English Romantic Painter, 1775-1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner (23 April 1775 ?C 19 December 1851) was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker, whose style is said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism. Although Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, he is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting. Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321) Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires (such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand, and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840). Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by man, evidence of the power of God - a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period. The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena. Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape. However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper 321) One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a storm at sea. In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists, particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.  Related Paintings of Joseph Mallord William Turner :. | Naked portrait | The triangle with black | Rome from the Vatican | Volcano erupt | Crossing the Brook |
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Evert Oudendijck
(1650, Haarlem - 1695, Haarlem), was a Dutch Golden Age painter. According to Houbraken he painted stag hunts and other hunting scenes in landscapes, along with the artist "Drossaart". He was the father of Adriaen Oudendijck. According to the RKD he was registered in the Haarlem Guild of St. Luke in 1663 as the pupil of Adriaen van Ostade which would make him about 15 years old at that time.His registration as a member of the guild in 1646 is therefore impossible. Though Evert Oudendijk is listed in the Haarlem guild register as a member in 1646, he probably became a member in 1664 (a year suspiciously lacking member registrations), like other members mistakenly registered in 1646, such as Evert Collier and Egbert van Heemskerck. He is listed two other times in the Haarlem guild; in 1663 (listed as Ostade's pupil "Evert Adriaanszen van Oudendijck") and as painter in 1670.
POORTER, Willem de
Dutch Baroque Era Painter, 1608-ca.1648 Dutch painter. His father, Pieter, came from Flanders to Haarlem, where in 1631 works by Willem were recorded for the first time. In 1634 Willem was registered in Haarlem as a master painter, and in 1635 Pieter Casteleijn was named as his pupil. As late as 1643 Pieter Abrams Poorter and Claes Coenraets began their studies with him in Haarlem. Willem is mentioned for the last time in the archives of the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1645, the year he left for Wijk bij Heusden. He supposedly studied under Rembrandt, together with his fellow townsman Jacob de Wet. There is no documentation to support this assumption, but a number of de Poorter's small-scale biblical and history paintings bear such a striking likeness to Rembrandt's biblical compositions of c. 1630 that the two hands are often confused. Rembrandt's Presentation in the Temple (1631; The Hague, Mauritshuis; see REMBRANDT VAN RIJN) was copied (Dresden, Gemeldegal. Alte Meister) by de Poorter, who also painted his own version (Kassel, Schloss Wilhelmsh?he). The lighting in de Poorter's Entombment (Guernsey, D. Cevat priv..) was also apparently inspired by Rembrandt's example. Since de Poorter's paintings were first reported in Haarlem in 1631, the year that Rembrandt moved from Leiden to Amsterdam, it seems likely that de Poorter received his training in the Leiden workshop, where Gerrit Dou had also been working since 1628.
Alfred Dehodencq
French Painter. Paris 1822 - Paris 1882. Specializes in Orientalism. French painter born in Paris. Well known for his vivid oil paintings depicting slices of life in the world around him. During his early years , Dehodencq studied in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts under the tutelage of famous French artist Leon Cogniet. Following the French revolution of 1848 he spent five years in Spain where he became acquainted with the works of Spanish painters Diego Vel??zquez and Francisco Goya which had a strong influence on his approach to painting. In 1853 he travelled to Morocco where for the following ten years he produced many of his most famous paintings depicting scenes of the world he encountered. While he considered himself to be a 'Last of the Romantics', his work is generally categorized in the mid 19th century realists artistic movement. Dehodencq was the first foreign artist known to have lived in Morocco for an extended number of years. He returned to Paris in 1863. He died in 1882