivened by Greco-Roman or contemporary staffage, became more tranquil, more classical in style and increasingly strengthened with pen outlines. In 1792 he returned to Basle to teach. He soon became an art dealer, opened his own shop and set up his own publishing house, and in 1802 he printed his best-known work, a series of aquatints of Voyage pittoresque de Basle ? Bienne par les vallons de Mottiers-Grandval. From 1802 to 1804 he showed at the annual exhibitions of the K?nstlergesellschaft in Zurich, and in 1804 and 1810 in Berne he exhibited work in oils, a medium that was becoming increasingly important for him. In 1805 he was commissioned by the publishing house of Artaria & Co. in Vienna to sketch the scenery in the region of the north Italian lakes. For the next 30 years he continued to paint and draw, but after 1834 he tended to repeat the locales and compositions of his earlier landscapes.