1637-1712 Dutch Jan Van Der Heyden Gallery Van der Heyden grew up in Gorcum, but the family moved to Amsterdam around 1650. They lived on Dam Square. As a young guy he witnessed the fire in the old townhall which made a deep impression on him. He later would describe or draw 80 fires in almost any neighborhood of Amsterdam. When he married in 1661 the family was living on Herengracht, the most fashionable canal in Amsterdam. In 1668 Cosimo II de' Medici bought one of his paintings, a view of the townhall with a manipulated perspective. Van der Heyden often painted country estates, like Goudestein, owned by Joan Huydecoper II. He was not good in drawing figures and used for his paintings a metal plate for bricks, a sponge or moss for the leaves. Johannes Lingelbach, Adriaen van de Velde und Eglon van der Neer assisted him drawing the figures. Jan van der Heyden also introduced the lamp post and in 1672 impoved the design of the fire engine. He died in wealth as the superintendent of the lighting and director of the (voluntary) firemen's guild at Amsterdam. Van der Heyden was a contemporary of the landscape painters Hobbema and Jacob van Ruisdael, with the advantage, which they lacked, of a certain professional versatility; for, whilst they painted admirable pictures and starved, he varied the practice of art with the study of mechanics. Until 1672 he painted in partnership with Adriaen van de Velde. After Adrian's death, and probably because of the loss which that event entailed upon him, he accepted the offices to which allusion has just been made. At no period of artistic activity had the system of division of labour been more fully or more constantly applied to art than it was in Holland towards the close of the 17th century. Van der Heyden, who was perfect as an architectural draughtsman insofar as he painted the outside of buildings and thoroughly mastered linear perspective, seldom turned his hand to the delineation of anything but brick houses and churches in streets and squares, or rows along canals, or "moated granges," common in his native country. He was a travelled man, had seen The Hague, Ghent and Brussels, and had ascended the Rhine past Xanten to Cologne, where he copied over and over again the tower and crane of the great cathedral. But he cared nothing for hill or vale, or stream or wood. He could reproduce the rows of bricks in a square of Dutch houses sparkling in the sun, or stunted trees and lines of dwellings varied by steeples, all in light or thrown into passing shadow by moving cloud. He had the art of painting microscopically without loss of breadth or keeping. But he could draw neither man nor beast, nor ships nor carts; and this was his disadvantage. His good genius under these circumstances was Adrian van der Velde, who enlivened his compositions with spirited figures; and the joint labour of both is a delicate, minute, transparent work, radiant with glow and atmosphere.  Related Paintings of Jan van der Heyden :. | Church Square, memories | Deer Hunter | kanal i amsterdam | Jan van der Heyden | The City Hall in Amsterdam |
Related Artists:
bernt notke
ca 1440-1509
Franz Ludwig Catel
German Painter, 1778-1856,German painter. As a child, Catel helped carve small wooden figures in the toyshop owned by his father. With the encouragement of the printmaker Daniel Chodowiecki, Catel enrolled at the Berlin Kunstakademie, becoming a full member in 1806. In 1807, after already making a name for himself as a watercolourist and book illustrator, he began several years of study at the Acad?mie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where his main subject was oil painting. In 1811 he moved to Italy, where he stayed for the rest of his life. Initially he wavered between Joseph Anton Koch's classically heroic style of landscape painting and the Romantic lyricism of the Nazarenes. Eventually he found that he could best exercise his technical ability, and most quickly achieve fame and fortune, by producing Italian landscapes. He specialized in Neapolitan scenes depicting festive folk customs; and such paintings proved popular with the mass of wealthy travellers who came to Italy after the Napoleonic Wars.
Antonio Maria Esquivel
Nacio en Sevilla en 1806. Comenzo los estudios de pintura en la Academia de Bellas Artes de Sevilla. Alli se familiarizo con la tecnica pictorica y el detallismo al estilo de Murillo. En 1831, se traslado a Madrid, donde concurso en la Academia de San Fernando, siendo nombrado academico de merito. En contacto con el ambiente intectual madrileno de esos anos, participo activamente en la fundacion del Liceo Artistico y Literario en 1837, donde daria clases de Anatomia, asignatura que impartiria tambien mas tarde en la Academia de San Fernando. En 1839, otra vez en Sevilla, sufrio una enfermedad que le dejo practicamente ciego; el artista, sumido en una profunda depresion, se intento suicidar arrojandose al rio Guadalquivir. Enterados sus companeros y amigos poetas y artistas y movilizados por el Liceo para ayudarle, sufragaron entre todos un caro tratamiento realizado por un prestigioso oftalmologo frances. Gracias a esto, en 1840 sano y recupero la vision. El artista, agradecido, pinto a sus amigos, poetas y pintores del Romanticismo, en un cuadro que se ha hecho justamente celebre. Como reconocimientos oficiales, recibo la placa del Sitio de Cadiz y la Cruz de Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Catolica. En 1843 es nombrado Pintor de Camara y en 1847 academico de San Fernando, siendo ademas miembro fundador de la Sociedad Protectora de Bellas Artes. Como teorico de la pintura, redacto un Tratado de Anatomia Pictorica, cuyo original se guarda en el Museo del Prado. Fallecio en Madrid en 1857. Sus hijos Carlos Maria (1830-1867) y Vicente tambien fueron pintores.