Flemish Baroque Era Painter, 1577-1640 Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 ?C May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England. Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, "history" paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635. His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms 'Rubensian' or 'Rubenesque' for plus-sized women. The term 'Rubensiaans' is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.  Related Paintings of Peter Paul Rubens :. | Philip II on Horseback (df01) | The Apotheosis of Henry IV and the Proclamation of the Regency of Marie de Medici on the 14th of May | Virgin and Child with the Infant St John | Elijah and the Angel | Portrait of A Young Man (mk27) |
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Pedro Blanes
1878-1926 Uruguayan painter. He first studied painting and drawing as a child with the Catalan painter Miguel Jaume i Bosch. As an adolescent he moved with his family to Spain, where he studied at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid and frequented the workshop of Santiago Rusieol. After studying in Paris with Benjamin Constant, he visited Italy and Mallorca, where he first developed his talents as a landscape painter before returning briefly to Uruguay in 1899. During another prolonged visit to Europe from 1902 to 1907 he enthusiastically studied the work of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Lucien Simon, Henri Martin, Claude Monet and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. After his return to Montevideo in 1907 he painted shimmering Impressionist-influenced landscapes such as Palma de Mallorca and treated local rural and urban scenes in which he established himself as a remarkable colourist. He also commemorated subjects from Latin American history in works such as Artigas Dictating to his Secretary Don Jose G. Monterroso , the equestrian portrait of General Galarza and Artigas in el Hervidero.
Jean-Etienne Liotard
1702-1789 Swiss Jean Etienne Liotard Gallery He began his studies under Professor Gardelle and Petitot, whose enamels and miniatures he copied with considerable skill. He went to Paris in 1725, studying under J. B. Masse and François Lemoyne, on whose recommendation he was taken to Naples by the Marquis Puysieux. In 1735 he was in Rome, painting the portraits of Pope Clement XII and several cardinals. Three years later he accompanied Lord Duncannon to Constantinople. His eccentric adoption of oriental costume secured him the nickname of the Turkish painter. He went to Vienna in 1742 to paint the portraits of the imperial family. Still under distinguished patronage he returned to Paris. In 1744 he visited England, where he painted the princess of Wales in 1753, and went to Holland in 1756, where, in the following year, he married Marie Fargues. She also came from a Hugenot family, and wanted him to shave off his beard. Another visit to England followed in 1772, and in the next two years his name figures among the Royal Academy exhibitors. He returned to his native town in 1776. In 1781 Liotard published his Trait?? des principes et des r??gles de la peinture. In his last days he painted still lifes and landscapes. He died at Geneva in 1789. Liotard was an artist of great versatility, and though his fame depends largely on his graceful and delicate pastel drawings, of which La Liseuse, The Chocolate Girl, and La Belle Lyonnaise at the Dresden Gallery are delightful examples, he achieved distinction by his enamels, copperplate engravings and glass painting. He also wrote a Treatise on the Art of Painting, and was an expert collector of paintings by the old masters. Many of the masterpieces he had acquired were sold by him at high prices on his second visit to England. The museums of Amsterdam, Berne, and Geneva are particularly rich in examples of his paintings and pastel drawings. A picture of a Turk seated is at the Victoria and Albert Museum, while the British Museum owns two of his drawings. The Louvre has, besides twenty-two drawings, a portrait of Lieutenant General Hrault and a portrait of the artist is to be found at the Sala di pittori, in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. While his son also married a Dutch girl, the Rijksmuseum inherited an important collection of his drawings and paintings.
Ferdynand Ruszczyc
(1870-1936) was a Polish painter, printmaker, and stage designer. Ruszczyc originally studied law at the University of St. Petersburg, but then switched majors and began taking painting classes at the Academy of Fine Art. He was a student of famous Russian landscape painters Ivan Shishkin and Arkhip Kuindzhi. Ruszczyc travelled to the Crimea to paint seascapes, and later to the Baltic islands and Sweden to paint northern landscapes. He visited Berlin, where he was significantly influenced by the Symbolist painters such as Arnold Bocklin. After graduation, Ruszczyc made extensive tours of Western Europe incorporating much of the styles he came across into his own art.